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]

Right, that wouldn't be a loss of parking.  I've said throughout that underground garages are a good compromise to allow greater density/use of space, but still provide ample parking.[/quote]

Underground garages are very expensive. Who will pay for them, and how? Lots of the garages are already half-empty lots of the time.

Also: "ample parking" is for suburban areas, not dense urban areas like downtown Bethesda. "Ample parking" is not what we should be aiming for.  Marriott is moving to Bethesda because it's a dense urban area with good transit. If they want that AND for all of their employees to be able to drive to work in their own cars, by themselves, and park? Nope.[/quote]

Bethesda isn't that dense or urban and even with the current development it won't be.  First, even in the downtown core, there are plenty of spots that aren't terribly dense (lots of one story buildings, some SFH) and that isn't going to change.  But even if the downtown core itself truly became that dense, you are ignoring that downtown is quite small, maybe a square mile or two.  That area is surrounded by wide swaths of suburbia, much of which doesn't have good transport options into Bethesda, but can drive there quite easily and currently does to substantially sustain much of Bethesda.

Take DuPont, for example.  Not only is the immediate area denser, it is surrounded for miles by other dense areas almost all of which provide public transport into the area easily.  An area such as that has enough people to draw from that it can afford to have limited parking options and thrive.

Even as Bethesda develops, it won't have that.  There won't be enough people in Downtown Bethesda to sustain thins alone and you will still want and need to draw people from the surrounding areas, areas that by and large don't (and under any current or feasible plan wont) have public transportation options.  Neither your idea that Bethesda will be able to simply say good riddance to the huge number of people who currently park there nor that most of these people will suddenly take public transit without parking comports with reality.

[/quote]

I guess you haven't read the Bethesda Downtown Plan?

But yes, if the policy were that lots of people must be able to easily drive and find ample parking in downtown Bethesda, then downtown Bethesda would never be as dense an urban core as it could be otherwise.

I don't mean to be snarky, but I do seriously wonder whether you know anybody who doesn't have school-aged children at home and/or doesn't have a car. There are a lot of people who live in downtown Bethesda and don't have a car. (In fact, there are a lot of people in the county overall who don't have a car, but in other parts of the county, it's not always so easy to tell whether they don't have a car because they don't want one or because they can't afford one.) Don't you know any of them? [/quote]

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