QLine: Park it
A city-contracted consultant has offered up a draft plan that would radically reduce the amount of parking required for new developments in most of Santa Monica.
So this week, Q-Line asked:
Do you agree that developments need less parking than in the past or is this report just wishful thinking?
Here are your responses:
“Yeah, this consultant must be smoking something or brain dead. How can new construction need less parking? He is an idiot. The only way this construction is going to need less is if everybody who goes there is blind or seeing-impaired and then they don’t need a car. No, he’s crazy and I think it’d be a big mistake to follow that way to go and, also, I think we need to stop all this big construction. Santa Monica is getting too crowded.”
“This type of thinking is not just wishful, it’s the height of absurdity. Of course they need more parking, not less. Everyone has a car. And as soon as somebody gets old enough to drive, they get a car. There are always more cars than parking spaces. That’s the reality of today.”
“Well of course that’s a stupid thing. Of course more parking is required here in new developments in San-Malicious. Of course. Where are they supposed to go, up to the sky, to the heavens?”
“Where is this city digging up these so called ‘consultants’ who constantly and consistently waste hard-earned tax dollars? This latest bit of insanity about the parking tops them all, I think, and there have been a lot of pretty bad ones. Between the burdening population and the large number of vagrants that sleep in their cars, campers, trucks and SUVs on our streets, how could anyone in their right mind think we need less parking? In my area alone, guest and visitor parking is nonexistent. The developers and other entities, like Saint John’s Health Center, don’t want to spend money on parking facilities for their tenants. They just want the rent… . The citizens can go to you know where. The parking for the ER at Saint John’s is criminal and excruciatingly inconvenient. My family and I have made our last visits there for anything. Now the whole city, what’s left of it, is going to go in a similar way?”
“For quality of life, we need in Santa Monica less development, more parking and a slower pace of desperate, social engineering.”
“The visually impaired can see this mess coming from a mile away, even if you miss the smell from this pile of sewer manure. You do not need parking if you do not have a car. The circus clowns in City Hall, with their worthless degrees, and western, European, Socialist urban planning, have their sphincters set on it takes a Utopian village. Having no cars creates more space for commercial tax-enhancement buildings, also voting enhancement of low-income housing tenants. With mass transit and a hoard of unwanted buildings and no parking, the village elders can control the movement of the people. This foul idea is so obvious that the City Hall czars hate individualism. The car owner, they hate you because they hate success. They do love hate crimes because parking spaces are a crime against egotistical civil servants, against stupidity. The gods themselves contend in vain. Good luck Santa Monica.”
“The supposed study is so flawed in every aspect, including methodology. Even a sophomore would not turn in such garbage as homework after taking Survey 101! It is not based on reality and extremely hostile to residents! We have a hard enough time with parking as is. This is a giveaway to developers. They are chipping away on zoning, parking to turn Santa Monica into Miami. No! This is not even wishful thinking. It is upending our lives based on some fantasy of some uninformed outside person. Why not use our local university experts for a study? It would cost one-tenth and be based on our reality.”
“Well now I know why the city is having a workshop on marijuana dispensaries. We will all need to be stoned when traffic and parking become more horrific under their latest plans. Perhaps they also need the dispensaries to be local to keep their consultants coming up with such ludicrous ideas. Now I must tell my landlord to change my non-smoking unit to smoking so I will be able to deal with the craziness.”
“I do not agree that the solution is to reduce parking for new developments. It is one thing to bring in consultants, using our tax dollars to provide solutions to existing problems. It is another matter for them to produce ‘solutions’ that cause the problems in the first instance. The consultants are already treating the city as if it was a high density urban center such as Chicago or San Francisco with a fully functioning mass-transit system that we do not have. The residents that I speak with do not plan to give up their cars in order to ride bikes and rely on a transit system that doesn’t exist now and may not be in place any sooner than 2020. This seems to me to be a situation where: ‘Even though the city won’t build it, we still need to keep driving and parking.’
“With the way traffic is in Santa Monica, there is already plenty of parking. It is called traffic lanes.”
“Why is it that on virtually every issue before our City Council, ideology trumps common sense?”
“Perhaps these great thinkers have never needed to buy groceries for a family, or transport a child or an elderly friend or relative. Bicycles and public transit are adequate in some situations, but for most Santa Monicans who live in the real world, a car and parking are both desirable and necessary.”
“For a dose of reality, rather than wishful thinking, our city leaders should forego car travel for an extended test period, and see how well they manage in their idealized car-free lifestyle.”
“Creating more housing without adequate parking is another example of ideology over common sense and reason. Anyone who thinks people will move into these developments and not need a car is living in a dream world. People need cars to get to and from work, to markets to get food for the family, and travel just about anywhere in California. Reducing parking requirements for developers will just make it easier to build more and increase traffic congestion. I wonder if the so-called consultant, or any of our City Council members can live without a car and be willing to walk, bike, or take a bus to get places.”
“This is such a bad idea! I live in a part of Sunset Park where there are many apartments built in the 1940s. Parking is terrible because these old buildings have garages in inconvenient places (down a 75 foot driveway that is only 6 feet wide and tiny garages) and not enough parking spaces for each unit. In the ‘40s it was normal for a married couple to have just one car; a nearby couple I know have three cars and use their garage for storage. My building has the garages behind my unit. Good thing I own this triplex; I don’t rent the garages. I gave up renting them because of the late hours and inconsiderate behavior of former tenants. Even with permit parking there is none along many parts of Ocean Park Boulevard, and all the residents along that street park on my block. We have 18 apartment units on this block, but serve the parking needs of more than 40 apartment units along Ocean Park Boulevard.”
