Guy wrote: ↑December 20th, 2018, 11:22 am
This is all about revenue generation under the guise of fixing a problem that is not year round and could easily be solved in many other ways.
What Bosterson said too
Can you imagine having to pay $15 just to park at one of the waterfalls down there?!? This is like Uber surge pricing. It's not a solution to overcrowding (or in this case just car congestion), it's the creation of socioeconomic tiered access.
I'm still skimming through
their report: it seems like their $5-15 range may be based on the parking being timed? So parking in the Gorge would be like parking downtown - an hourly rate vs a daily rate, etc.
Page 3 of ODOT report (emphasis added) wrote:Priced parking strategies could help to accelerate turnover and could help to even out demand when paired with reservations. Priced parking would create a revenue stream to fund parking management activities and potentially other activities to improve access and mobility in the corridor including transit service.
Page 5 of ODOT report (emphasis added) wrote:Scenario 2 does not provide alternatives to full parking areas, but would implement tools to even out parking demand through reservations and provide incentives for turnover through variable pricing.
Page 16 of the ODOT report (emphasis added) wrote:Parking prices could vary based on location, season, and time of day. For example, parking could be more expensive on a summer Saturday than a fall weekday. (A-28) The revenues from parking could be managed by the Transportation Management Association (A-35) in the baseline for both scenarios, and reinvest the receipts into transit and other upgrades along the corridor.
It sounds like the revenue generation would be used to pay for transit improvements. (Though who knows - maybe ODOT is trying to earn back the shortfall of having to pay people overtime to sit in cars 24-7 at Gorge trailheads for the past year.
) This is stupid though: funding for infrastructural improvements should come from existing government revenues (and if such revenues are insufficient, that should be addressed via the government's normal budgeting process). Societally we are setting the precedent that users will pay for public works, and as more money is needed, more is demanded: this leads to proposals like the $70 National Parks entry fee to pay for the backlog of maintenance.
Re above, it's inconceivable that "congestion" would need to be addressed via parking fees on a "fall weekday." I was at Horsetail Falls TH at 7:30 on a Friday a few weeks ago and there were zero other cars for the entire time we were there. Having to pay to park would be asinine.