From: Stew Plock
To: Council, City
Subject: Please Pull Item #8 from 12/2 Council Consent Calendar Date: Sunday, December 1, 2024 9:38:53 PM
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Mayor Burt and Council Members, please pull Item #8 from the 12/2 Council meeting agenda, for further analysis and discussion.
The item would authorize design, EIR and administration work for a new downtown parking garage. As is often
the case with technology in general these days, transportation technologies that were seen as in the distant
future have arrived much sooner than expected, obviating the need for other capital investments once seen as necessary, like big, centralized garages.
That is the case with self driving "autonomous" vehicles (AVs). For example, not only are Waymo's robotaxis being introduced now on our city streets, but the company is already providing 150,000 rides a week in three metro areas. With our city's council behind wide deployment of AVs (cars or small buses), we could see in 10 years time a drastic reduction of privately owned cars in downtown Palo Alto...significantly reduced traffic, no need for more parking, easier for shoppers to get downtown without the hassles of finding parking near retail, etc. European cities are doing it now, through what's referred to as Mobility as a Service (MaaS).
The proposal for another parking garage for downtown was disapproved 4 years ago. Now there are even more reasons to discuss another similar proposal and to reject it again...please pull the #8 item for further discussion.
Stew Plock, Channing House senior community resident, and member of our Parking and Transportation Working Group and our CarFree Committee