Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater

Thu, 30 Jul 2015

Parking Fees

So, I work in the 4th and Madison building in downtown Seattle. On rare occasion, I ride my motorcycle in to work; today was such a day.

Here is the current blurb about parking from the 4th and Madison website:

Four floors of parking are available, including a complimentary valet service for guests of Fourth & Madison. Pay entrances to the parking garage are located off of both Madison Street and Marion Street. Garage hours of operation are 5:00a.m.- 9:00p.m. Monday through Friday and 7:00am - 7:00pm on Saturday. We also offer different rates for monthly, carpool, and evening parkers. The garage is closed to non-tenants on Sundays. For questions regarding rates please contact the Property Management Office at 206.262.4100.

Fourth & Madison is participating in the Downtown Seattle Parking Program. Go to www.downtownseattleparking.com for more information on this program.

Following the link to downtownseattleparking.com results in a delightfully incompetent 404 error, but that's beside the point. The downtownseattleparking website, once you've found it, shows the following information for the parking garage in the building:

Clear enough, as far as it goes. Doesn't get into daily rates, of course, but it gives you the impression that you know what's up. I haven't found any other published rate information, but I haven't searched very hard: I found rate information, why should I dig further?

Many parking garages, recognizing that they can pack in 4-5 motorcycles in the space of one car, and can put them in places that cars can't fit, offer motorcyclists a discounted rate. This is common, though certainly not universal.

The parking garage in the basement of 4th and Madison used to offer a rate of $7 per day for motorcycles. A few months ago, they changed it, instead charging $31 per day (the same rate as for cars), but offering a discounted monthly rate of $120-some per month. At the same time, they changed their entrances around, allowing the public to enter on both sides, where previously only one entrance was public, the other requiring a monthly pass.

So, as I mentioned, I rode in today. My company offers, as one of its perks, complimentary parking for a handful of days per quarter. Not regular parking by any stretch, but enough for those occasional days when you need to drive in.

I arrived at the newly public gate, and despite my best efforts, couldn't get the bike to register with the inductive loop in the ground, and thus couldn't take a ticket. With a line of cars behind me, I rode around the still-lowered gate arm, deciding I'd deal with it during the day.

I got the ticket squared away, and as part of that, looked up the parking management to ask them if they could increase the sensitivity of the loop to register motorcycles. It turns out they can't for technical reasons that are mostly due to an infrastructural blindness to motorcycles (the trigger loop and the safety loop after it are too close together, so if they're turned up enough to register a bike, they interfere with each other).

However, as part of my discussion with Brian, the parking manager, he said something like this (paraphrasing, of course):

"And, you know, if you get one of the non-monthly parking fee tickets on your vehicle, since you have a validated ticket from your employer, we'll just take care of it at the booth." Further discussion, and he let drop that the value of this extra fee would be $43, although whether that was on top of the normal $31 fee, or in lieu of it wasn't exactly clear. I suspect it was in lieu of it, essentially a $12 surcharge for parking a motorcycle without being on the list of monthly parking pass holders.

So, a daily parker, such as a visitor to the building, would be charged the $31 daily parking fee (regardless of motorcycle or car), and if this motorcycle didn't appear on the list of monthly parking pass holders, it would be charged an additional fee of $12, for a total of $43 for one day of parking.

Now, it would be reasonable to expect that, given such a princely fee, motorcycles would be afforded only the best accomodations. A full car-sized spot, with walls around it perhaps, to ward off inattentive car drivers' doors. Lockers for riding gear and helmets. Possibly some kind of wash or detail service.

Ah-hah. Of course I'm kidding. We can expect to be shuffled off into the odd spots where cars can't be accomodated, directed to areas that look like they're simply off-limits, but bikes park there anyway, because the designated motorcycle spot holds (I kid you not) three bikes. We can expect to be looked down upon as second-class or even third-class citizens (bicyclists get a nicely set up series of racks for locking up, all under the part-time steely gaze of the parking booth attendant). Clearly the motorcyclist is a miscreant.

I understand: I'm not actually responsible for the fee. But if I run out of my company's goodwill validations, I will be, and the injustice to other motorcyclists is unspeakable.

I'm sure, when I go to retrieve my motorcycle this evening, it will be furnished with a $43 parking fee ticket for having the unmitigated gall to not drive a car.

Posted at 11:53 permanent link category: /motorcycle


Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater