"Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot."--
Joni Mitchell, 1970
I often think of this song when I walk around downtown. It seems we have learned nothing in the past 30 years.
There was a time when trolleys, horse-drawn wagons, and even Model A's competed for Troy's streetspace. However, there never seemed to be a parking problem even though 30,000 more people lived here.
Yet, today Troy continues to thrive in, and promote, the present day car culture. It's getting out of hand.
Recently, more buildings were torn down so the Gurley building on Fifth Avenue could have a parking lot.. Jack Hedley seems to be paving anything that doesn't have a building on it for his state workers, including historic streets. Throughout the city, individual buildings get cannibalized so a few cars can park in their footprint. In the near past, entire neighborhoods and business districts have been torn down to build bridges to help people miss Troy. The State DOT, you will remember, tore down thousands of buildings (including Uncle Sam's home) to build a road system, then abandoned the idea the following year. Russell Sage has torn down blocks of historic buildings so their students and faculty can have a place to park!
If the city keeps this up, they'll have to paint the asphalt green so we can at least call it "green space."
What is it with this love for the car, or really, the convenience of having one? The average person spends about 2 hours a day in a car, unless you drive a taxi or truck. That's 14 hours a week, 728 hours a year, for a $23,000 car. To operate your car you need a license and registration, the cost of fuel, insurance, repair, and depreciation which is an estimated 25 and 30 cents for every mile traveled. If you drive an average of 15,000 miles per year this amounts to approximately $4,000 annually or $350 per month. What? So you can have it parked most of the time?
The environmental consequences are well known. Carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter. These air pollutants are harmful to our health, contribute to global warming (still doubt it?), and reduce visibility.
Car use in the U.S. alone accounts for 40% of all oil consumed.
I'm also amazed on how people are suckered into thinking their car is an extension of home. Look at the way they're advertised. Some commercials have a beautiful blonde draped over the hood of the car in scant clothing (for male buyers?). I have purchased several cars and none of them came with a blonde. For the ladies, we have the SUV's with color TV in the back so the kids can watch RugRats while she drives to nowhere.
Look at the two main selling features for today's car. How quickly it hugs the curves on U.S. 1 (or climbs Mt Everest), and those plush comfortable seats with climate control and GPS (global positioning satellite devices).
Come on, folks, you don't want to be that comfortable driving at 90 mph, hugging curves. Your name is NOT Andretti. Furthermore, if you spend $30,000 for a SUV or truck, are you really going to use it to climb the sides of mountains?
Why is it that cars can travel over 100 miles per hour but the speed limit is 55?
GPS? If you don't know how to get from work to home every day, you don't belong behind the wheel in the first place!
And, if I see any more SUV's with bumper stickers about how their kid is a genius, I'm going throw up on them.
Nothing is totally pollution free or without some risks. Even those horse drawn and later electric trolleys running down Troy's streets had some drawbacks.
The horse manure on a warm humid day must have been great for the senses, although it was recycled for fertilizer in surrounding farm fields. And, occasionally, getting run over by a trolley that was out of control running down Hoosick or Congress wasn't fun either.
However, blocks of buildings were not torn down for parking those horses or trolleys.
From the air, Troy looks like a bowl of Trix with multicolored car tops cluttering the landscape. At night it looks like bombed out beirut - a few standing buildings with vast open space between them.
Seriously, the city needs to address the parking issue! We need parking garages and soon!
Build two large garages. Place one at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Congress. Place the other at the corner of Eighth and Federal. Since the garages are built into the hill, they will not appear to be massive.
The mayor once told me that a study revealed that people will not walk more than 4-500 feet from their car.
Ok, build a trolley system going from the new garages to downtown and back, similar to the San Francisco trolley. Now people can park their cars, hop on the trolley, go shopping, hop on the trolley, and go back to their car. They can enter and exit the city at Hoosick or Congress.
The bottom line is stop destroying our historic infrastructure to accommodate cars. Then we can rewrite Mitchell's famous line to "They saved paradise and made us a happy lot."