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this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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It baffles me that there's even a discussion about this. Customers do not drive down Pike Place to access the market. It's already functionally a pedestrian space where occasionally some person takes a wrong turn and accidentally drives through. Vendors use it, but they arrive early in the morning before customers. It should be closed to regular traffic during normal shopping hours.
Hey there, I worked in the market for 5 years at a produce stand and still have contact with many vendors through my current job.
The big money customers are regulars who come down to the market weekly or bi-weekly to get a service level that is not provided at a regular grocery store. Those customers drop hundreds of dollars at multiple vendors and absolutely do drive through to get loaded up after shopping. Many of those customers are retirees that absolutely could not carry their purchases down to the parking garage.
The market is a very unique place and if it caters only to the tourists it will kill what makes it a tourist destination in the first place. It would become even more hollowed out as it drives away locals.
Maybe we shouldn't be encouraging elderly citizens to drive through a street that is crowded with pedestrians? If you can walk through the market, you can take an elevator to Western.
Locals are also walking on Pike Place, dodging cars that don't belong there. Making the market safer isn't going to drive people away.
Pretty disingenuous to say a person that can't carry $400 worth of groceries shouldn't be able to drive.
It will cease to be a market is my point, but hey we can just fill in that space with more corpo restaurants like the most recent addition. Problem solved I guess.
I'm saying they should drive on a street for cars, not a street for people, which is what Pike Place is. We're literally talking about parking only the western side of the market rather than the eastern side. It isn't some distant hinterland.
This is just ridiculous. It's a huge market with tons of people who walk there and tons of other people who park at the easily accessible parking garage. Telling a handful of people they can't load their purchases on a street with negligible available parking and hordes of people walking between shops (because it's a busy market) will not harm the market in any capacity.
What are you on about? Do you just want to rant about corporations? The issue is that it's in practice a pedestrian street and already filled with pedestrians, so cars should be restricted. If you ban the cars, it's still full. That's the whole point of banning the cars.
I'm sharing my point of view as someone that has an direct understanding of not only the businesses in the market but their profit margins (historic businesses are already on a subsidized lease if you didn't know). If you want to write off that experience as unimportant then go ahead.
Tell me you've never shopped at the market without ever telling me you've never shopped at the market. That is the side of the market with the butcher, the produce, the fish mongers its literally "the market" side.
You keep talking about safety but I have yet to see an extensive report on traffic incidents that compares to other downtown areas. I've spent my entire life going to the market and not once have I felt unsafe, I've yelled at a couple drivers but that's not unique to the market.
I've shopped at the market many times. The main market with the produce is on a narrow strip between Pike Place and Western Avenue. Due to the slope it's level with Pike Place and above Western Avenue, but that's what elevators are for. By actual walking distance the difference between parking on one side versus the other is trivial.
I've helped customers down to western before or out to the parking garage on the occasional festival day that does close the street. What could be an easy load in 2 minutes becomes a 30 minute walk round trip. That's 28 minutes I could have been making sales to street traffic on top of that large order. Nothing to you as a customer buying a few bags, but I just cannot stress enough that it matters to the vendors and will impact their already low bottom line. Their are no adjacent streets that provide easy access to the market and that's pointed out in the article.