XPost: alt.autos.toyota, rec.autos.driving, alt.society.liberalism   
   XPost: alt.fan.michael-moore   
   From: bashley101@gmail.com   
      
   On 08/15/10 15:49, Ralph Mowery wrote:   
      
   > "His Highness the TibetanMonkey, Creator of the Movement of Tantra-Hammock&   
   > the Stationary Bicycle to burn the calories"   
   > wrote in message   
   > news:3312abff-929d-4eb1-bf43-54ba5461b81d@x25g2000yqj.googlegroups.com...   
   >>  The "car culture" has little to do with culture or public preference   
   >>  or convenience. CONVENIENCE IS HAVING OPTIONS, ie. cars, public   
   >>  transportation, bicycles, etc.   
   >>   
   >>  The car is about BIG MONEY, and this goes together with Darwinian   
   >>  Capitalism. Yep, and we fell in the "trap" of the Hungry Lion today.   
   >>  We went to this high school contest in the early hours (not fancy   
   >>  opera concert time) and when we came out of the parking lot three   
   >>  hours later they charged us... 22 bucks! (That's American dollars)   
   >   
   > Bad to pay that just to park for a high school function.  I have quit going   
   > to some things I would normally go to for the parking reason.  It is not too   
   > bad to pay a reasonal fee for parking, but when the parking is as much as   
   > the fuction I go to, I don't usually go.  There are other similar events I   
   > go to that don;t charge for parking.   
   > One thing the shopping malls did for the city I live is was to make them get   
   > rid of the parking meters.   
   > The malls didn't ,but the city store owners complained and the city removed   
   > the meters.   
      
   Worked exactly the opposite here.  Parking was free until the mall was   
   constructed.  Parking was free in the mall for quite a while, but you   
   had to be willing to hold your breath from your car to the mall entrance   
   or be overcome by fumes -- I guess it never occurred to them to   
   ventilate the n-layer below-ground parking structure.  They also needed   
   every 3rd or 4th space for a support pillar, yet another bit of stupidity.   
      
   They tore down the old mall, built a new "multi-use" structure on its   
   corpse, and charge for parking.  They also installed meters on the   
   street.  Then they swapped out the coin-meters for credit-card meters.   
   Now they have parking kiosks one or two per block -- you feed your CC   
   into the kiosk and it does something.  I don't know what it is because I   
   rarely need to go downtown and have a bicycle.   
      
   The doctors' offices parking lots charge nothing for the first half hour   
   (yeah, right) and $5 or $6 for anything over that.  You're stuck because   
   there's no on-street parking at all for blocks around.  I ride my bike   
   to the docs' too, unless I'm getting my eyes dilated.   
      
      
   --   
   Cheers, Bev   
   =============================================   
   If you are going to try cross-country skiing,   
   start with a small country.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)