Parking and mass transit

On Ted McDermott ‘s serendipitous electric bus article:

STA is going to belch diesel smoke from three backup generators in our Emerson Garfield neighborhood a mile from the the Spokesman-Review building every time the power goes out and for 30 minutes every week to keep them in top running order.

It’s ridiculous and hypocritical to me. They simply moved the fumes from being evenly distributed across town to our West Sinto Avenue at North Cedar. The entire Boone northwest complex has happened since 2018, with the last two generators added in the last month. In a prolonged power outage people will be more concerned with their home not being looted than a bus ride.

The main reason cities like New York and San Francisco have such high mass transit participation is there’s nowhere to park. Maybe the buses wouldn’t be so empty if the city had meaningful parking enforcement. Vehicles and other bins and trailers stay on our streets for months, sometimes years. The city doesn’t have a towing and impound budget I’m told. The city needs to enforce parking violations for mass transit to work.

Mike Reno

Spokane