Reminder! We have an active survey underway NOW.

Go here for details and to take it; it runs until July 5, 2015:

https://www.westseattletc.org/moveseattlesurvey

 

2015 WSTC Parking Survey Results

On March 19, 2015, we asked residents to take a survey on parking in our area. Here are the results from 920 responses.

Part 1: The basics — who took our survey?

The overwhelming majority were West Seattle homeowners, at 80%. 78% of you said you live in a single family home.

On the question of how many of you had cars, and how many of them, almost none of you said you had no car — only 24 of 920 people. 79% of you own 1-2 cars.

Part 2: How convenient is your life today, and without a car?

We asked three questions related to these topics. Here are the takeaways:

• The majority of you said you do not live in convenience walking distance of required amenities to live your lives.
• The majority of you said you could not get through your lives for a month without your cars.
• But curiously, 76.5% of you said that you live 0 to 10 minutes from a useful bus stop, without using a car to get to it.

We asked a follow on question: if you don’t ride the bus, why not? We received exactly 200 responses. The overwhelming reasons boil down to:

• Employment conflicts: jobs that require usage of a personal vehicle seeming to be most common. Sales and contractors seemed most common, in the sorts of jobs that require maximum travel mobility.
• Scheduling conflicts: the bus doesn’t get you where you need to be when you need to be there.
• Timing conflicts: the pace of bus travel is not acceptable to you.
• Child-care conflicts: not having a dedicated vehicle would interfere with your child care requirements.

Part 3: Questions for the home owners

We asked a set of questions next for the homeowners. This turned up interesting results right away:

• Of 701 home owners with off-street parking, 76% keep their primary vehicle in off-street parking, compared to renters at 74%.
• Of the home owners, 10% say they have no off-street parking for their cars.
• 23% of home owners WITH off-street parking keep their cars on the street anyway.
• For multi-car home owners, 53% keep their cars beyond their primary vehicle on the streets, compared to renters at 63%.

We asked a follow on question here: if you are a home owner with off-street parking who parks in the street, why do you? Of 98 responses, the overwhelming reasons boil down to:

• Your garage is repurposed for other things: storage, living space, etc.
• Very inconvenient garage access.
• Too many cars/vehicles to accommodate in your off-street space.

Part 4: Questions for the renters

Next were the questions for the renters. The first three questions centered on if renters had a dedicated parking space, if they were charged for it, and how much they were charged. Here the takeaways from 189 responses:

• 7% of renters have no cars, compared to 2.6% of home owners.
• 67% of renters have a parking space of their own.
• 77% of renters either pay for or have the option to pay for a parking space.
• Of the renters who pay a known dedicated parking space fee, 61% are paying up to $100 per month ($1200 per year) for that space.

We then asked renters the same questions we did the home owners — if you have off-street parking, why do you park in the street? What do you with the ones beyond your primary vehicle?

• Of 140 renters with off-street parking, 74% keep their primary vehicle in off-street parking, compared to home owners at 76%.
• For multi-car renters, 63% keep their cars beyond their primary vehicle on the streets, compared to home owners at 53%.

We asked the same follow on question here for the renters as we did home owners: if you are a renter with off-street parking who parks in the street, why do you? Of 98 responses, the overwhelming reasons boil down to:

• Too expensive to park off-street.
• Very inconvenient garage access.
• Too many cars/vehicles to accommodate in your off-street space.

Part 5: Questions about parking restrictions

This was the final section of our survey, focused on questions we often hear in regard to the idea of ‘parking restrictions’. These focused on the City of Seattle’s “RPZ” program (more details here). The short version of the RPZ program is that the city sells “parking passes” that go on your vehicle, and during certain parts of the day, those without stickers are ticketed if they park in your neighborhood. The RPZ passes last two years and cost $65, for a rate of $5.41 per month.

The main takeaway here is that there appears to be no reasonable support for increasing parking restrictions in our area at this time.

We received an additional 200 responses of comments on this subject. There is no single overwhelming pattern in them — it’s roughy a third of you saying “no, thank you,” in various forms, a third of you saying “yes, please,” in various forms, and again as many uncertain/unsure.

The final question in our survey was this one:

 

Thank you from the West Seattle Transportation Coalition.

For taking this survey and advising us in person, by e-mail, online on Facebook and Twitter, and in various meetings and forums. We’re all residents and volunteers here in the area, taking our guidance from all of you on what problems to tackle. We can always use more help, as well. We meet on the 4th Thursday of every month from January through October at Neighborhood House High Point, 6400 Sylvan Way SW.

We can always use more help!

This September, we are planning a candidate forum for the finalists from our City Council primary elections in August, focusing on transportation issues.

You can find us online at this website, and:

• Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/westseattletc
• Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/westseattletc
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/wstcoalition