The best way to park in Asheville is by using a parking deck. Trolling for spots in the downtown area is time-consuming, blocks traffic and slows the ability for deliveries. People are walking all over the place using sidewalks, jaywalking and crossing streets at random times and places. It’s chaos. Parking on the periphery and using parking decks would make downtown easier to navigate for everyone.
People who come downtown want to shop, eat, have drinks on a rooftop, have dessert on the square, hear music at Rabbit Rabbit and then Uber home. They don’t drive in, park in front of the restaurant and then leave. They tour the entire city. Creating bike lanes is not going to hinder that. Nobody is driving from dinner at Cúrate to hear music on the South Slope, then driving over to the AC Hotel for rooftop drinks. They are walking. If they have bikes, they will ride from place to place.
It’s nice to say that bike lanes would allow access for people who can’t afford to drive and park, but there are a lot of people with money who have turned to bikes, Onewheels, skateboards, scooters and e-bikes as their mode of transportation. These vehicles are so much quicker and easier to navigate. Bike parking would accommodate way more people than current metered spots.
Creating bike lanes would bring more people downtown. It’s not like traffic would be slowed any further. This would also allow for bicycle taxis, which people would definitely catch while trying to cruise across town from say, Patton Avenue to the South Slope.
If you own a business, your income is not reliant on that one parking spot out in front of your establishment.
— Bettina Freese
Asheville
Sounds like your directly tell the people of Buncombe County and surrounding counties not to spend their money in Asheville. If most non e-economy businesses were dependent on two wheel traffic they would soon go out of business.
If it wasn’t for the four wheel traffic most businesses in downtown area would disappear.
Must say that the same sort of things were said by cyclists ahead of the Merrimon conversion. Now cyclists are saying it wasn’t about bike lanes. I’m all for walking and biking…and for telling the truth. How many times have you biked to Ace to buy screws? Where did you park your bike?
Another bike zealot. The lanes that have been carved out get usage near zero and add congestion—see Hilliard and Merrimon.
I spent 6 years as a Grad Student at UNC CH where parking a car near campus was simply IMPOSSIBLE for a grad student.. But parking a bicycle OR motorcycle was easy and convenient. It took me 2 months to figure out I needed a motorcycle. Then I spent 40 years as a prof on a campus where parking a car was theoretically possible, but if you didn’t like to get to work by 7:30 it was a royal PITA.. But motorcycle parking remained generally easy (until the plague of unregistered “moped” scooters arrived about 10 years ago and were allowed to occupy motorcycle spots) So (at age 78) I still ride my motorcycle when going to campus.
I find motorcycle riding in traffic FAR less frightening than bicycling but for some reasons the Greenies don’t seem to acknowledge motorcycles as part of the traffic/parking solution (even though there are electric motorcycles that can run 70+ MPH
Should Maggie Ullman RECUSE herself from voting on downtown bike lanes due to her inside connections ?