Steel rails are high in irony

This article gives one pause:

Visitors and commuters to South Lake Union will enjoy lower parking rates and looser rules than in the rest of Seattle after the city installs automated pay stations this year...

Even as Seattle officials work to eliminate long-term spots and discourage commuters from parking in all other neighborhoods, in South Lake Union the city will sell 1,250 all-day spots at 75 cents an hour.

"We're not trying to encourage it, but it is going to be allowed," said Mary Catherine Snyder, who runs the city's parking program.

And short-term parkers will get a break, too.

In most of Seattle, the city charges $1.50 an hour... But at 750 two-hour spots near South Lake Union's retail core, city officials plan to charge $1.25 an hour.

. . .

...the city has set a parking occupancy goal as its threshold for success: 85 percent. That means at any given time visitors should be able to find a handful of open spots in a block. Source

Not only are taxpayers paying for the Streetcar, but now we're expensing parking revenues in South Lake Union and facilitating on-street parking??? These actions are at odds. One would think that our green Mayor would want to raise parking rates, decrease open spots and shorten terms, in order to encourage people to take Metro into downtown (light rail in the future) and transfer to the Streetcar.

Unless the Streetcar was really about gentrification, not transportation.