Saratoga Springs, let’s make our city great again
Great cities are healthy cities. Healthy cities continue to thrive when gas prices increase, industries change and when horses stop running. Healthy cities are places where residents want to pay taxes because of the vibrant parks, great amenities and required services that a city provides to it’s residents in exchange for being able to live here. Healthy cities are not those that allocate the majority of their city owned property and use of their tax base for the creation of and upkeep of automobile storage. Healthy cities put people first, people places first and prioritize that the use of publicly owned space be used for people rather than cement structures used for the temporary storage of cars, horses, carriages or other conveyances people happen to be using at that time.
Currently there are 6 publicly funded parking lots and 3 publicly funded car parking garages in the urban core of Saratoga Springs and only 1 public park for the PEOPLE who live here. The entirety of the transportation system in Saratoga Springs is focused on moving cars and for storing non-moving cars at the expense of the people. What’s worse is that we are at the cusp of allowing another one to be built (for 750 cars) and our mayor has the guts to call it a “community destination” and reach out to our city’s sustainability group for their support. We need not argue if a parking garage should stand 2 stories high or 5 stories high but whether we want to continue to prioritize cars in our city and let another monstrosity be built. Or instead, we could put people needs first and create a real community destination with an incredible playground, outdoor theater, magnificent slides, and an attractive place for people to gather. This is what makes cities amazing and this is what we can create in Saratoga Springs if we decide we will provide for the needs of people first.
Each and every time we make a transportation “improvement” such as a center turn lane for vehicles or add another lane of traffic, we improve the drive-ability in our city and thus create greater danger & difficulty in crossing that street and more difficult to ride a bicycle. Every time we decide to “improve” parking by deconstructing a public space and turning it into a cement structure or parking lot, we are creating “dead spaces” which strip it of all it’s desirability for humans and ask that they gather, play and talk somewhere else. Any investment in parking lots and parking garages are not progress at all and are a blow to the overall transportation, social and fiscal health of the city where we live. More so, it makes our city ugly. When we decide to reduce automobile speed, build parks instead of parking lots, and eliminate on street parking in order to provide protected bikeways for residents, we aren’t fighting against cars, we are fighting for the people who live here and the children who are growing up here. We are investing in ourselves and our communities. Let’s make a decision moving forward: Do we want to make our city great for the movement and gathering of people or the movement and storage of cars? We can’t pick both.
Ian Klepetar Saratoga Springs