I'm frequently critical of Austin's neighborhood associations, but even I don't blame the Bouldin Creek neighborhood for last weekend's parking fiasco, when simultaneous events (Carmen at the Long Center, a convention at Palmer, and the Reggae Festival at Auditorium Shores) snarled traffic for hours and caused patrons to miss their events.
The City's line is, "Hey, we wanted to put more parking there but the neighborhood associations objected."
Even doubling the Palmer parking garage's 1,200 spaces would not have dented the demand for parking last weekend. Regardless, the City cannot, and should not, build the parking necessary to accommodate the "perfect storm." That's a horribly inefficient use of money and space. And, frankly, who wants to line one of our premiere parks with 5-6 story parking garages?
It's not even clear to me that the neighborhoods were acting selfishly. Neighborhood associations usually demand more parking than is necessary because the spillover ends up on neighborhood streets. I'm sure Bouldin Creek knew at the time that less parking on site would mean more parking in the neighborhood streets.
Austin Lyric Opera's patrons and others who use Long Center, Palmer and Auditorium Shores need to know they can get to their events. (I'm sure the opera lost subscribers last weekend.) The solution is better traffic management, more shuttles, more buses on Cap Metro's regular routes, and better publicity of alternative parking. We can't build our way out of messes like last weekend's.
