Our customers count on quick access to reliable parking at our park-and-rides. Yet many tell us it’s getting harder to find spaces, especially as more people use transit.
We also know some of our park-and-ride spots are being filled by people who aren’t there to catch a bus, vanpool, or carpool—instead, they’re going to nearby businesses, apartments, or construction sites.
Metro is now looking at a range of options to improve management of parking at our lots and garages, and we want your input.
One option might be permits for priority parking for carpoolers, similar to a program Sound Transit will roll out this fall.
We’d like your thoughts about permit parking, as well as any other ideas to help us better manage parking at our park-and-rides.
Take this 10-minute online survey to tell us what you think, or contact us at haveasay@kingcounty.gov or 206-263-9768.
The deadline for comments is Friday, August 19.
Learn more
Project website: www.kingcounty.gov/metro/parking
Sound Transit parking permits: www.soundtransit.org/permitparking
Metro Connects (our DRAFT long-range plan – see Pages 35-42):
www.kcmetrovision.org/plan/metro-connects-draft-plan
Your idea of ensuring transit riders have priority at Park and Rides makes sense. It’s quite discouraging when I see a busy P&R being used by next door apartment building, colleges, or business offices when the intention (spirit) of Park and Rides is to give those investing their time and flexibility a convenient and sound place to commute from.
It also makes sense that parking transactions would occur via Orca card and possibly the best incentive is reimbursement or credit of some sort for the user.
Can you give us an idea of the cost? If it’s similar to Seattle garages then all marks and intentions have been missed. Will the charge only cover the administrative cost?
The current system favors the best paid employees and punishes lesser paid employees. If we are building a priority of equity and social justice this should not be so.
Do not make us pay to park at a park and ride! Ridiculous and not supportive of King County’s equity and social justice agenda. I will just drive my car. Not worth the hassle. Too stressful already trying to jockey for one of the few spots left after 7 a.m. Quit putting bandaids on the situation and think of some long-term strategies, like ADD MORE PARKING, especially by high-capacity transportation (trains and rail). Do not make the spaces smaller–that only adds a few spaces and dramatically increases the chances of damaging vehicles.
Like the survey! I need more park and ride spots so I don’t have to drive just because I have no place to leave my car….They need to be well lit and safe. The lots need to be big enough for minivans, SUVs and trucks as that is the type of vehicle in my family neighborhood. The problem is that the cities are reducing parking slots and not adding parking to apartment units so cars are needing a place to go. Public policy or political correctness is causing some of the problem.
I agree with the garage theory. Parking in downtown Seattle is expensive and not always available. Even trying to find parking on the street for a couple hours is almost non-existent because of all the people illegally using handicap decals and parking for free with them (yes, I see this on a daily basis outside my building and even know the people that do this). I often see cars in the park and ride who take up more than one parking space because they are too big for the space and there isn’t anything else that they will fit in. Paying for parking in a park and ride lot kind of defeats the purpose of these lots.
Charging for parking at the P&Rs will only discourage people from taking the bus all together. You want to get people to use public transit but then want to make it inconvenient and costly for them to do so, all in the interest of generating more revenue, but not solving the problem. I use a park and ride because it saves me at a minimum, an hour a day that would be spent taking multiple buses to get to my work. If I’m going to have to pay for parking and the bus, I’ll simply drive to my work each day and pay for parking, which only adds to daily traffic congestion. How about we have longer term vision and goals??? How about we consider that the P&Rs need to be garages so they have more parking available???
Make everyone pay for parking using Orca cards, but then reimburse them right away as soon as they use the same Orca cards for their bus rides within the next two hours. This should discourage people from using Park and Ride for unintended purposes.
No parking fee!
No reservation!
Only one rule: first come, first served
awesome initiative. Hope ppl cum up with good stuff. BTW why cant you build P&R that fly in air? 🙂 I mean like put an engine to big platform and rotate the fans and make the platform (having cars) fly