These days, Saint Paul is all abuzz over the potential loss of a few dozen parking spaces downtown for the construction of the proposed bike loop. Some people are upset over the disappearance of the spaces, but others insist that there is plenty of parking downtown. It’s a hot topic.
Well, other cities have been down this road before. For example, when Montreal built a new bike lane, people complained about the loss of parking spaces… at least until the advocates reframed the issue by talking about the spaces as a percentage of the total parking supply in the area. This is the chart they used:
This fine chart came across my desk via this post on People for Bikes. Saint Paul is just completing a parking study that will hopefully place the “loss” into a larger context. Dollars to donuts, it won’t be a very large percentage of the total downtown parking supply.