12-04-2016, 06:11 PM
(12-04-2016, 02:47 PM)KevinL Wrote:(12-04-2016, 01:16 PM)Canard Wrote: Even though I'm still primarily a motorist, I still can't help but think these very few spaces along King could have been better used as bike lanes. There are hundreds of spots just the other side of the building - did the extra ~10 spots on King really make that much of an improvement?
The local merchants are very protective of street parking - they were annoyed enough with the spots on the other side going away. Keeping these became a requirement.
This is unfortunately the situation. Even though empirical evidence from other bike lane installations shows that they are wrong, the general sentiment is that if their customers cannot park in front of their business, well, they won't have any customers. And for better or worse, the cities are very often willing to acquiesce, to these demands. I think getting the BIA on board with removing street parking in order to install bike lanes north of Erb was tremendously progressive, and also instrumental in getting council support for doing so. And yet, despite the fact that more than 100% of the street parking was replaced with off street lots (yes, you read that correct, parking actually INCREASED in uptown), there was still a business who felt so strongly about losing parking, that they came to the council meeting to speak out against it.