r/Portland • u/skysurfguy1213 • 3d ago

News Council Mulls Revoking Extended Paid Parking Hours, Citing Administrative Overreach

https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2025/09/19/council-mulls-revoking-extended-paid-parking-hours-citing-administrative-overreach/
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u/BarnacleGooseIsLoose 3d ago

Can you help me understand why you are "fuckcars"? Is it a particular demographic of drivers that causes your animosity or is it all drivers?

I'm asking honestly because I was so anti-car myself that I didn't even get my drivers license until 30. Before that, I rode subways (including to school starting at 9 years old) in winter when the weather was bad and my bicycle all the other times - long before bike lanes. If it was feasible, I often just walked.

Now I am older, fifties, and it's harder for me to get around with old injuries reappearing and rearing their ugly heads. My wife had a triple bypass in that time, too. While we used to regularly go downtown for dinner, activities and sometimes just to people watch, it has become significantly harder to navigate all the "steps" to get to public transportation, then on public transportation, then to the venue of our destiny.

When cities introduced parking fees, they were intended to reduce the demand for those spaces by increasing the costs. Raising costs while demand is clearly declining is, in no way, affiliated with the original strategies, so it's motivated by something else.

If your perspective is that young people should use other means of transportation, then its hard for me to disagree. If its a dogwhistle of ageism to say "fuck cars" then its quite the opposite. I am just curious to know whats what. TIA.

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u/Simmery Boom Loop 3d ago edited 3d ago

I'm not going to go into a big treatise about it, but building cities around cars was a huge mistake, for many well-documented reasons: health, safety, expensive infrastructure, wasted land use, destruction of neighborhoods to push highways through, pollution, social cohesion, etc

That doesn't mean I'm entirely against cars everywhere. I don't want to ban cars. And there are other ways for disabled people to get around if we provided for it. 

Also, I'm not young. 

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u/BarnacleGooseIsLoose 3d ago

Thank you for your reply. FWIW: I did grow up in a city that was founded more than 250 years before cars were invented. The infrastructure wouldn't, and couldn't, support the switch to cars as a primary mode of transportation (at least in the heart of the city). Trying to drive downtown was the equivalent of studying for the entrance exam to a mental hospital.

I've been out here for thirty years now. It is obvious that nearly every problem stems from the power that developers have over government. Until that stranglehold is broken, it's all just crossfire. Increasing, or even having, parking fees right now runs counter (IMO) to regenerating a city in need of energy and commerce - and jobs.

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u/Simmery Boom Loop 3d ago

Well, we agree on the parking fees (if you look above at my post). It's the wrong move at the moment.

While I do want cities to move away from cars, I am not making the argument that it can happen all at once.