Dear Atlanta: Just Shut Up and Pay for Your Parking

[bUU]

Originally Posted by ATLTJL

Bwahahahahahahaha!!!!! You really think a MARTA BUS is a sufficient mode of transportation to support businesses like WEST ELM?????

While Disney's monorail gets most of the attention, it only ferries guests between three of the hotels and two of the four theme parks. Guests from those three hotels must use buses to reach the other two theme parks and the water parks, and guests from the remaining seventeen hotels reach all four theme parks and the water parks using buses. That's not to mention the Downtown Disney hotels which run less frequent commuter bus service to and from the theme parks. Like it or not, buses are a very effective and flexible means of connecting large numbers of people between terminals and destinations. Need more capacity, add more buses. While the streets are not an unlimited resource, buses make better utilization of the streets than personal vehicles.

[magnetar]

Originally Posted by ATLTJL

I haven't seen the food court during dinner, but my hunch is that it is highly dependent upon the lunch crowd.

My office is only a mile or so from PCM, and adjacent to the Beltline. But on a normal day, who has time for that? 20 minutes there, 20 minutes back, you can't really do it within a normal lunch hour.

Imagine how convenient it would be with light rail on the BeltLine!

It's busy during dinner. Very busy. Minero was an hour wait last Saturday (we skipped it) and had to scout out for a table space in the food hall (pro tip: go upstairs if the tables on the first floor are full).

[ElleKaye]

Originally Posted by bu2

If that's what you got from it, you turned your brain off after the first paragraph (or didn't bother going beyond). His comment about free parking being in the constitution was sarcastic. The vast majority of the article is quotes from and explanation of why people think paying for parking is a good idea.

I agree with you even though I have no desire to read the article or two articles from different sources based on the comments in this thread. I don't have patience for extremists on either end.

On one side you have people who want car drivers to be penalized for driving at all in every possible way. Drive down the freeway - you need a toll. Park that car anywhere - pay a HIGH fee. Let's do away with parking lots and chat density, density, density. It's like the most poorly planned campaign ever to entice people to take public transit. Don't get mad at everybody else because you don't have a car.

On the other side, you have people who seem to think that someone must be a bottom feeder if they cannot take personal control over their transportation needs and would prefer that public transit would bring an unsavory element to their areas.

It really should not be so difficult and no, we are not all getting along. You don't see how many communities with the majority of the wealth are trying to break out and make their own cities? That is a *********, fund your own stuff for everything (transit being the least of it). It's not that different from being overly concerned about drivers heavily penalized for using a parking lot.

Now, in any place that I have been, it's expected that the downtown area will not have free parking. It's also expected that parking garages or even a random-looking lot (though probably a scam) are not free. However, under no circumstance would I expect to pay for parking a Kroger which is a parking lot, right?

If we're going with that regime, then let's charge admission to make it fair. Charge by the head for access. Doesn't matter how you got there - that's between you and whatever floats your boat. Happy Thanksgiving!