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In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
This summer, for the first time, Seattle banned cars in the Pike Place Market :
Last year (2024), some politicians said no one will shop here anymore if it's pedestrianized :
https://publicola.com/2024/04/02/dont-open-pike-place-to-pedestrians-council-member-urges/
So the argument was "if we make it walkable, people will stop coming here"?
Yep, that is indeed what it boils down to because it's a major tourist attraction for people coming in to visit Seattle. So the city councilperson argued that it would reduce people visiting if they had to park far away.
Glad to see they were wrong.
I’ve been to Seattle twice and we went to the market both times. We always walked from our hotel bc there’s quite a few hotels in that area (almost like it’s a hot tourist area) but even when we wanted to go somewhere further away, we just either used public transit or those rentable scooter things. Also the first time we went to pike place market like 4 years ago or something cars kept trying to drive around the crowd and it made everything so much worse. I swear some people have forgotten that not using a car is an option, even when they only want to go somewhere a block away
The absolutely baffling thing is that that one particular stretch of road has been being shut down to car traffic for various events for like... decades.
Its very widely a social faux pas to drive on that street during busy market hours, becsause it has always been full of pedestrians without it even being blocked off, again, for decades.
They'll regularly have overflow marker stalls, or just functionally limit it to market stall shopkeeps unloading or packing up their stuff.
The only people who would be against this like 1/8 of a mile of road that is nearly always swarming with people just finally being formally classed as 'no cars' are fucking idiots and/or obscenely privileged suburbanites who cannot understand the concept of walking.
There is literally a (or multiple) parking garage(s) under the Market. You can park in it, and emerge just literally in the Market.
https://www.pikeplacemarket.org/parking-directions/
Its just that it doesn't work so well for modern, literally larger than a WW2 M4 Sherman tank, automobiles.
If you wanna zip around Seattle and actually be able to park, get a subcompact.
It can be done, I've done it, for a decade.
Your F-350 is shit outta luck though.