Amsterdam

If You Build It With Less Parking, They Will Still Come

We're nearly a couple of weeks into baseball season, and fans of the Washington Nationals are enjoying their new transit-, bike- and pedestrian-friendly stadium. The DC complex, with its transit links, shuttle buses and valet bike parking, is so accessible -- and city efforts to encourage fans to get there by alternate means so successful -- that on Opening Day its relatively few parking lots weren't even full, reports Greater Greater Washington:

By Brad Aaron

4:07 PM EDT on April 10, 2008

We’re nearly a couple of weeks into baseball season, and fans of the Washington Nationals are enjoying their new transit-, bike- and pedestrian-friendly stadium. The DC complex, with its transit links, shuttle buses and valet bike parking, is so accessible — and city efforts to encourage fans to get there by alternate means so successful — that on Opening Day its relatively few parking lots weren’t even full, reports Greater Greater Washington:

Good for DC for resisting the warnings from team owners and various
commentators that the world would end unless the entire neighborhood
were converted to parking as New York did to the South Bronx. Looks like parking demand is elastic, after all.

The Yankees, while we’re at it, are in Kansas City tonight; the Mets host the Phillies.

Photo: ShepDave/Flickr

Brad Aaron

Brad Aaron began writing for Streetsblog in 2007, after years as a reporter, editor, and publisher in the alternative weekly business. Brad adopted New York's dysfunctional traffic justice system as his primary beat for Streetsblog. He lives in Manhattan.