Highwayguy
Active Member
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2020
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Surprise - no one is parking and riding... "Collectively, these North Shore lots and garages in the MBTA's daily reports have had about 2,000 vacant parking spaces available by the end of the morning rush hour, with a total utilization rate that's consistently less than 50 percent."
View attachment 41242https://mass.streetsblog.org/2023/0...-parking-garages-are-mostly-empty-this-summer
1. This proves we should not reserve real estate for parking where housing desperately needed.
2. Is anyone surprised that after brutal delays, unpredictability, and neverending doom&gloom media coverage that people think bumper to bumper driving is less risky than the T? We need both a performance and public image rehab.
While l agree massive parking facilities next to transit isn't the greatest land use, l think the occupancy rates dont prove that point. Lower overall ridership (esp off peak) is the tradeoff when parking rather than dense land use is placed next to transit. If the service is better than the alternative and the demand is there, the parking will be utilized (particularly if parking is essentially free like it is now).
The more damming takeaway is that even with the tunnel closed, people voted with their modeshare and the quickest/ easiest/ most convenient way to get downtown for the majority of the the 1A corridor catchment is to drive rather than taking rapid transit. The demand is there; if the Blue line had sub 5 min headways and ran track speed, those lots would be full.
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