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Ecotrainguy
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Name: Gary
Gender: Male
Interests: fast trains, softball, economics
Expertise: automobile parking analyst
Occupation: material handler, paper carrie
Message: message me
Member Since:
5/1/2007
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| A man walked in front of a train the other day in Normal while he was going to class. Many students live on the south side of the tracks near the campus. I don't know why he died, but I feel there is a simple solution so it will not likely happen again. A walking tunnel should be built to go under the tracks at that intersection on University. And it wouldn't hurt to put one at Fell and Broadway also. There seeems to be enough jurisdictions involved that the money could be gathered for these passageways. There used to be a walkway under the railroad yard in Bloomington at Chestnut street. We should do it again. | | |
| I just drove past the Coliseum parking garage. Only two floors are allowed for the special event parking. The Full sign is up. All ticket holders have a dollar surcharge for parking whether they walk or park a mile away or in the garage. I believe all who come to the special event have to pay $5 to park in the garage. Everyone else who parks downtown doesn't have to pay any more. It seems the price for parking is too low if all the spaces are filled. I don't think it is right to let half of the parking deck be used for the parks and recreation users, and use it for free, While only half the deck is used by paying customers for the special event. Any space near the colisseum should be a paid position. Only when a couple of spaces in each block or lot are empty are we maximising the economic demand for parking. Here the Coliseum is likely to be 1.6 million dollars in the red by the end of this year and people are parking at a lower rate than they would be willing to pay. | | |
| Recently I attended the meeting of the Bloomington-Normal mass transit. I found out that the fares only cover about one/fourth of the actual cost. Most of the money comes from state and federal grants. I can see then that the actual value of this service should be only one-fourth of what it costs. Or we could say the cost is four times what the value is. Some of the poorer people in the community use this service, but many have better cars than I do. I think the real culprit in this equation isn the great amount of free parking. If we all had to pay something for parking then the efficiency of mass transit would come out plainly. Then there would be no need for 3/4ths of the funding to come from grants instead of fares. | | |
| Recently I went to the Bloomington City Council meeting. The city manager was discussing the combining of five small lots at the corner of West Monroe and South Morris into two larger lots. He said this was a continuing empasis by the city to reduce congestion. I have a couple of questions about this. Is there really congestion here? If five people have houses on these small lots, then wouldn't it be up to them whether they felt too close to their neighbors. Also, wouldn't it be in the city's interest to increase the density or congestion rather than decrease it? One of a city's advantages is to have more people closer together so it takes less effort to do business. And wouldn't it be better to have five people helping pay the taxes on these lots rather than one or two. I know there is hardly a market any more for small homes and lots, but if there were then these lots could provide a place for a small family to afford a home rather than pay rent. It seems to me the city is more interested in spreading people out, rather than making housing more affordable. | | |
| The Normal City Council has really enjoyed spending other peoples money. And they say they want a transportation center in "Uptown Normal". They have put $977,000 into a lot so there will be about 90 more free parking spaces. So at this time each space is worth $10,855. Yet each free space which is costing the taxpayers of Normal so much is decreasing the necessity of a transportation center. Because when people aren't paying the market value of those spaces they have no motivation to use the transportation center. The transportation center will only work well if all other competing ways of transportation are paying the market value of the space they are using. Each time someone parks in one of these spaces the City of Normal is subsidizing the competitive car transportation system and making the transportation center less needed. In fact every free parking space in Normal makes it seem that our own auto use is actually less expensive than it really is. Every car parked on public property is getting the benefit of all the taxpayer money that goes into the roads. The cost of every free parking spot that a business offers a customer is included in the cost of the product or service the business produces. So every person that buys a product at a store pays the cost of the free parking spaces whether the person has a car or not. So free parking is another way to make the poor pay for the benefits of the rich. | | |
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