Post navigation

Prev: (01/09/17) | Next: (01/13/17)

Capitol Hill Community Post | Parking Changes Coming to Capitol Hill Pike-Pine Corridor

pike-pine-parkingFrom the Seattle Department of Transportation

There’s more demand than ever for parking near businesses and restaurants in Capitol Hill.  To improve parking availability and turnover, we are expanding the existing paid parking along Pike-Pine east to 15th Avenue.  Hours and rates will match existing paid parking along 12th Avenue and to the west.  These changes will be installed starting in the middle of this month.

 

While parking on these streets is free and limited to 2 hours, SDOT studies show that parking is full as early as 9 AM, remains over 90% full for most of the day, and that most vehicles stay longer than the posted time limit. This makes it extremely challenging for customers and visitors to find available on-street parking. These study results contrast with the adjacent paid parking area which, while well utilized, generally has parking available until 6 PM.

To provide more predictable, consistent parking regulations, we are also relocating Restricted Parking Zone (RPZ) 4 parking from commercial blocks to residential blocks.  Finally, in areas that are already No Parking at the corners for intersection visibility, we will  add on-street bike corrals.

Get more information and background on parking changes here.

Subscribe and support CHS Contributors -- $1/$5/$10 per month

2 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
danab
danab
7 years ago

The chronic shortage of on street and the continuing escalation in rates are the direct result of a policy the city enacted about five years ago to exempt developers from including parking in their developments. At a cost of $30,000 to $40,000 per stall, developers have profited mightily from this zoning change. Their windfall profit has come at the expense of the loss of adequate on on-street for the rest of us and it should be noted that on-street Parker is a shared public resource. Essentially, this change in city policy has enriched a limited number of private developers by allowing them to exploit a shared public resource at everyone else’s expense. When will the City of Seattle catch on to this? The truth is, sadly, on-street parking is a finite resource that has already so over allocated based based on this change in zoning, that it is probably already too late to fix it.

Mark h
Mark h
7 years ago
Reply to  danab

Your post implies parking wasn’t a problem in Capitol Hill until recently and states that if we had lots of new parking everywhere things would be awesome. When in fact, both are false. What would be awesome is if people stopped dragging their cars with them to an area that is extremely walkable and well served by transit.