WWhyte24

Hi! Long time lurker, but I thought I'd post for once since I consider this a very interesting subject. Parking will always be an issue. Let's say, for example, they build 3 new parking ramps with ground floor retail and maybe apartments or offices above. At this rate, those spots will fill up within a year and then we will be back to a parking crisis. Have you ever heard of the Katy Freeway in Houston? At it's widest, it's 26 lanes. This has been due to increased traffic along the freeway causing the Department of Transportation to just add additional lanes multiple times. However, it is common knowledge that if you build it, they will come, and this is the same for parking. It will never be satisfied. We will never solve this issue of parking, so the city is looking at it from a different perspective. Businesses will come and go. Perhaps we lose business downtown, but businesses will eventually fill their place and will most likely be in tune to what Downtown Grand Rapids has going on. When businesses threaten to leave the suburbs, I laugh, because there is literally the entire rest of the city to move your business to and yet to them it's either downtown or the suburbs. There is nothing wrong with relocating your business to another part of the city that has more parking amenities. There is also nothing wrong with Downtown Grand Rapids becoming less and less of a Central Business District. Yet, the biggest names in downtown business are staying put. In the meantime, the city has made the silver line FREE downtown, additional to it's free downtown shuttle system. You can get from almost anywhere in the city to downtown by transit and bike lanes are also being implemented on a project-by-project basis. Not all businesses will like this, but you can't shape your city around pleasing the entire private sector. Instead, I want more BRTs. I want them all over the city. And I want to leave my car at home.