RochesterSubway.com : Rochester Wins Parking Madness Tournament! Hooray for us?

Rochester Wins Parking Madness Tournament! Hooray for us?

April 9th, 2014

Well, it’s time to celebrate. Rochester has just won the . To outsiders, Rochester is a Cinderella story (who in the world would have picked us to beat out Detroit in the second round?). But anyone who reads this blog is probably not surprised. We’ve been fighting the parking madness mindset on these pages for years. It’s just that now, the national blogosphere knows about Rochester’s dirty little parking problems. Our asphalt is hanging out there for the world to see.

How embarrassing. Right? Some people have asked, “Why would we want to win such a negative contest? Doesn’t this paint Rochester in a bad light?” Now the man who nominated Rochester, Matthew Denker, explains why he did…

The following statement is from Matthew Denker.

There has been quite a bit of back and forth over the value of competing in, trying for, and (we hope) winning the Parking Madness 2014 Bracket at Streetsblog. Some people see it as an innocent way to poke fun at sixteen cities in the US and Canada, possibly goading them to do better for themselves, while others view it as bringing shame to our mighty institutions.

No matter what your position is on the bracket, I support the competition wholeheartedly, and believe it’s worthwhile to explain exactly why. As you may know, Rochester is the 101st largest city in the US. That makes it larger than any number of cities you might have heard about, including Des Moines, Little Rock, Salt Lake City, and Providence. Nevertheless, before Parking Madness, Rochester has had all of 2-3 articles about it on Streetsblog, most dedicated to tearing down the inner loop. This is in comparison to dozens upon dozens of articles for each of those other cities. Suffice to say, being in, and specifically winning this competition puts Rochester on the map. It allows us to open up to the fact that we have a problem, but more importantly, it begs us to care and hopefully to DO something about it.

Sure there may be cynics who will read about Rochester’s shameful award. They may point and laugh and make fun. But that’s ok. These cynics are not the Rochester expats who have moved elsewhere, succeeded, and would come back to invest. These cynics are not the Rochester readers of Streetsblog who might do something (participate in Roc Transit Day or Parking Day 2014, if we’re throwing out ideas). And these cynics are not the people who will travel to and enjoy a better Rochester. The parking downtown, today, is as bad as it is whether we are in this competition (and win it) or not. But without having been in this competition, we’d not be having this conversation right now.

There are many things we can all do to alleviate parking madness. Little things… walk, bike, use transit more. And big things… like making better regional planning decisions. Maybe it’s time to get serious about bike sharing, a downtown circulator, and other enhanced transit options?

But the absolute worst thing we could do now, would be to sweep this opportunity under the rug.

• • •

About Matthew Denker:

Matthew Denker is a Project Director by day and a fantasy real estate tycoon by night. He has a deep interest in Rochester, NY, as well as the subjects of new urbanism, walkability, mass transit, and land use. Going forward he hopes to combine all of those things to make Rochester a city competitive not only with other small, successful cities, such as Portland and Minneapolis, but even better by leveraging its easy access to the world-class cities of Toronto and New York.

Tags: downtown Rochester, Matthew Denker, parking, parking lots, parking madness, Rochester, Rochester NY, Streetsblog, urban planning

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 9th, 2014 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Reader Submitted Stories, Rochester News, Transit + Infrastructure, Urban Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

15 Responses to “Rochester Wins Parking Madness Tournament! Hooray for us?”

Matthew Denker says:

April 9, 2014 at 4:48 pm

I want to take a moment to thank all the readers of RochesterSubway who supported our town in this little experiment. I look forward to having a conversation here about what we can do, both in the short term and the future to improve the lot, heh, of these lots. Transforming them into something bigger, better, and more community oriented rather than a daycare for automobiles would go a long way to make Rochester even greater.
Nathanael says:

April 9, 2014 at 8:06 pm

I think the *north* half of the Inner Loop is poisoning Rochester’s situation even more than the east half (which thankfully has its demolition funded).

It was the section of Rochester just south of the the north part of the Inner Loop which won the Parking Madness Tournament.

Maybe this can raise some awareness and start building some pressure to get rid of more of the Inner Loop, and reconnect Downtown Rochester to the (soon-to-be-rebuilt) Amtrak station and the (new) Greyhound Station. Franklin Square could even be reconstructed!
daggar says:

April 10, 2014 at 2:37 pm

Nathaniel is right. Now instead of an inner loop we will have an inner C-clamp– in case its effect on the city’s core was in doubt.
daggar says:

April 10, 2014 at 3:49 pm

The only way to convey the horror of urban blight is with an equally horrific format. Thus, here is a 2 meg animated gif of the location:
http://daggar.net/blarg/franklin-square.gif
Matthew Denker says:

April 10, 2014 at 4:29 pm

That’s about what I was thinking of making. i’d love to see it loaded into one of those before/after sliders that are so prominent at NYT and such places. Thank you for making this. It throws the problem into stark relief.
daggar says:

April 10, 2014 at 5:07 pm

Fortunately, jquery plugins replaced most of my frontal lobe years ago.

http://daggar.net/blarg/the-aliens-levelled-our-cities-with-asphalt.html

The alignment isn’t perfect, but it get the point across.
Matthew Denker says:

April 11, 2014 at 12:13 am

Doubly spectacular. I hope you and Mike are amenable to making that a post of its own. It deserves it. Thank you. I should try to find additional aerials to do that with. I imagine one near the west side of downtown would be similarly striking.
RochesterSubway.com says:

April 11, 2014 at 8:19 am

Great minds think alike. We’re already working on that post!
daggar says:

April 11, 2014 at 9:53 am

Thanks Matt. Mike has sent me some old arials to use; if you’ve got any more on hand feel free to send them along. Mike has my email address.
Joe says:

April 11, 2014 at 9:35 pm

When is the original picture from? If everything lines up I notice the ca. 1930s firehouse at Andrews and North and the accompanying building across Andrews don’t have an Andrews st to face.

Also what’s the story behind the massive shuffling, the inner loop alone does not explain it.
RochesterSubway.com says:

April 11, 2014 at 11:09 pm

The before shot is from 1918. All the shuffling is due to new streets added afterwards to allow for easier traffic flow thru downtown. Chestnut Street (in the upper right corner) was added north of Main. Andrews and Pleasant streets were also extended as additional east/west routes, to relieve traffic on Main.
Nathanael says:

April 12, 2014 at 2:55 am

Wow. It’s amazing realizing that it wasn’t just the Inner Loop: they rammed multiple streets through. When did that happen?

Chestnut Street at least serves a purpose (as a connection from north to south). Pleasant Street doesn’t and should probably be removed.
RochesterSubway.com says:

April 12, 2014 at 9:39 am

I can’t say for sure…sometime between 1940s and 1970s. I just remember reading about each project in old newspaper clippings.
Joe says:

April 14, 2014 at 6:33 pm

The chestnut/north street realignment had to happened post 1930’s you can see how the fronts of the buildings on chestnut follow a different path than the current street. The firehouse which I know is from th 30s used to have bays facing north st, so the realignment had to come after.
Jason Haremza says:

April 15, 2014 at 5:07 pm

Chestnut Street north of Main Street (really north of East Avenue) happened much later… as late as the 1970s or early 1980s when we should have known better. The better north-south vehicular connection provided by Chestnut Street does not make up for the demolition, illogical street pattern, and truncation of North Street as the primary north-south corridor into the east side of downtown.

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Rochester Wins Parking Madness Tournament! Hooray for us?

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