Tuesday night will bring your opportunity to publicly comment on a community-generated proposal to add more blocks around E Madison to the city’s Restricted Parking Zone 2.
The meeting will also help show you how an RPZ is born if you’re into that kind of thing.
“The Capitol Hill Community Council has requested the City make more blocks eligible for RPZ 2,” the Seattle Department of Transportation notice for the meeting reads. That’s mostly true.
A representative for the council tells CHS that the request for the new zones designed to make more street parking available for residents and people working in the area by restricting the duration cars without permits can park in the area was actually made by a resident living in the area. It’s not a requirement for the process but SDOT apparently suggests people interested in an RPZ make their requests through local councils.
The result of the direction means the Capitol Hill Community Council fielded this request and has received a few others. A council rep said it’s not exactly an evaluation process — at this point, the Capitol Hill community group plans to pass along the few requests it receives to SDOT. The latest include an area around Summit and a block near St. Mark’s.
A typical residential RPZ permit costs $65 and are good for “a 2-year cycle” — in RPZ 2, the cost for areas south of E Union is $16 thanks to subsidies from Swedish and Seattle University. Guest permits cost $30. Here’s where you can look up RPZ information by address. The program has been reviewed and modified over the years and zones are sometimes added or extended.
The RPZ 2 extension, because of its size, is required to go through a public comment process. You can have your say Tuesday night or you can submit your comment via email by February 29th. Happy Leap Year.
You can learn more at seattle.gov.
Anyone know what happened to the potential RPZ in Summit Slope?
Yea really. I’m surprised there is no RPZ parking on Melrose, Bellevue, and Summit north of Denny Way…
There is! At least north of Mercer on Summit there is. I live on Summit and it’s Zone 15.
I cant wait until the whole city is an rpz and we can’t drive to any other neighborhoods.
$65 for TWO YEARS??
How much revenue is losing the city compared to charging by the hour?
$65 is nothing compared to insurance or tabs.
The point of an RPZ is not to make money. It’s to deter people from parking there for extended periods through a timeframe to allow for those that work/live/shop in the area some level of a guarantee that they’ll be able to park near where they work/live/shop.
I think you have it backward. Parking meters and and signs limit the hours. RPZs reserve spaces for those who live in the hood and prevent visitors from parking there during certain hours. Like on QA by Seattle center, no parking in RPZ after like 5:00. It is probably being pushed by all the new well healed renters and condo owners in the Pike Pine all of a sudden don’t like the wonderfully crazy energy at night. RBZ is just another way to spell NMBY
Last I checked, monthly parking goes for about $125 a month around here. So… this would be a giveaway of almost $3,000 per year to the people getting the RPZ permits.
Anybody who wants free parking needs to move to the suburbs. It’s what they exist for. The whole point of living in a place like Capitol Hill is to experience the amenities that only exist in a dense, open, transit accessible neighborhood.
Sorry, that’s $3,000 total. So $1,500 per year.
This is great but the “2-year cycle” is a joke, we just recv’d RPZ status on our block this fall and our $65 stickers are good until THIS coming July. It took 2-3 months to find people home and get them to sign, then SDOT took 2 months to approve our petition and our stickers won’t be valid for even a year. The cycle concept is ridiculous.
Get rid of the permits. We keep telling everyone they don’t need a car. No to subsidized parking. The city keeps telling developers that no parking is needed for new construction. I don’t see a reason to help them even more.
I’m hanging on to my aging house with decades left on the mortgage, needing replacement of everything from the 30yr old roof to the waterlogged foundation and failing french drain (made worse by the horrfic drainage issues around Madison and overdevelopment of the hillsides, flooding the valley) and pay $477 per month in property taxes (about to go up again with the levy). Why should I also pay to park my 20 year old car on my own block?
You don’t have to pay. Just move it every two hours until 6PM.
Because you don’t own the street?
Because you live in the fastest growing neighborhood in the fastest growing city in the country. Parking on the street is not a right. If your house is too expensive for you to maintain you can sell it for a good price. I’m sitting on mine for a few more years and then I’m out of here.
Because your lifestyle doesn’t match the privileged lifestyle of the active 20- or 30-something.
The complaints here make me chuckle. Try moving to downtown Chicago or something and let me know how you find their parking rates and permit fee structure.
Growing pains of Seattle becoming a real city. Although I will add, I’d love to see the paid zone parking hours on Capitol Hill go to 12 or 1am. We’re losing a ton of money from people driving in from the burbs to party and taking up parking spots for free.
Residents in apartments, and especially micro housing, should not be allowed to receive parking permits. To me this seems like a no-brainer, but the City will give them permits if they are in the zone and let them park in front of single family residences as long as they want to. Didn’t they move into micro-houssing to give up their cars and embrace the urban lifestyle?
Doesn’t your house have a garage and/or driveway that the apodment doesn’t have?