The City of Asheville is moving forward with constructing a parking garage in a high-demand area. Personally, I didn’t have much of a problem with it, as I believed the results of the parking study, and I’m too jaded to blink about the city constructing parking garages.
Councilman Gordon Smith, however, wanted to try to get a foot in the door for a circulator shuttle downtown. He drilled Kimley-Horn’s Fred Burchett, the parking consultant, on questions that any aware and green person should have asked about multimodal transit. Those questions were somewhat outside the scope of the contract. Smith conceded this was not the time to change policy, but got a thumbs-up from his peers for carrying the matter forward for discussion at council’s January retreat.
WWNC 570AM’s Matt Mittan took issue with the matter saying the city doesn’t have the money, the taxpayers will be burdened with the debt, the city has more pressing needs with crumbling infrastructure, etc.
For a synopsis, check out the Twitter at the MountainX.
