Someone shared this blog's recent post about plans for 71 new un-priced parking spots to be built for the Alameda Aquatic Center on Reddit — and the "reply guys" started replying:

The "discussion" continued from there. The reply-guys couldn't stand the piece's title — which the editor of Streetsblog SF republished, with my permission, under their own headline of "Alameda Swimming Pool Planners Assume Everyone Drives" — nor the piece's tone, nor the piece's content. There's never any winning with reply-guys!

The most up-voted comment on Reddit is thoughtful and detailed, so here it is in full:

Reddit comment by user 2ft7Ninja: I attended the Planning Board Meeting Monday and the amount of parking being proposed is way too much (nearly half of the land of the proposed project!). We do need some parking for the handicapped and service vehicles but the assumptions made for predicting parking demand are super unrealistic. For main activities: 90% of visitors/staff would drive at 1.1 people per vehicle For summer camps: 95% of visitors/staff would drive at 1.5 people per vehicle for kids and 1.1 people per vehicle for staff I grew up in the exurbs where driving was the only way to get anywhere and I can count with one hand the number of times I remember one person (other than staff) driving alone to the local pool. We would often carpool between families and there’d be typically 4-6 kids per minivan. Regardless, there is no way this parking should be free. Cars are the most space inefficient and expensive mode of transportation and we live in one of the densest and unaffordable regions of the US. It’s ridiculous to believe that limited green space and taxpayer money should go towards subsidizing wealthier car drivers when plenty of people have no intention of driving to the pool because they can’t afford to own one or multiple cars per family. Before staff ask to increase the budget by 18%, they should first cut costs by requiring parking be paid. If you’re worried about there not being enough parking spots left when you go to visit the pool you should support paid parking because it will shift many from driving to biking, using public transport, and carpooling, saving you a spot.

The draft folder of this blog has ~1,800 words on the oddly arbitrary outcome of Monday's Planning Board meeting. To be honest, I'd rather not read more insults after clicking the publish button on that next post — but as the first rule of the internet likely states: Never read the comments.

That said, since enabling commenting on this blog last year, I have read every comment submitted through this site. Can't say I agree with 100% of them, but I've yet to have cause to delete any comments for being over the line. Thank you to everyone who reads these posts, and thanks to everyone who comments in a constructive manner!

Never read the comments (after writing about free parking)