RE: Parking

["Jerry L. Schutz" <jschutz@moscow.com>]

I am in favor of the pilot program for a number of reasons.  One it will increase metered parking at high turnover areas,  As I am neither a student nor staff but do have occasion to go onto campus many times a month, a quarter in a meter for an hour, close to my destination will make me happy.   If I'm going to be on campus longer I frequently get the visitor pass for free. 

 

Two it's nice to see the University and the City cooperating on this and many other issues.  As the two largest government organizations in Moscow, sharing and joint use of limited facilities is a much wiser use of my taxpayer dollars. 

 

Lastly, it is only a PILOT program.  It will be reviewed and refined in a years time.  Maybe it will work and be kept, maybe it won't and will be thrown out.  Until something is tried there is no solution.  As Dan Schoenberg said in his presentation to the council last night, anytime you talk about parking you get people up in arms.  Lets give the proposed solution a chance before we call it dead on arrival.

 

For those folks advocating bike & pedestrian solutions, until such a time as there is public transportation available in and around Moscow people will continue to drive in cars. Period.  The University is well on it's way to developing transit from peripheral lots to the campus core,  which  at some point will help in alleviating some of the core congestion, and make parking farther away from the core at least more bearable.  It's just going to take time and money, neither of which are in abundant supply.

 

As for Tim's quote below, I would suggest you look at all the major airlines who frequently oversell their flights by 10-20%.  There is little difference between overselling a fixed number of seats on a 747 and buying a parking permit.  I don't see anyone calling the airline practice fraud, instead the FAA calls it "good business".

 

My two bits,

 

Jerry

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Hillebrand [mailto:chief@synergetics.org]

 ... Any other business would be convicted of fraud in a flash with no defense for overselling a product that doesn’t exist.