Parking no longer free on Saturdays in MoCo lots starting 7/8/23

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Except moco is a city, dumba$$.

You clowns keep trying to turn suburbia into a concrete jungle like NYC, when it will never work. So yea, it will take 4 hours to do a handful of errands it'd take 45 minutes to do by car because you could never build busses, trains and bike paths to cover the whole area and have the system running with minimal waiting times while having it be economically viable. Such delusional nonsense.

I need to take fluffy to the vet, get a gallon of milk, and drop stop at FedEx to drop a package off for delivery. Lol, good luck doing that by bus. Hope you got 6 hours to piss away.

So there are actually a lot of neighborhood shopping centers that have grocery stores, vets, and/or shipping storefronts, in walking distance of where a lot of people live, right here in Montgomery County. It also seems foolishly time-consuming and wasteful to transport yourself all the way to the store by SUV, and then transport yourself and a gallon of milk back home by SUV, unless the store is very close by, in which case it's...in walking distance!

But everything is always impossible when a person is bound and determined to make it impossible.

No sense reasoning with these anti-growth NIMBYs, they only care about their own way of life and expect us to pay for it.

MoCo is almost double the land area of NYC with 1/8th or so the population, yet urbanist morons and cyclists like you have insanely stupid visions of getting NYC density in the suburbs, as if everything will become magically walkable, bikable, and accessible with public transit in a reasonable amount of time.

Lol, this idea is pure pie in the sky nonsense. Areas are much larger with not enough population density to support all of the spending you'd have to do to build 1000 more transit stops by rail. It's so stupid it is laughable.

You have to drive in the suburbs. We live in the US. MoCo is not NYC. It will never be NYC. We don't live with density like Tokyo, Hong Kong or Seoul. Comparing life in those areas to life in the burbs is so dumb. Yes, it would take inordinate amounts of time to run errands because everything a scattered all over a much larger area with less people. That means less lines run, and there's not enough people to make any similar styles of transit in NY or Tokyo economically viable.

Cars it is.

You are convincing literally nobody with your nonsensical rants, dude.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The council is so good at figuring out new ways to take our money! This is on top of recently raising property tax rates and the recordation tax, of course.

"On or about July 8, 2023, Saturday payment will be required in garages and lots. Rates and hours requiring payment will be the same as the rest of the week."

https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/DOT-Parking/FAQ/using-meters.html

Poor drivers. Won't someone think of the drivers?

Poor county council, nonprofits, snd community activists. Whatever will they do without more taxpayer money!!!? We gotta make sure they can eat!

Eh. "Free" parking subsidizes drivers and driving. End driver/driving subsidies.

End lunch subsidies, housing subsidies, electric power tool and car subsidies, solar panel subsidies, etc. etc.

End it all!

That's an unnuanced view of public policy. In the nuanced view, we subsidize behaviors/actions we want to encourage, and remove subsidies from behaviors/actions we don't want to encourage. We want to encourage kids having lunches, people having housing, and clean(er), local energy sources. We don't want to, and don't need to, encourage driving.

Which is why we make parking easier, so that local businesses thrive.

But this is moco, where the county does everything in its power to kill jobs, kill businesses, and stifle economic growth. No surprise.

No, when we make parking easier, we get a lot of roads, traffic congestion, parking lots, and car crashes, none of which contribute to economic vitality or help most local businesses. It's true that car crashes are good for car-repair, tow truck, and car-sales businesses, though.

Fix the problem then. What solution you got so a grocery store run doesn't take 4 hours and you can move millions of people all over the county.

Let me guess,.you have the typical list of really stupid ideas the bike idiots always try to propose.

I'm working on it. What are you doing?

Why should I have to do anything? I pay taxes.

Until there is a solution, I will drive. And you can eat my exhaust.

What a charmer you are.

I live in the suburbs because I chose to live in the suburbs. I WANT to drive everywhere and not have to take 10 hours on weekend to so basic chores because I have to take public train.

That’s what you clowns don’t get. You try to make the suburbs NYC, as if we have the same kind of density that can make public transportation economically viable.

We live in the burbs. Now accept the fact that it requires driving and stop having grand delusions that you can bike, bus, and take trains everywhere. You can’t. No one wants to spend entire days just trying to do two things like going to get milk and sugar and then having to spend 4 more hours to get to Target to pickup cleaning supplies.

Suburbanites drive. Get over it.

Lol, you clearly have never lived in a city dude. I can get milk in 1 minute walk, it takes you a half hour + parking.

Except moco is a city, dumba$$.

You clowns keep trying to turn suburbia into a concrete jungle like NYC, when it will never work. So yea, it will take 4 hours to do a handful of errands it'd take 45 minutes to do by car because you could never build busses, trains and bike paths to cover the whole area and have the system running with minimal waiting times while having it be economically viable. Such delusional nonsense.

I need to take fluffy to the vet, get a gallon of milk, and drop stop at FedEx to drop a package off for delivery. Lol, good luck doing that by bus. Hope you got 6 hours to piss away.

What is this crazy fantasy future dystopia you keep bringing up? What is wrong with you? Cities grow, get over it. We have a government and planners for a reason: to make it work. Jesus, calm down.

Believe it or not, many, many people do things via the bus. If that makes you cry, I'm sorry. Get over it, grow up, and shut up.

Believe it or not, many, many people do things via the car. If that makes you cry, I'm sorry. Get over it, grow up, and shut up.

You should take your own advice.

Yes, and you should pay for it and stop asking us to pay for your car. Get over it and stop being selfish. Literally nobody agrees with you.

[Anonymous]

You should be blaming ParkMobile. ParkMobile - which is owned by a Swedish company - gets $0.35 - 0.45 for each person who parks. Their operating costs are very low so they use their profits to lobby local governments to increase the amount of paid parking and days they charge for parking.

[Anonymous]

In this thread: lots of people who think poor people without cars should pay for the parking of your luxury SUV because 2 bucks an hour is TYRANNY.

Get a grip losers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Except moco is a city, dumba$$.

You clowns keep trying to turn suburbia into a concrete jungle like NYC, when it will never work. So yea, it will take 4 hours to do a handful of errands it'd take 45 minutes to do by car because you could never build busses, trains and bike paths to cover the whole area and have the system running with minimal waiting times while having it be economically viable. Such delusional nonsense.

I need to take fluffy to the vet, get a gallon of milk, and drop stop at FedEx to drop a package off for delivery. Lol, good luck doing that by bus. Hope you got 6 hours to piss away.

So there are actually a lot of neighborhood shopping centers that have grocery stores, vets, and/or shipping storefronts, in walking distance of where a lot of people live, right here in Montgomery County. It also seems foolishly time-consuming and wasteful to transport yourself all the way to the store by SUV, and then transport yourself and a gallon of milk back home by SUV, unless the store is very close by, in which case it's...in walking distance!

But everything is always impossible when a person is bound and determined to make it impossible.

No sense reasoning with these anti-growth NIMBYs, they only care about their own way of life and expect us to pay for it.

MoCo is almost double the land area of NYC with 1/8th or so the population, yet urbanist morons and cyclists like you have insanely stupid visions of getting NYC density in the suburbs, as if everything will become magically walkable, bikable, and accessible with public transit in a reasonable amount of time.

Lol, this idea is pure pie in the sky nonsense. Areas are much larger with not enough population density to support all of the spending you'd have to do to build 1000 more transit stops by rail. It's so stupid it is laughable.

You have to drive in the suburbs. We live in the US. MoCo is not NYC. It will never be NYC. We don't live with density like Tokyo, Hong Kong or Seoul. Comparing life in those areas to life in the burbs is so dumb. Yes, it would take inordinate amounts of time to run errands because everything a scattered all over a much larger area with less people. That means less lines run, and there's not enough people to make any similar styles of transit in NY or Tokyo economically viable.

Cars it is.

You are convincing literally nobody with your nonsensical rants, dude.

Look, we know you’re a cyclist stuck in a crappy apartment that costs $3000+ a month and are angry you can’t afford a home. Don’t take your failings out on the rest of us who choose to live in the burbs on purpose to have more space. Just because you’re stuck in an apartment and have a lifestyle boxed into 300 soft of space doesn’t mean everyone else wants your rat in a cage lifestyle. If you hate the burbs and driving so much then move already. Stop trying to take other peoples’ space to try to turn the burbs into nyc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Except moco is a city, dumba$$.

You clowns keep trying to turn suburbia into a concrete jungle like NYC, when it will never work. So yea, it will take 4 hours to do a handful of errands it'd take 45 minutes to do by car because you could never build busses, trains and bike paths to cover the whole area and have the system running with minimal waiting times while having it be economically viable. Such delusional nonsense.

I need to take fluffy to the vet, get a gallon of milk, and drop stop at FedEx to drop a package off for delivery. Lol, good luck doing that by bus. Hope you got 6 hours to piss away.

So there are actually a lot of neighborhood shopping centers that have grocery stores, vets, and/or shipping storefronts, in walking distance of where a lot of people live, right here in Montgomery County. It also seems foolishly time-consuming and wasteful to transport yourself all the way to the store by SUV, and then transport yourself and a gallon of milk back home by SUV, unless the store is very close by, in which case it's...in walking distance!

But everything is always impossible when a person is bound and determined to make it impossible.

No sense reasoning with these anti-growth NIMBYs, they only care about their own way of life and expect us to pay for it.

MoCo is almost double the land area of NYC with 1/8th or so the population, yet urbanist morons and cyclists like you have insanely stupid visions of getting NYC density in the suburbs, as if everything will become magically walkable, bikable, and accessible with public transit in a reasonable amount of time.

Lol, this idea is pure pie in the sky nonsense. Areas are much larger with not enough population density to support all of the spending you'd have to do to build 1000 more transit stops by rail. It's so stupid it is laughable.

You have to drive in the suburbs. We live in the US. MoCo is not NYC. It will never be NYC. We don't live with density like Tokyo, Hong Kong or Seoul. Comparing life in those areas to life in the burbs is so dumb. Yes, it would take inordinate amounts of time to run errands because everything a scattered all over a much larger area with less people. That means less lines run, and there's not enough people to make any similar styles of transit in NY or Tokyo economically viable.

Cars it is.

You are convincing literally nobody with your nonsensical rants, dude.

Look, we know you’re a cyclist stuck in a crappy apartment that costs $3000+ a month and are angry you can’t afford a home. Don’t take your failings out on the rest of us who choose to live in the burbs on purpose to have more space. Just because you’re stuck in an apartment and have a lifestyle boxed into 300 soft of space doesn’t mean everyone else wants your rat in a cage lifestyle. If you hate the burbs and driving so much then move already. Stop trying to take other peoples’ space to try to turn the burbs into nyc.

Rich coming from someone who is angry he can't afford to pay $3/hour to park

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Except moco is a city, dumba$$.

You clowns keep trying to turn suburbia into a concrete jungle like NYC, when it will never work. So yea, it will take 4 hours to do a handful of errands it'd take 45 minutes to do by car because you could never build busses, trains and bike paths to cover the whole area and have the system running with minimal waiting times while having it be economically viable. Such delusional nonsense.

I need to take fluffy to the vet, get a gallon of milk, and drop stop at FedEx to drop a package off for delivery. Lol, good luck doing that by bus. Hope you got 6 hours to piss away.

So there are actually a lot of neighborhood shopping centers that have grocery stores, vets, and/or shipping storefronts, in walking distance of where a lot of people live, right here in Montgomery County. It also seems foolishly time-consuming and wasteful to transport yourself all the way to the store by SUV, and then transport yourself and a gallon of milk back home by SUV, unless the store is very close by, in which case it's...in walking distance!

But everything is always impossible when a person is bound and determined to make it impossible.

No sense reasoning with these anti-growth NIMBYs, they only care about their own way of life and expect us to pay for it.

MoCo is almost double the land area of NYC with 1/8th or so the population, yet urbanist morons and cyclists like you have insanely stupid visions of getting NYC density in the suburbs, as if everything will become magically walkable, bikable, and accessible with public transit in a reasonable amount of time.

Lol, this idea is pure pie in the sky nonsense. Areas are much larger with not enough population density to support all of the spending you'd have to do to build 1000 more transit stops by rail. It's so stupid it is laughable.

You have to drive in the suburbs. We live in the US. MoCo is not NYC. It will never be NYC. We don't live with density like Tokyo, Hong Kong or Seoul. Comparing life in those areas to life in the burbs is so dumb. Yes, it would take inordinate amounts of time to run errands because everything a scattered all over a much larger area with less people. That means less lines run, and there's not enough people to make any similar styles of transit in NY or Tokyo economically viable.

Cars it is.

You are convincing literally nobody with your nonsensical rants, dude.

Look, we know you’re a cyclist stuck in a crappy apartment that costs $3000+ a month and are angry you can’t afford a home. Don’t take your failings out on the rest of us who choose to live in the burbs on purpose to have more space. Just because you’re stuck in an apartment and have a lifestyle boxed into 300 soft of space doesn’t mean everyone else wants your rat in a cage lifestyle. If you hate the burbs and driving so much then move already. Stop trying to take other peoples’ space to try to turn the burbs into nyc.

Rich coming from someone who is angry he can't afford to pay $3/hour to park

How's apartment life going between fumigating for bed bugs and roaches, having neighbors' weed smoke permeate your walls, and having craptastic 300 sqft of space to live all for the lowly price of $3000 per mo.

We get it, u mad you don't have a home, therefore you feel compelled to ruin what others have and worked for.

You hate the burbs, so leave.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Except moco is a city, dumba$$.

You clowns keep trying to turn suburbia into a concrete jungle like NYC, when it will never work. So yea, it will take 4 hours to do a handful of errands it'd take 45 minutes to do by car because you could never build busses, trains and bike paths to cover the whole area and have the system running with minimal waiting times while having it be economically viable. Such delusional nonsense.

I need to take fluffy to the vet, get a gallon of milk, and drop stop at FedEx to drop a package off for delivery. Lol, good luck doing that by bus. Hope you got 6 hours to piss away.

So there are actually a lot of neighborhood shopping centers that have grocery stores, vets, and/or shipping storefronts, in walking distance of where a lot of people live, right here in Montgomery County. It also seems foolishly time-consuming and wasteful to transport yourself all the way to the store by SUV, and then transport yourself and a gallon of milk back home by SUV, unless the store is very close by, in which case it's...in walking distance!

But everything is always impossible when a person is bound and determined to make it impossible.

No sense reasoning with these anti-growth NIMBYs, they only care about their own way of life and expect us to pay for it.

MoCo is almost double the land area of NYC with 1/8th or so the population, yet urbanist morons and cyclists like you have insanely stupid visions of getting NYC density in the suburbs, as if everything will become magically walkable, bikable, and accessible with public transit in a reasonable amount of time.

Lol, this idea is pure pie in the sky nonsense. Areas are much larger with not enough population density to support all of the spending you'd have to do to build 1000 more transit stops by rail. It's so stupid it is laughable.

You have to drive in the suburbs. We live in the US. MoCo is not NYC. It will never be NYC. We don't live with density like Tokyo, Hong Kong or Seoul. Comparing life in those areas to life in the burbs is so dumb. Yes, it would take inordinate amounts of time to run errands because everything a scattered all over a much larger area with less people. That means less lines run, and there's not enough people to make any similar styles of transit in NY or Tokyo economically viable.

Cars it is.

You are convincing literally nobody with your nonsensical rants, dude.

Look, we know you’re a cyclist stuck in a crappy apartment that costs $3000+ a month and are angry you can’t afford a home. Don’t take your failings out on the rest of us who choose to live in the burbs on purpose to have more space. Just because you’re stuck in an apartment and have a lifestyle boxed into 300 soft of space doesn’t mean everyone else wants your rat in a cage lifestyle. If you hate the burbs and driving so much then move already. Stop trying to take other peoples’ space to try to turn the burbs into nyc.

Says the person who is upset about the prospect of having to pay $1 per hour if they want to store their car in certain county-owned garages on a Saturday.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

But charging for parking doesn’t enhance other characteristics. Maybe it’s easier to find a spot when you pay for parking, but maybe it’s harder. Maybe there’s a particular store you like where they charge a parking fee, maybe there are 2 stores you like even better where parking’s free. The point is that there are an infinite number of variables to balance and people will prioritize those variables differently. Charging for parking introduces a negative variable into the associated locations. That variable may have minimal importance for you, but other people may feel differently. If you could hypothetically contrive two identical locations, differing only by parking charge, I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who considered it a positive deciding factor. You may only be able to think of a few times you chose between two equal destinations based on whether it cost money to park, but I will generally avoid it whenever possible. Not only do I consider it a pointless waste of money, I consider it particularly galling to be charged for the privilege of patronizing someplace. If they’re going to charge me for bringing them business, I’ll take my money elsewhere.

So do. As you say, people make decisions about where to go based on all kinds of things. Not everything has to be for you. If you refuse to go out to eat in downtown Bethesda because you don't want to pay $1-2 an hour to keep your car in a municipal parking garage, well, there are plenty of other places for you to eat, or you can stay home and cook.

And so I do. But what has charging for parking accomplished? Do I drive less? No, if anything I drive more. Instead of going to the closest restaurant I like, I’ll drive further to one I like that doesn’t charge parking. The only difference is that the restaurant I would have gone to before they implemented the parking charge has lost my business. It’s good news for my new restaurant choice, but the charge hurt the local business.

Great, that works for your. And it makes sense as you are not passing on the externalities to us. Taking responsibility, nice!

And no, the change doesn't hurt local biz. Any place that is considering this obviously knows most of their customers can get there without parking. Not that hard to understand champ.

Except in this case it wasn’t the businesses that decided and it wasn’t because parking was scarce. The county decided to charge more just because they could.

They should charge market-rate, so the space (owned by the tax-paying public) is most optimally used, not given away to car owning freeloaders.

The county garages in Bethesda are underutilized so market rate is less than what they charge now.

Agreed, there is way too much parking in downtown Bethesda. It would be great if some of it could be converted to more productive use.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Except moco is a city, dumba$$.

You clowns keep trying to turn suburbia into a concrete jungle like NYC, when it will never work. So yea, it will take 4 hours to do a handful of errands it'd take 45 minutes to do by car because you could never build busses, trains and bike paths to cover the whole area and have the system running with minimal waiting times while having it be economically viable. Such delusional nonsense.

I need to take fluffy to the vet, get a gallon of milk, and drop stop at FedEx to drop a package off for delivery. Lol, good luck doing that by bus. Hope you got 6 hours to piss away.

So there are actually a lot of neighborhood shopping centers that have grocery stores, vets, and/or shipping storefronts, in walking distance of where a lot of people live, right here in Montgomery County. It also seems foolishly time-consuming and wasteful to transport yourself all the way to the store by SUV, and then transport yourself and a gallon of milk back home by SUV, unless the store is very close by, in which case it's...in walking distance!

But everything is always impossible when a person is bound and determined to make it impossible.

If I could go everywhere in a straight line, sure. But I can’t and despite all the posturing about walking and pedestrian safety, the planning board still approves plans that are dangerous for pedestrians and oriented toward car driving.

Yes, they do, although to be fair:

1. a lot of this is determined by setback requirements and, especially, requirements for large fire trucks (there's irony for you, we have to build streets that encourage crashes, so that large fire trucks can get through when they respond to crashes)
2. the planning board doesn't make the real decisions; the real decisions are made by the county department of transportation and the state highway administration, which are producing a lot more talk about safety than actual safety

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Except moco is a city, dumba$$.

You clowns keep trying to turn suburbia into a concrete jungle like NYC, when it will never work. So yea, it will take 4 hours to do a handful of errands it'd take 45 minutes to do by car because you could never build busses, trains and bike paths to cover the whole area and have the system running with minimal waiting times while having it be economically viable. Such delusional nonsense.

I need to take fluffy to the vet, get a gallon of milk, and drop stop at FedEx to drop a package off for delivery. Lol, good luck doing that by bus. Hope you got 6 hours to piss away.

So there are actually a lot of neighborhood shopping centers that have grocery stores, vets, and/or shipping storefronts, in walking distance of where a lot of people live, right here in Montgomery County. It also seems foolishly time-consuming and wasteful to transport yourself all the way to the store by SUV, and then transport yourself and a gallon of milk back home by SUV, unless the store is very close by, in which case it's...in walking distance!

But everything is always impossible when a person is bound and determined to make it impossible.

No sense reasoning with these anti-growth NIMBYs, they only care about their own way of life and expect us to pay for it.

MoCo is almost double the land area of NYC with 1/8th or so the population, yet urbanist morons and cyclists like you have insanely stupid visions of getting NYC density in the suburbs, as if everything will become magically walkable, bikable, and accessible with public transit in a reasonable amount of time.

Lol, this idea is pure pie in the sky nonsense. Areas are much larger with not enough population density to support all of the spending you'd have to do to build 1000 more transit stops by rail. It's so stupid it is laughable.

You have to drive in the suburbs. We live in the US. MoCo is not NYC. It will never be NYC. We don't live with density like Tokyo, Hong Kong or Seoul. Comparing life in those areas to life in the burbs is so dumb. Yes, it would take inordinate amounts of time to run errands because everything a scattered all over a much larger area with less people. That means less lines run, and there's not enough people to make any similar styles of transit in NY or Tokyo economically viable.

Cars it is.

You are convincing literally nobody with your nonsensical rants, dude.

Look, we know you’re a cyclist stuck in a crappy apartment that costs $3000+ a month and are angry you can’t afford a home. Don’t take your failings out on the rest of us who choose to live in the burbs on purpose to have more space. Just because you’re stuck in an apartment and have a lifestyle boxed into 300 soft of space doesn’t mean everyone else wants your rat in a cage lifestyle. If you hate the burbs and driving so much then move already. Stop trying to take other peoples’ space to try to turn the burbs into nyc.

Says the person who is upset about the prospect of having to pay $1 per hour if they want to store their car in certain county-owned garages on a Saturday.

No, people are upset because all the county ever does is kill jobs, kill businesses, and then raise taxes because that's all the solution the nitwits running MoCo ever have to plug budget holes.

You see it as a $1 for parking and fail to miss the bigger picture. It will absolutely turnoff people from shopping, patronizing restaurants, and will be overall negative for local businesses. Yet again the county figures out ways to make doing business harder and is hostile to business. It means they'll keep raising taxes even more as they get less revenue from sales and alcohol taxes from businesses. MoCo can't grow economically and has barely grown for decades. Even PG is creating more jobs and economic growth now than MoCo.

Keep killing jobs, killing businesses, and making harder to open and run businesses. See how well they goes for the county. Who's going to magically pay for all of the infrastructure all of the asinine cyclists and urbanists want if the tax base and businesses leave?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

But charging for parking doesn’t enhance other characteristics. Maybe it’s easier to find a spot when you pay for parking, but maybe it’s harder. Maybe there’s a particular store you like where they charge a parking fee, maybe there are 2 stores you like even better where parking’s free. The point is that there are an infinite number of variables to balance and people will prioritize those variables differently. Charging for parking introduces a negative variable into the associated locations. That variable may have minimal importance for you, but other people may feel differently. If you could hypothetically contrive two identical locations, differing only by parking charge, I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who considered it a positive deciding factor. You may only be able to think of a few times you chose between two equal destinations based on whether it cost money to park, but I will generally avoid it whenever possible. Not only do I consider it a pointless waste of money, I consider it particularly galling to be charged for the privilege of patronizing someplace. If they’re going to charge me for bringing them business, I’ll take my money elsewhere.

So do. As you say, people make decisions about where to go based on all kinds of things. Not everything has to be for you. If you refuse to go out to eat in downtown Bethesda because you don't want to pay $1-2 an hour to keep your car in a municipal parking garage, well, there are plenty of other places for you to eat, or you can stay home and cook.

And so I do. But what has charging for parking accomplished? Do I drive less? No, if anything I drive more. Instead of going to the closest restaurant I like, I’ll drive further to one I like that doesn’t charge parking. The only difference is that the restaurant I would have gone to before they implemented the parking charge has lost my business. It’s good news for my new restaurant choice, but the charge hurt the local business.

Great, that works for your. And it makes sense as you are not passing on the externalities to us. Taking responsibility, nice!

And no, the change doesn't hurt local biz. Any place that is considering this obviously knows most of their customers can get there without parking. Not that hard to understand champ.

Except in this case it wasn’t the businesses that decided and it wasn’t because parking was scarce. The county decided to charge more just because they could.

They should charge market-rate, so the space (owned by the tax-paying public) is most optimally used, not given away to car owning freeloaders.

The county garages in Bethesda are underutilized so market rate is less than what they charge now.

Agreed, there is way too much parking in downtown Bethesda. It would be great if some of it could be converted to more productive use.

There's already tons and tons and tons of empty office space in Bethesda because the county has anemic economic growth. Why target parking garages when there is tons of available office space no one is using because doing business in the county is so difficult?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

But charging for parking doesn’t enhance other characteristics. Maybe it’s easier to find a spot when you pay for parking, but maybe it’s harder. Maybe there’s a particular store you like where they charge a parking fee, maybe there are 2 stores you like even better where parking’s free. The point is that there are an infinite number of variables to balance and people will prioritize those variables differently. Charging for parking introduces a negative variable into the associated locations. That variable may have minimal importance for you, but other people may feel differently. If you could hypothetically contrive two identical locations, differing only by parking charge, I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who considered it a positive deciding factor. You may only be able to think of a few times you chose between two equal destinations based on whether it cost money to park, but I will generally avoid it whenever possible. Not only do I consider it a pointless waste of money, I consider it particularly galling to be charged for the privilege of patronizing someplace. If they’re going to charge me for bringing them business, I’ll take my money elsewhere.

So do. As you say, people make decisions about where to go based on all kinds of things. Not everything has to be for you. If you refuse to go out to eat in downtown Bethesda because you don't want to pay $1-2 an hour to keep your car in a municipal parking garage, well, there are plenty of other places for you to eat, or you can stay home and cook.

And so I do. But what has charging for parking accomplished? Do I drive less? No, if anything I drive more. Instead of going to the closest restaurant I like, I’ll drive further to one I like that doesn’t charge parking. The only difference is that the restaurant I would have gone to before they implemented the parking charge has lost my business. It’s good news for my new restaurant choice, but the charge hurt the local business.

Great, that works for your. And it makes sense as you are not passing on the externalities to us. Taking responsibility, nice!

And no, the change doesn't hurt local biz. Any place that is considering this obviously knows most of their customers can get there without parking. Not that hard to understand champ.

Except in this case it wasn’t the businesses that decided and it wasn’t because parking was scarce. The county decided to charge more just because they could.

They should charge market-rate, so the space (owned by the tax-paying public) is most optimally used, not given away to car owning freeloaders.

The county garages in Bethesda are underutilized so market rate is less than what they charge now.

Agreed, there is way too much parking in downtown Bethesda. It would be great if some of it could be converted to more productive use.

There's already tons and tons and tons of empty office space in Bethesda because the county has anemic economic growth. Why target parking garages when there is tons of available office space no one is using because doing business in the county is so difficult?

Hey, how about converting empty office space AND empty parking space to more productive use? There's no need for either/or, we can do both!

Also, no, that's not why there's empty office space in downtown Bethesda. All of the downtowns in the US are having the same issues.

[Anonymous]

The entitlement from car owners on display in this thread. Unreal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

But charging for parking doesn’t enhance other characteristics. Maybe it’s easier to find a spot when you pay for parking, but maybe it’s harder. Maybe there’s a particular store you like where they charge a parking fee, maybe there are 2 stores you like even better where parking’s free. The point is that there are an infinite number of variables to balance and people will prioritize those variables differently. Charging for parking introduces a negative variable into the associated locations. That variable may have minimal importance for you, but other people may feel differently. If you could hypothetically contrive two identical locations, differing only by parking charge, I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who considered it a positive deciding factor. You may only be able to think of a few times you chose between two equal destinations based on whether it cost money to park, but I will generally avoid it whenever possible. Not only do I consider it a pointless waste of money, I consider it particularly galling to be charged for the privilege of patronizing someplace. If they’re going to charge me for bringing them business, I’ll take my money elsewhere.

So do. As you say, people make decisions about where to go based on all kinds of things. Not everything has to be for you. If you refuse to go out to eat in downtown Bethesda because you don't want to pay $1-2 an hour to keep your car in a municipal parking garage, well, there are plenty of other places for you to eat, or you can stay home and cook.

And so I do. But what has charging for parking accomplished? Do I drive less? No, if anything I drive more. Instead of going to the closest restaurant I like, I’ll drive further to one I like that doesn’t charge parking. The only difference is that the restaurant I would have gone to before they implemented the parking charge has lost my business. It’s good news for my new restaurant choice, but the charge hurt the local business.

Great, that works for your. And it makes sense as you are not passing on the externalities to us. Taking responsibility, nice!

And no, the change doesn't hurt local biz. Any place that is considering this obviously knows most of their customers can get there without parking. Not that hard to understand champ.

Except in this case it wasn’t the businesses that decided and it wasn’t because parking was scarce. The county decided to charge more just because they could.

They should charge market-rate, so the space (owned by the tax-paying public) is most optimally used, not given away to car owning freeloaders.

The county garages in Bethesda are underutilized so market rate is less than what they charge now.

Agreed, there is way too much parking in downtown Bethesda. It would be great if some of it could be converted to more productive use.

There's already tons and tons and tons of empty office space in Bethesda because the county has anemic economic growth. Why target parking garages when there is tons of available office space no one is using because doing business in the county is so difficult?

Hey, how about converting empty office space AND empty parking space to more productive use? There's no need for either/or, we can do both!

Also, no, that's not why there's empty office space in downtown Bethesda. All of the downtowns in the US are having the same issues.

The stupidity of this idea is the fact that no one is going to move to coveted office spaces, etc. if there are no jobs! That's what you urbanists always ignore. The county is so bad at growing the economy and creating new jobs and businesses that no amount of affordable housing or new apartments will solve anything. No one wants to move where there are no jobs.