The costs associated must include labor, elevator operation/service, line painting and boom gate upkeep to think of a few. From a quick perusal, they also need to be checked for stresses due to the nature of their use: holding heavy vehicles. Actually, preventive maintenance seems to be key with p-decks to avoid escalating costs, similar to the dilemma we now face with our roads, streets, bridges. It’s really quite an industry.

As a Midtown neighborhood resident, I’m all for the parking deck… that is not the issue. What is problematic, and the thing I believe Gary has pointed out well here, is that parking decks by themselves do not solve the problems they are built to solve. Along with the bricks and mortar and solar panels, there need to be policies and practices outside the confines of the deck that reinforce the values and behaviors the deck is supposed to represent.

Gary’s right on point. Why would anyone choose to park in a parking deck if the penalty for parking on Front Street and other valuable downtown streets is barely the cost of a day’s fee? If the parking deck, and the others already built or yet to come are to work we need brave policies and informed citizens. It’s an integrative process. One simply does not work without the other. It starts with raising meter fees, then raising civil infraction penalties, encouraging high-occupancy-vehicles, and creating a real benefit for businesses, their employees, and customers to choose least-impact transportation methods. Not to offend people or push them away, but to create the kind of vehicular parking behavior that the City needs.

If I have an issue with the parking decks in Downtown it is that they come with no real comprehensive and integrated strategy for implementation beyond financing their construction. And that I’ll admit was daunting in itself. I want to see a comprehensive surface transit strategy, a plan for the city and how it will treat parking now that it’s got all those new spaces. What have we gained in public space by building the decks? It’s a fair question. I would love to see the City celebrate the deck (as Hans says) by committing to removing several downtown parking spaces and replacing them with public seating, bike racks, more trees, or dog parks. And I don’t expect it today, but I would like to know there’s a plan to reflect the change in use of public property.

Perhaps the newest deck would be easier to get excited about if there was any kind of balanced transportation funding. How about a $6 million deck, with another million put to transit and another million put to bicycle facilities. Parking for private automobiles seems to be the greatest single outlay of public funds these days. Quite a legacy left for our children.