It is time for Portland to outlaw new apartment construction w/o Parking (Burns: sublease, lease)

[EnricoV]

Originally Posted by pdxMIKEpdx

Nope, I just realize all the sneaky ways Portland has of "taxing" it's residents.

You don't think Portland has the exclusion on that do you? Every government, at every level does. Portland is no different.

[pdxMIKEpdx]

I totally agree with that statement.


BTW, I heard on the radio this morning that the annual fee for a parking permit to park in front of your own home is 60 bucks.

Remember in the not too distant past (a couple of years ago), an Oregonian could register their car for two years for 40 bucks?
Now its more than triple that.

Watch, in a few years that 60 buck fee will be at least 150 bucks.

[Minervah]

This is a non car owner asking. Does Portland require a city sticker for vehicles? Or is that a big city (Chicago) thing?

One thing that puzzles me is that the new apartment building that is going up on 27th and Hawthorne will have 77 units which will include some ground floor businesses and twenty parking spots. Okay, so who gets the parking spots? I wonder if they will have a lottery or will it be for the businesses or what? Right now there is some street parking on Hawthorne. On 27th there is parking from Madison to Hawthorne on one side of the street only. There is one handicapped spot that is reserved by permit.

It will be interesting to see how parking will be accomodated and how many people will actually not own cars. I think Safeway will be please with all the new customers. Maybe they will hire more check out clerks.

The guy who bought the old house that was on 27th and Hawthorne has had it move a block away. He stated that like it or not, Hawthorne will be "improved."

But he is the neighborhood hero. He is going to redo the house from offices into a few apartments. But he will accomodate parking. It should be really nice when he gets finished with it.

[pdxMIKEpdx]

No city stickers in Portland.

I am also very glad that the house was saved.

[Steve Pickering]

We watched them move it on Channel 12.

[Minervah]

Originally Posted by Steve Pickering

We watched them move it on Channel 12.

Quite a sight wasn't it? I watched on Sunday in person when they began but it was raining pretty hard and it was a very slow process so I didn't stick it out for too long. The next day they continued the move so I watched some more. Just a fascinating process.

[Beenhere4ever]

About the "enough parking space" thing, yeh, if residents are reasonable enough to be one car owners, I think the problem is within reach of manageability. But there's no way to solve the "problem" when you are talking about people who want two or three cars. My feeling is that they really need a house with a yard. And there are cars that are a good compromise between various types of cars. You don't need a sedan AND an SUV. The right SUV can work as both, plus as an offroad vehicle. And if you're a collector, don't live in an apartment, simple as that. Or rent wareouse space. I know someone who has a ministorage as the permanent garage for his car. Do they have ministorage facilities in or near Portland?

[Minervah]

Originally Posted by Beenhere4ever

About the "enough parking space" thing, yeh, if residents are reasonable enough to be one car owners, I think the problem is within reach of manageability. But there's no way to solve the "problem" when you are talking about people who want two or three cars. My feeling is that they really need a house with a yard. And there are cars that are a good compromise between various types of cars. You don't need a sedan AND an SUV. The right SUV can work as both, plus as an offroad vehicle. And if you're a collector, don't live in an apartment, simple as that. Or rent wareouse space. I know someone who has a ministorage as the permanent garage for his car. Do they have ministorage facilities in or near Portland?

The original idea behind the multi unit buildings with no parking spaces in areas where there already were no parking spaces was to encourage people to not have any cars and encourage people to use bikes as their sole means of transportation which I think was unrealistic. Some of these buildings already built have escalator devices to transport bikes to upper floors.

Charlie Hales was a supporter of these buildings in the begining but now he is saying that he supported the ownership of only one car. Sort of "backpedaling" on the issue no pun intended. The problem is this. Surveys have shown that indeed people with bikes have moved into these units as hoped. But they have cars as well. And the problem in some cases has been made worse because even though many do have only one car, they leave their car in favor of riding their bikes so the car sits in one spot taking up that spot for days sometimes. This just makes the problem worse.

I guess the plan sounded good on paper but in reality it did not work so well.

[SETabor]

When I lived in DC, I originally had a car. I never used it except on the occasional weekends. Street parking was free but they had street cleaning. North sides on Tuesdays, south sides on Wednesdays. They usually didn't tow your car if it was left over but they did give you a $35 ticket. Having to deal with moving the car twice a week or getting a ticket plus paying insurance and registration made it annoying to deal with, so I sold it. I then would borrow a friend's car or get a zip car for a day trip and rent a car if I needed it for longer. That ended up being cheaper and almost as easy. All those people who only use their cars a few times a month would get rid of it in a heartbeat if it was annoying or more expensive.

It's illegal to store vehicles on the street and after 24 hours, a car's technically an abandoned auto. I suspect that if someone left their car in front of my house for over a week and never even checked on it, I may report it as suspicious or abandoned.

[Steve Pickering]

Current registration is required here.