The idea of people not owning a car is absurd

The recent letter, “City shouldn’t eliminate parking requirements,” in the June 25 Camera was wonderful. Here’s a real-world scenario. My wife has a duplex near Boulder’s Alpine-Balsam project; you know the one that is going to have more housing units than parking. This neighborhood is a high-density, “affordable” rental area in Boulder. In the past, say 10 years or so, the number of people living on the block has increased by a lot. And so has the number of cars. In some cases, a single renter has had more than one car. One had a car and a camper van. Our property is one of the few on the block with adequate off-street parking. And there’s always somebody parked on the street in front because the neighbors don’t have enough off-street parking. So we’re subsidizing their parking. Nice deal for them!

When Alpine-Balsam is finally finished, if I live long enough to see it, I expect to see people who live there parking on our street. Here’s a suggestion: If the premise that people who live in Alpine-Balsam aren’t going to own cars is true, then the city shouldn’t allow cars to be registered to these addresses. Shouldn’t be a problem since they aren’t going to own cars anyway. The truth is that the idea of people not owning a car is absurd. The whole reason people move to Boulder is so they can park their car along the side of Lefthand Canyon Drive on the weekends to go hiking or mountain biking.

— Tom Chapin, Lyons