A while back I posted some pictures of Axel Peemoeller’s Funky Parking Garage, well I just came across a post over at weburbanist.com with more high-tech, artistic, and/or just flat out strange parking solutions from around the world.
Here is the link: 15 Creative, Innovative & Hilarious Parking Solutions
Enjoy!
In the course of my thesis research I have tracked down a copy of the 1910 plan prepared for the Oklahoma City Parks Commission by W.H. Dunn, a landscape architect from Kansas City. The book entitled: Oklahoma City: A report on its plan for an Outer Parkway and a plan for an Interior System of parks and boulevards (the complete report is available in .pdf – see below). This may very well be the first formal plan prepared for Oklahoma City, though there were previous planning efforts for individual developments like Classen’s streetcar neighborhoods or some of I.M. Putnam’s developments. I don’t have time to get into all of the details of the this plan and my thoughts right now, but I figured I could make a bunch of information I have discovered available and allow you to read and discuss. Please let me know if you have any insights or see any connections that you think are worth pursuing. Looking through this plan that contains some of the earliest ideas that helped shape Oklahoma City has certainly been a pleasure for me and I hope you enjoy them as well.
OUTER PARKWAY GENERAL PLAN
This actually represents one of the earliest and most complete maps of Oklahoma City. I have tracked down a couple maps that predate this one, but this is definitely the most complete and absolutely beautifully done. Keep in mind that this map is a combination of what existed and what was proposed – not all of the ideas came to fruition.
For a higher-resolution image of the map, download the .pdf at the bottom of the page.
GRAND BOULEVARD
CLASSEN BOULEVARD
DETAILED PLANS FOR NEW PARKS
Northeast Park – what became Lincoln Park
Southeast Park – what became Trosper Park
Southwest Park – what became Woodson Park
DOWNLOAD COMPLETE PLAN
These resources are all made available in .pdf. These files are quite large (please use right-click Save as…).
Also, I have full-size 300dpi scans of all images available and will consider sharing them – please email me if you are interested.
RELATED RESOURCES
These articles are from journals available for free through google books that reference this planning effort around the time it was carried out. They are helpful in completing the picture, though you have to take it with a grain of salt as early Oklahoma Citians were always hard at work selling their beloved city. I downloaded each journals complete .pdf and saved only the portion that contains the relevant article.
Last Friday Toyota showed off their new Winglet personal-transporter. Apparently, it will only go 3.7 mph, barely faster than the 3.0 mph walking speed of a typical pedestrian. While it seems odd that people would pay for something that requires them to stand up and still only travel at a walking speed, there is certainly a cool factor here. Also, persons with mobility problems could benefit greatly from such a device. Either way, this is only the first generation we are talking about; I am sure they will increase the speed in the future.
Not sure what the price is yet, but it did get me thinking. What if we made these available all over downtown like a bike sharing program. You know, so that people that have to park far away from Bricktown, would be able to Winglet it instead. I know I would park at the Galleria for the chance to buzz through downtown on one of these things. In fact, for the $21 million we discussed spending on a downtown trolley, we could provide personal transporters for all of the disgruntled parkers instead. I expect the Winglet to be cheaper than the Segway, but even if we were to spend the $4,500 it costs to buy Segways, we could afford to put over 4,600 of them spaced throughout downtown. It would definitely be fun to watch on Friday nights when the bars let out – that is for sure!
Anyway, don’t get too excited about the Winglet yet, they won’t hit the market until around 2010.
Here is the video:
If you want to read more about the Winglet, here you go:
Bricktown has a parking problem. I am apparently very lucky, as I have never had to deal with this problem myself, but people have now talked about this “problem” or “perception of a problem” for so long that it really must be true. According to Steve Lackmeyer, the city is now considering “fixing” the problem by purchasing the Power Alley parking garage and offering free or reduced-price parking spaces. Before we talk more about the garage, lets check out the current parking situation in Downtown.
DOWNTOWN PARKING
Downtown OKC, Inc. has tried to ameliorate the parking issues by distributing information on the amount and location of parking in Downtown and Bricktown. On their website they provide this map showing all of the parking spaces in Downtown along with the route of the downtown trolley.
As you can see there is actually a ton of parking available in Downtown – over 20,000 spaces! Bricktown itself has over 4,000 and that is without including the 750 spaces located on the north lots. It appears the point of contention is not the availability of spots but the cost. “Wal-mart has free parking, so why not Bricktown?” This may explain why people continue to proclaim a lack of parking, while the consultant hired to study the issue stated that even during peak hours 1 out of every 3 parking spaces is available, with over 1,000 total available spaces (it appears my good fortune wasn’t luck afterall). So the idea of purchasing the Power Alley garage and subsidizing the parking costs ostensibly tackles the problem head on – we don’t need more parking, we just need cheaper parking…or better yet free parking!
FIXING THE PROBLEM
The Power Alley parking garage (located on Sheridan, just north of the Bricktown Ballpark) has 538 parking spaces (according to the Bricktown Association website).
The owner of the garage is Marsh Pitman. And while Marsh is actually a good friend of mine, I haven’t asked him about anything related to this deal, so I don’t know how much the City would spend to acquire Power Alley from him. Still, we can probably estimate the price pretty close ourselves. According to the County Assessor’s website the property is worth approximately $4.2 million. Typically you would want to price a structured parking garage in terms of the cost per space or with an operating garage you could cap the operating income. I don’t have any clue what the income is on the garage, but we do know the number of spaces. If you take the $4.2 million figure and divide by the 538 spaces, it works out to around $7,800 per parking space without including the cost of land. Generally, new structured parking spaces cannot be built today for less than $12,000 per space, and that is the minimum. So we can definitely throw out the assessor’s number as being far too low. My best guess is that the City could not buy the Power Alley garage for less than $16,000 per space total – so we are talking about approximately $8.6 million.
So spending $8.6 million for the Power Alley garage, and providing 538 more subsidized parking spaces in Bricktown, is one option for the City. But I beleive there is another – better – option that will take care of the parking problem while providing some added benefits to the entire Downtown area.
THE GREEN LINE
As you likely already know, I am a huge proponent of improving and expanding our transportation options in Oklahoma City. I think the rubber-tired trolleys are great, but we can all agree that they have always been more of a novelty than something you can actually depend on to regularly get around Downtown. Knowing what we know now, we probably would have scraped together enough money to get the MAPS streetcar system up and running even without support from Washington. Well this is our opportunity to right the wrong and fix our parking troubles in the process.
The proposed Green Line consists of a modern fixed-rail streetcar system running straight along Sheridan for three-quarters of a mile from N. Stiles Ave. on the east end of Bricktown to Hudson Ave. in Downtown. Four stops are proposed, spaced approximately one-quarter mile apart, putting most of Downtown and Bricktown within a five minute walk. The short route and limited stops will allow for consistent and expedited service – likely less than five minutes between trains during peak periods. And the straight-line route and bi-directional service would make navigation a breeze for locals and tourists alike.
Perhaps the best thing about the Green Line is that is will solve all of our parking troubles as well. As we saw before there are a ton of parking spaces in the Downtown area and the Green Line will provide easy access to some of the largest parking structures. Instead of adding 538 spaces we can provide access to the 1,696 spaces at the Galleria garage – not to mention the other garages that are also close to the route. And almost all of these spaces are likely empty most nights and weekends during Bricktown’s peak business hours.
PAYING FOR IT
These are the most current figures being used by the City of Albuquerque:
The cost to construct a Streetcar is approximately $28 million / mile. That cost includes all aspects, including steel rail, concrete, pedestrian friendly stops, traffic signals, maintenance facility, power source, utility reconstruction, roadway reconstruction, and vehicles.
So our three-quarter mile system would cost approximately $21 million. If we used this option instead of purchasing the Power Alley garage, then we would save that $8.6 million, bringing the total extra cost down to $12.4 million. For this bargain amount we would really be solving Bricktown’s parking “problems” while laying the foundation for an urban transportation system that would greatly benefit both Downtown and Bricktown into the future. This is a senseable and relatively inexpensive way to get public transit off the ground OKC! It will mesh perfectly with the forthcoming Devon Tower; lighten the parking demand in Bricktown, allowing for some of Bricktown’s surface lots to be developed; and the energy created would serve as an impetus to make something happen with the Stewart Metal buildings on the east end of Bricktown. This is just the start, when the time is right the line could be easily expanded to provide service to the fledging Film District or even the American Indian Cultural Center. We could sit here and name the benefits of this all day, but instead we should just do it!