The downtown parking situation is already horrible, as noted in previous Voice articles. The lack of parking is stifling business growth and making any trip downtown a major hassle for residents.. The City Council refuses to build new parking, instead relying on cultural change (biking, ride-sharing) to improve the dire parking situation. But this idea of theirs: to actually remove existing parking? Spiteful and greedy. Shows how little they care about the concerns of voters.

Former Council Member Sally Lieber brought up the idea of "pocket neighborhoods" of micro homes a generation ago, it was a great idea then, and it is an urgent idea now. Pocket neighborhood consist of less than a dozen small houses that cluster around a joint commons area.

7min Video "Perspective Changing" Walkthrough of the Design and Implementation of "Pocket Neighborhoods"
Web Link

Overview Article on "Pocket Neighborhoods"
Web Link

One of the Nation's Leading Community Planner of Micro Neighborhoods: Ross Chapin:
Web Link

We need a more diversified approach to affordable housing. Forcing developers to build affordable housing units as portions of new developments has its place, as does the city envisioning and leading a different vision of market-supported scaleable solutions (building smaller-micro homes as part of thoughtfully designed micro-communities on ever more expensive parcels) is a key missing component.

Every innovation has to start somewhere, lets build at least one micro community to see how it works and feels. Anyone who cares about affordable housing all the while preserving a livable MV should check out the links above.

Housing is vitally important. But not at the expense of parking. Right now, thousands of units of housing are being added all over the city. But Mountain View has chosen not to add even one single parking space to downtown, despite notoriously insufficient supply. And now they want to subtract parking spots? Ridiculous! The City Council is not thinking clearly. Perhaps too many of the members live within walking distance of City Hall ... and Cascal too. They don't need to park, so why should you?

Nora, what on Earth does it say about our priorities if you think it's more important that we have places to put cars than have houses for human beings? Housing should always take priority over parking.

Timothy, what does it say about your priorities if you would turn over every square inch of land to housing, and not leave anything for services? That's what I call a ghetto.

My gosh, Nora, you're right. It's better that people go homeless than live in a way you dislike. At least there will be parking spots for the cars they have to live out of.

How come the city has yet to stripe surface parking around downtown? Everywhere I look people take up multiple spaces because there are not designated stripes for each space. This leads to less efficient parking throughout the downtown in a already starving market for more parking. There are a few sites downtown where the city could build more parking structures yet they still for some reason will not.

Build all of the above! Housing on top of retail on top of parking. When space is tight side to side, go up.

Talk about a solution that is worse than the problem! ??? This is it.

Insufficient downtown parking is and has been a major problem for years. It's the main reason I avoid shopping there, though I would prefer to support the small, independent businesses in that area. But spending more time seeking a parking space than I will use to make a purchase or eat a meal is absurd to me.

This idea needs to be canned asap.

It seems to me that you all need a day off the reservation.
When do you understand that life is not about parking spaces and can I find a place to flop for the night.
People, there is quality of life all around you but you fight to be confined?
I can't understand the millennial intellect...

Housing is great, but we really do need more parking in downtown. Why not put a 4 story parking garage there? We can put those 75 homes somewhere else...

Housing plans should be forward looking. The need for housing isn't likely to change, but our general demand for parking may look radically different in 10 years, driven by changes in driving being created in our very city.

Self driven cars have a major impact on how we park. It would be crazy to develop long term housing plans that don't consider those changes to how we may drive.

The percentage of people spending far too high a percent of their pay on housing,
The percentage of people driving far too far to be considered healthy,
The percentage of people living in their cars all the while local housing laws are meant to protect a minimum quality of life,
The percentage of people who can't sell because anything they buy will be even more costly.

Housing is the #1 problem for a majority of the city.

To invite all these innovative jobs for decades, and not build more innovative housing options for all those workers has to change. MV is smart enough to design housing that won't reduce the overall quality of life, but only if it breaks from the status quo.

How did it become tolerable to say that the working class should live in their cars or spend a quarter of their waking hours driving their cars to serve MV's prosperity? Breaks my soul each time I see homeless in our city, all the while, some undermine any solutions to help. The suffering around us is already hurting everyone's sense of morality.

Christopher, what's broken our sense of morality is the system of capitalism. Under capitalism, the greatest good is enriching yourself, with no regard for others. We're just now waking up to the disgusting outcomes inherent in it.

Just make sure only city employees, councilmembers and relatives of councilmembers get that "affordable housing."

At Hooli we practiced a ritual called "dogfooding". In other words, we "ate our own dogfood", using the same products and services as our customers.

Today it's so difficult to find parking in downtown Mountain View that I avoid shopping and dining there*. Realistically, there's no way to get from 101 to downtown without driving, unless your time is completely worthless or you don't mind having your bike stolen.

If the city council and staff want to get rid of parking, I'll embrace that leap of faith, on one condition: they should get rid of their own reserved parking. Let's dogfood a bright future of self-driving cars, cycling, walking, and mass-transit together, on equal terms.

[* I'm also still wary that I'll be ticketed and towed because of a ballgame 10 miles away. I don't follow football and can't be bothered to check the schedule every time I want to eat out.]

[Post removed due to disrespectful comment or offensive language]

Christopher, I can see that you, like many members of the City Council, believe that locals can and should be bullied into changing their behavior so that it comes into line with your anti-car beliefs. This is why the City Council has allowed the parking situation downtown to slide into its current state of chaos. New housing units have insufficient parking because of Council laxity, and no new parking structures are planned to compensate. Why? Because, maybe, just maybe, in ten years, the problem will solve itself! Because, you know, problems have a history of doing that. Ignore them and they go away. Right?

I say it's wrong. Solve the parking problem now. Don't stick your heads in the sand like a bunch of deluded ostriches, pretending that everyone who drives a car should be ignored. Your ideology is trumping common sense and strangling the economic health of our city.

Mr. Mayor:

Please,
get rid of the reserved council member parking in the City Hall basement lot. ASAP please. I've seen you and Lenny walk the walk beside talk the talk (or rather bike rather than walk). So: start the discussion Mr. Mayor. Put it ON THE AGENDA!

"city officials said it made little sense to preserve a surface parking lot in the city's urban core." I totally agree with the city officials. However, Mountain View can't afford to destroy any more off-street public parking downtown. I most humbly suggest that instead of building even more high density housing, the City Council should replace that surface lot with a 4 story parking garage --- one below ground and three above, which would more than double parking at that site. Making downtown more car-friendly may be a novel idea for the City Council, but it certainly isn't for businesses, restaurants, and MV residents like we who live in outlying neighborhoods.

In response to "Solve the parking problem now. Don't stick your heads in the sand like a bunch of deluded ostriches, pretending that everyone who drives a car should be ignored. Your ideology is trumping common sense and strangling the economic health of our city."

I don't disagree parking is hard, but Downtown seems far from economically struggling. If anything, it's the workers of downtown that need protecting first right now, there's no reasonable parking for store workers. Hopefully one day someone can create an app to allow store owners to rent home driveways for downtown hourly workers.

The lack of housing is the biggest economic threat to to this entire region, not parking. The amount of talented productivity lost to traffic is mind boggling, the amount of talent lost to other more affordable regions is equally tragic.

My family too has to drive longer to park, but my pain is less than those who live in RVs or are on the freeways for hours away from their own families.

Great idea! Turn all the downtown parking into housing units and then when there is no downtown parking nobody will use the library etc. so we can then pull those buildings down for more housing. That way, the realtors who channel campaign contributions to the city council members via the National Association of Realtors in DC get what they paid for and all the housing problems in the Bay Area can be solved by Mountain View alone.

Or maybe our sanctimonious (and bought-off) city council could take a break and allow Palo Alto, Los Altos and other cities share in the sense of righteous superiority that comes from doing what the real estate industry has bribed them to do.