Parking is such sweet sorrow

Typical parking for San Francisco
Originally uploaded by keithwanders.

This annoys me.

A new mall and Bloomingdale's store, opening today in downtown San Francisco, will lure big crowds to the shops, restaurants and movie theaters. But visitors also could encounter traffic jams and parking shortages -- at least during the holidays and big events at Moscone Center...

No new parking was built to accommodate the 25 million people a year expected to visit the mall, which has tripled in size. The decision not to add parking is in keeping with the city's "transit first" policy, which encourages the use of public transportation.

I won't go off on too much of a rant here but this city does not encourage the use of public transit so much as it discourages driving. It's a no-carrot, all-stick approach. Maybe I'm spoiled from having grown up in New York City, but our transit system here does not possess a fraction of NYC's utility, convenience, or reach. (Although parts of it may be lovely.)

Bloomingdale's is going to be a destination for shoppers from all over the Bay Area. People who live outside of SF will not heed SF's transit-only imperative, and they are going to drive here. When they do, they will find that parking lots are packed and prices have been jacked up to height-of-dot-com-bubble levels-- but that will not convince them to take a 2-hour bus-and-BART odyssey with fifty pounds of shopping next time.

Then there's this graphic, which shows all the parking lots within a ten minute walk of the new store. I'm a swarthy, 6' 1" guy from NYC, and I wouldn't park in half of the encircled area. The idea of middle-aged matrons carrying thousands of dollars of purchases through the scummiest parts of the Tenderloin and SOMA would be laughable, if not for all the muggings and killings that will ensue.

I'm not a city planner, but I am a designer, and design is all about problem solving. And I can tell you, the way to solve a problem is to address it, not ignore it and hope that the negative consequences nudge other people into the behavior you prefer.

If you disagree with my take, please take a minute to tell me why in the comments. If there's some factor I'm not considering, I'd like to know.