Does city planning include parking availability?
Published Date: October 3rd, 2006
The other day I toiled effortlessly to find a parking spot in downtown Savannah. Ordinarily I would consider it a normal day. Except this was a Monday at 4:50pm. I guess now that I see that in print (ok….so a blog isn’t print, I admit) I realize that isn’t even so odd. Well, try this. The only open spot was taken by one of those little scooter/car/golf cart things that the Meter Maids drive. Can you believe that? She had the audacity to take a parking spot and THEN proceed to ticket other vehicles. I quickly used my cell phone to snap a picture which was later emailed to our fair city!
That got me thinking. What does parking do to downtown commerce. Well, I found on the Ellis Square Project blog these statistics.
It takes:
- 8 minutes: Average time spent driving around looking for a parking spot.
- 47,000 gallons: Gas wasted annually by parking space hunters in one urban shopping district.
- 100,000 hours: Driver time wasted hunting in the same district.
- 40 calories: What you would burn in a brisk 8 minute walk.
Technorati Tags: Savannah, Ellis Square
And this is why I park in a garage!