Park Once

hugeasscity

Not many people I know get very excited about this kind of shit. But I certainly do. First, huge-ass-city is an awesome name for a blog. Second, this concept is great. For those of you not willing to click and read for yourself here's the summary; It's a proposal in Portland to build a giant parking garage on the edge of downtown. The idea being that they'll need to consolidate a lot of parking in one location as they start to build condos, apartments and stores where smaller, scattered parking lots and garages now stand. Eventually,  in an effort to make the downtown more bicycle and pedestrian friendly, they'll start closing streets to traffic one-by-one. I've seen it in a few places before. New Brunswick, NJ is the first place I had seen the "park once" concept. You can drive right up to the outskirts of New Brunswick, park your car, and take a shuttle bus into town. You know, instead of driving around, looking for parking, then going back to your car to take it with you to your next destination a few blocks away. Believe it or not, a lot of downtown traffic in most cities is just people circling the block looking for parking. Oxford, England is another example. Oxford being more relevant here because most of the streets in the town are now closed to car traffic. Buses and deliveries are all that get through.  Hmmm . . . yeah . . . I have a picture of that somewhere . . . ohh, there it is