Reply to S/O What should MoCo do about parking in downtown Bethesda

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

I wrote about this upthread - Montgomery County loses lots of money on its parking garages (and so does everyone else).  They cost 30-40 million to build and never recover their costs in parking fees and have on-going high maintenance costs.  And there is an opportunity cost as the county could sell the land under those garages and get something that instead generates tax revenues.

And that doesn't get into the crazy costs of building and maintaining our roadway system or the many externalities.[/quote]

Yes, you have said that.  But do you have any citation from a credible source to support it?

Your externality analysis seems to only cut one way. You seem to ignore that [b]significantly limiting parking would significantly harm businesses in Bethesda, causing economic and other harms[/b].[/quote]

DP. Do you have any citation from a credible source to support that?

If the county got rid of parking in downtown Bethesda (which is not going to happen) AND also did nothing else (which is also not going to happen), then that would likely harm businesses in downtown Bethesda. But if the county replaced parking in downtown Bethesda with housing in downtown Bethesda? Nope. In that case, it's true that people who would only spend money in downtown Bethesda if they can drive there and park, would no longer spend money in downtown Bethesda. But that loss would be offset by people who don't need to park in downtown Bethesda because they're already there.

There's a tendency to believe that a business that you wouldn't spend money at is a business that won't be successful. There was a lot of that when the new Target opened, for example - "There's not enough parking and it's too hard to get to! I'll never shop there!" Well, the new Target seems to be doing fine without those people's custom. And people in the western part of the county who want a drive-to Target with plenty of parking can still go to the Targets in Rockville, Gaithersburg, or Germantown.[/quote][/quote]

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