General Road and Highway Discussion

[danbrotherston]

Dan, I'm also fine with CBD congestion charges where they make sense.  But to me its more about managing congestion than funding the infrastructure.

I'm pretty against "no free parking anywhere".  I think you're dis-incentivizing the wrong thing and punishing the wrong people.  Especially in this day and age of online shopping and next-day delivery.  Similar to tolls, I think paid parking mostly makes sense as a way to manage usage.  I think in our case it probably makes more sense to encourage a few easy-to-get-to parking locations and then make the CBD really easy for pedestrians to get around from those locations and from public transportation.  It feels like we're moving in this direction?

I agree about congestion charges.

As for parking, the problem is, when malls have free parking, there's a huge push towards free parking everywhere.  And as we know, parking isn't free, everyone still do pay for it, but we pay for it in the goods we buy, so in fact, everyone who arrives on transit (or as a pedestrian/cyclist) subsidize those who drive.  That seems rather backwards.