Bridging Park & Market

[Rabble]

This place had great lasagna.





I believe the last time I ate here was in the early nineties, maybe ten years after the HOA approach was built. I'm not sure if it was the barrier that put them out of business but it sure could of helped.

[Rabble]

It's amazing how much bridge will be going away to funnel the HOA into Cherry street per Concept A.







A park & ride for northlanders could be built north of 3rd street, east of the Cold storage Lofts and built as part of the new HOA approach. The great thing is you could access the parking garage directly from the HOA bridge, park your car and take an elevator down to a street car stop along the track to the maintenance building. City Market shoppers, downtown office workers and UMKC students from the Northland could keep their cars off of downtown streets.



I haven't read much about park & rides in connection with the street car system. It seems like they should have been part of the original planning. Does anyone from Johnson County use the Union Station parking garages as a park & ride?

[WoodDraw]

If you're driving from johnson county, why would you park and ride and not just drive to your final destination? Honest question.

That use case has to be low and largely focused on special event days.

[TheLastGentleman]

The park and ride makes a lot of sense for the streetcar. If parking is centralized by the HoA Bridge or similar locations on the fringes of the line, it would open up parking spaces along the line itself for development, and keep drivers looking for parking off the streets. I could see Union Station being a good location too. Maybe a massive garage buried under a redeveloped Washington Square Park? The River Market would definitely benefit from such actions.

[WoodDraw]

The park and ride makes a lot of sense for the streetcar. If parking is centralized by the HoA Bridge or similar locations on the fringes of the line, it would open up parking spaces along the line itself for development, and keep drivers looking for parking off the streets. I could see Union Station being a good location too. Maybe a massive garage buried under a redeveloped Washington Square Park? The River Market would definitely benefit from such actions.

So I agree with this if there are no parking minimums and surface lots, and places would give up their parking. And the streets add bike lanes. And the expansions all happen.

But I'm struggling to think of too many scenarios where people would drive from the suburbs and not just park at the place they're going to. There's so much parking everywhere downtown.

[Rabble]

The River Market has no excess parking on weekends. And so much of the surface parking in the market area is holding up potential development because of the long term parking leases.

I seem to remember that when the street car opened, many office workers parked in the River Market and took the street car to work. This led to new parking regulations in the market. A park and ride would encourage the use of the street car as a part of someone's commute.

[kas1]

When I think of encouraging people to use transit, what I have in mind is not having people drive 90% of the way to their destination and then forcing them to wait up to 15 minutes to take a transit line that will meander in the general direction of their destination. You're probably doubling people's commuting time while gaining pretty much none of the benefits of having a mass transit system. Park & rides have already fallen out of favor among urban/transit planners even when placed in suburban locations close to where journeys originate. I continue to be perplexed that so many people on here want to put them near the endpoint of people's journeys. If you're okay with having people drive all the way to downtown, just let them park near their destination. Forcing them to park just barely far enough away to not be in walking distance seems pointlessly cruel, and I can only imagine it being a giant impediment to getting more companies to move downtown.

[Rabble]

When I think of encouraging people to use transit, what I have in mind is not having people drive 90% of the way to their destination and then forcing them to wait up to 15 minutes to take a transit line that will meander in the general direction of their destination. You're probably doubling people's commuting time while gaining pretty much none of the benefits of having a mass transit system. Park & rides have already fallen out of favor among urban/transit planners even when placed in suburban locations close to where journeys originate. I continue to be perplexed that so many people on here want to put them near the endpoint of people's journeys. If you're okay with having people drive all the way to downtown, just let them park near their destination. Forcing them to park just barely far enough away to not be in walking distance seems pointlessly cruel, and I can only imagine it being a giant impediment to getting more companies to move downtown.

Who is talking about forcing anybody to do anything?

[normalthings]

When I think of encouraging people to use transit, what I have in mind is not having people drive 90% of the way to their destination and then forcing them to wait up to 15 minutes to take a transit line that will meander in the general direction of their destination. You're probably doubling people's commuting time while gaining pretty much none of the benefits of having a mass transit system. Park & rides have already fallen out of favor among urban/transit planners even when placed in suburban locations close to where journeys originate. I continue to be perplexed that so many people on here want to put them near the endpoint of people's journeys. If you're okay with having people drive all the way to downtown, just let them park near their destination. Forcing them to park just barely far enough away to not be in walking distance seems pointlessly cruel, and I can only imagine it being a giant impediment to getting more companies to move downtown.

Correct. Park & Rides have generally been dropped in favor of TOD. STL's light metro system makes use of many park & rides yet suburban commuters have little reason to park & catch a train (40 minutes+) for what would be a 10-15 minute drive.

[Rabble]

When I think of encouraging people to use transit, what I have in mind is not having people drive 90% of the way to their destination and then forcing them to wait up to 15 minutes to take a transit line that will meander in the general direction of their destination. You're probably doubling people's commuting time while gaining pretty much none of the benefits of having a mass transit system. Park & rides have already fallen out of favor among urban/transit planners even when placed in suburban locations close to where journeys originate. I continue to be perplexed that so many people on here want to put them near the endpoint of people's journeys. If you're okay with having people drive all the way to downtown, just let them park near their destination. Forcing them to park just barely far enough away to not be in walking distance seems pointlessly cruel, and I can only imagine it being a giant impediment to getting more companies to move downtown.

Correct. Park & Rides have generally been dropped in favor of TOD. STL's light metro system makes use of many park & rides yet suburban commuters have little reason to park & catch a train (40 minutes+) for what would be a 10-15 minute drive.

So who were all the people parking in the River Market and using the street car to get to work? They were using the market as a park and ride, and very near to where they worked.

[TheLastGentleman]

Unless I'm horribly mistaken, the point of park and ride is giving the suburban drivers who would otherwise be meandering around searching for parking an easy but unintrusive place to park. Helps keep cars and parking structures out of downtown's core while keeping it approachable for suburbanites.

I don't think our streetcar is taking 40 minutes to make a trip that can be made with a car in 10-15. Even if it is, though, 8 million rides prove that a lot of people are okay with taking the streetcar to their destination instead of a car.

[WoodDraw]

When I think of encouraging people to use transit, what I have in mind is not having people drive 90% of the way to their destination and then forcing them to wait up to 15 minutes to take a transit line that will meander in the general direction of their destination. You're probably doubling people's commuting time while gaining pretty much none of the benefits of having a mass transit system. Park & rides have already fallen out of favor among urban/transit planners even when placed in suburban locations close to where journeys originate. I continue to be perplexed that so many people on here want to put them near the endpoint of people's journeys. If you're okay with having people drive all the way to downtown, just let them park near their destination. Forcing them to park just barely far enough away to not be in walking distance seems pointlessly cruel, and I can only imagine it being a giant impediment to getting more companies to move downtown.

This is correct and said much better than I tried to say it.

[earthling]

There are already some companies that have distant lots with shuttle buses that you have to wait for, like Hallmark, Hospital Hill and other companies in that area,. It's not ideal but is a working method of parking mgmt. For those visiting various downtown locations (like planning to visit City Market and Union Station or an event with dinner and venturing about downtown), probably less of a hassle. And for those who live downtown and don't use car often, could potentially rent from a P&R garage. The upside is that it keeps cars out of downtown, potentially requires less parking per project and increases opportunity to fill in surface lots. Not a perfect solution but still a useful one. Other cities have P&R at outskirts of downtown, like Minneapolis.

The alternative is giant garages at the base of every future large building. Choose your evil.

[flyingember]

The idea I had is to have it be part of an overall downtown shuttle. A number of ~15 people busses that help extend the range of transit.

Not on demand service, but a circulating route. Could be a great use for an electric vehicle.

We don't really need a full time 40 person bus route to every spot, but imagine 3-5 vehicles running on loops with a 15 minute frequency. This would enable a lot of movement around downtown.


This idea of bridging the two neighborhoods needs to be focused not on a street with thousands of vehicles per day cutting through at street level but on making it easier to get from Columbus Park to the River Market and beyond. Making it easier to get from the north needs to be part of the big picture but this is just moving the cars to a different road at peak.

[DaveKCMO]

If you're driving from johnson county, why would you park and ride and not just drive to your final destination? Honest question.

That use case has to be low and largely focused on special event days.

True. Park and rides are successful if parking is actually constrained. In KC it is not.

[Rabble]

If you're driving from johnson county, why would you park and ride and not just drive to your final destination? Honest question.

That use case has to be low and largely focused on special event days.

True. Park and rides are successful if parking is actually constrained. In KC it is not.

But constrained enough that people used the River Market as a park & ride until the city put two hour limits on the parking spaces. That shows a demand.

[normalthings]

If you're driving from johnson county, why would you park and ride and not just drive to your final destination? Honest question.

That use case has to be low and largely focused on special event days.

True. Park and rides are successful if parking is actually constrained. In KC it is not.

But constrained enough that people used the River Market as a park & ride until the city put two hour limits on the parking spaces. That shows a demand.

IIRC, the issue was that some workers were using the parking lots because they were free. Not because they didn't have easily available parking at their offices.

[flyingember]

Yes, which is why this has to be coordinated with higher on street parking costs, parking conversion to bike lanes and the like.

We need to start constraining parking.

The city market being purposefully constrained will help the streetcar long term by removing cars from the road

[DaveKCMO]

If you're driving from johnson county, why would you park and ride and not just drive to your final destination? Honest question.

That use case has to be low and largely focused on special event days.

True. Park and rides are successful if parking is actually constrained. In KC it is not.

But constrained enough that people used the River Market as a park & ride until the city put two hour limits on the parking spaces. That shows a demand.

The parking lot at 3rd & Grand was (and still is) mostly used by non-transit customers, thus it was not really functioning as a park and ride. There is no correlation between the number of spaces occupied and the boardings/alightings at the site.

[kas1]

True. Park and rides are successful if parking is actually constrained. In KC it is not.

But constrained enough that people used the River Market as a park & ride until the city put two hour limits on the parking spaces. That shows a demand.

IIRC, the issue was that some workers were using the parking lots because they were free. Not because they didn't have easily available parking at their offices.

That was my understanding as well. What's been shown to be successful at discouraging car usage is simply making people pay for all of the costs associated with driving and storing their cars instead of subsidizing them or bundling them in a way that detaches them from actual car usage. What's been successful at increasing transit usage has been making it faster/more frequent/more reliable/more accessible (and making it free, in this particular case). Trying to increase transit usage by spending tens of millions of dollars on automobile infrastructure that won't pay for itself is really losing sight of the forest for the trees.