The Simple, Serious, Affordable Way to Address Parking in Downtown St. Louis

No more parking studies or sustainability plans. No more BRT Band-Aids or streetcar fantasies. No more consultants paid to tell the city and select business owners what they want to hear. We know what needs to be done downtown, all that remains is to convince ourselves that we can change. We can reset the table downtown for a more vibrant future in three simple, affordable steps:

1) return all downtown streets to two-way
2) place on-street parking on all blocks 24/7
3) implement smart parking technology

Parking is a vexing problem for cities, right? St. Louisans love to drive, right? We simply won't go somewhere if there isn't easy parking, right? Maybe, maybe not. Many don't want this to be true, including myself. As a couple hundred people heard this past week at the John Norquist presentation on the value of flexible street design, congestion isn't just traffic, but also with money. Our most congested streets (not highways) are often our most prosperous (think Chicago's Michigan Avenue, Delmar in The Loop, the CWE's Euclid and Washington Avenue downtown).