Tag Archives: parking

New signs in Pike/Pine — Seattle launches Music Venue Zones for ‘musician parking and loading’

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Last year, the city launched a plan to create new Music Venue Zone parking spots to help bands dealing with load in and load out and help foster the city’s neighborhood live music scenes. Now the program is launching and City Hall is looking for Capitol Hill venues to join the program and add the signs and street markings to Pike/Pine’s maze of parking restrictions.

Qualifying music venues can apply for one annual Music Venue Zone permit each, creating up to three designated spaces at the curb, which SDOT will install. Music Venue Zones allow parking and loading 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with a valid permit displayed.
To qualify for the permit, music venues must:

  • Have a valid City of Seattle business license
  • Host live music events at least two different days each week
  • Charge a fee for entry for live music events

If your venue qualifies, you can now apply here for a Music Venue Zone permit.

CHS reported here on the legislative efforts to create the program last fall.

The new permits will cost venues $250 a year and the legislation has established rules limiting where they can be deployed. Each permit allows up to three Music Venue Zone
spaces per venue. Restrictions on parking and loading will be 24 hours a day, 7-days
a week. Vehicles in zones without the valid permit displayed will be subject to citation and impound, the city says. Continue reading →

Nice: Seattle boosts typical parking ticket to $69 starting January 1

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Screenshot

Seattle is jacking up its fine for parking tickets in 2025 for the first time in 14 years.

Currently, most parking fines range from $29 to $53, depending on the type of violation, the city says. The new fines will range from $43 to $78.

The most common fines of $47 will soon cost you $69.

CHS reported here on City Hall’s latest adjustments to on-street parking rates across Capitol Hill where the most coveted nighttime spots have now reached $6.50 an hour.

On-street parking also continues to shrink across the city as new programs and protected parking zones have been created to better utilize the public space. Continue reading →

City’s latest rate adjustments show nightlife crowds apparently willing to pay anything to park in Pike/Pine

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If you were to treat the Seattle Department of Transportation’s seasonal adjustments of its on-street parking rates like the stock market, you should be buying shares in the afternoon and evening sector on 12th Ave, go long all around the clock on 15th Ave E, hold a few shares of Broadway north of John, and be ready to jump off the momentum that keeps Pike/Pine nighttime rates soaring to match the highest total in the city.

Meanwhile, you can short Broadway between Pine and Capitol Hill Station in the afternoons and evenings — for now.

The city is out with the new payment schedule for Capitol Hill’s five main on-street parking zones as makes its “regular seasonal adjustments” to rates across the city. The new rates take effect starting today. More than half of the rates are staying the same. but the city is ticking up rates by $0.50 an hour for about 1 in 4 of its street parking spots. About 14% are getting a $0.50 discount in the latest update, the city says.

Here is how that shakes out this fall on Capitol Hill: Continue reading →

City’s Pike/Pine nighttime parking rate reaches $6

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Parking meter, 1951 (Image: Seattle Municipal Archives)

As far as market dynamics go, street parking around Capitol Hill’s E Pike and E Pine is a seller’s exchange where supply can never meet demand. Evening meter rates in the neighborhood’s nightlife core have now reached $6 an hour.

The milestone comes as Seattle City Hall makes it “regular seasonal adjustments” to paid parking rates across the city. Pike/Pine’s night rates were already the highest in the city but were part of a small bunch of neighborhood changes around the city where rates were bumped up 50 cents an hour.

All areas of Capitol Hill were increased by $0.50 for the nighttime rates. Big swaths of the neighborhood also saw 50 cent increases in daytime rates but demand didn’t warrant morning or afternoon changes in Pike/Pine, the city says. Continue reading →

Police: Man nearly shot, woman pistol-whipped in dispute over Capitol Hill parking spot — UPDATE: Thursday night reported gunfire

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Police say a man was nearly accidentally shot in a gunfire incident earlier this week stemming from a dispute over a parking spot near Pike and Minor.

CHS reported earlier on the Tuesday night shooting incident but Seattle Police has released new information about the shooting and the altercation.

According to SPD, police were sent to the area around 7:40 PM to a report of a woman screaming and crying for help. A single gunshot was reported as police arrived. Continue reading →

To meet demand — and be ready for coming growth — city adding paid-parking to Capitol Hill’s 15th Ave E

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15th Ave E changes a little more slowly than the rest of Capitol Hill but the neighborhood is in the middle of a transformation including redevelopment and, yes, a full overhaul of street parking to address what the city says is near overwhelming demand around its commercial core.

The Seattle Department of Transportation announced that crews will begin installing new parking kiosks, signs, and paint starting next week, Tuesday, October 10th to mark “two-hour paid parking” on 15th Ave E from E Denny Way to E Mercer.

The west side of 16th Ave E from E Denny Way to E Thomas will also get the treatment. The Residential Zone 4 Parking will remain in effect in the surrounding area.

The changes will mean new habits for those who drive to the area or residents and workers who have been jockeying with each other for street parking in the area around a mix of businesses including longtimers like Rainbow Remedies, Victrola, Coastal Kitchen, Hopvine, Jamjuree, and Liberty to relative newcomers like Ada’s Technical Bookstore, and Uncle Ike’s, to the latest additions like Windthrow, Creature Consignment, and Meliora.

“The project aims to address the growing demand for parking by visitors and customers, provide more reliable access at the curb, and enhance the overall parking experience for customers, visitors, and commercial delivery drivers,” SDOT says. Continue reading →

Thanks to new ‘urban economic activity,’ Seattle jacks up afternoon and evening parking rates ever so slightly

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The City of Seattle has released its latest regular update of on-street paid parking prices, a process officials say is on schedule to happen about three times a year.

The spring adjustments based on demand and availability vary across the city but mostly have manifested in upping afternoon and evening rates by a buck an hour “while morning periods are holding steady or decreasing and rates tend to be low, mostly at $0.50 or $1.00 per hour,” the city says. Continue reading →

Proposal would ease path to Seattle Central demolishing its massive Capitol Hill parking garage to make way for student housing development — and, don’t worry, more parking

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A design rendering of planned new SCC housing at Harvard and Pine

A Seattle City Council committee Wednesday will take up legislation to tweak city land use code to allow schools like Capitol Hill’s Seattle Central College to build much-needed new housing affordable to students close to urban campuses.

The council’s Land Use Committee chaired by Dan Strauss (D6 — NW Seattle) will consider the proposal form-fitted for SCC that would change code to allow its plans for hundreds of units of new student housing in a development replacing the school’s massive, multi-story parking garage that rises at Harvard and Pine.

The legislative tweak to city code would allow a new amendment process for Major institution Master Plan changes to allow “a one-time addition of student or employee housing.” The change would allow “a single development with residential uses at community colleges in Urban Centers to be approvable as a minor amendment to an existing MIMP when certain criteria are met.” Continue reading →

Seattle must refund or void 200,000 tickets after parking enforcement officer screw-up

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Sometimes you get lucky

An error at the top of its police department could cost Seattle around $5 million — and get you out of your recent Capitol Hill parking tickets.

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office announced the monumental mix-up this week, saying some 200,000 parking tickets must be refunded or voided because Seattle Police and Chief Adrian Diaz failed to properly commission parking enforcement officers after they were transferred out of the department in a Seattle City Council maneuver to downsize policing in the city:

On August 16, 2021, Council Bill 120148 was passed unanimously by the City Council and signed on August 18, 2021, officially moving PEOs from SPD to SDOT. Council intended special commissions to be issued for City employees who were not within SPD to enforce certain aspects of the traffic code. Special commissions are issued by the Chief of Police to personnel who perform law enforcement responsibilities outside of SPD. This technical step was not taken immediately upon PEOs’ relocation to SDOT in 2021.

The Harrell administration says it discovered the error and had Diaz commission the officers under their new wing in the Seattle Department of Transportation.

The city says tickets issued between September 1, 2021 and April 5th during the period before the correction are now void. Continue reading →

Capitol Hill car owners, start your engines and resume the 72-hour shuffle

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(Image: City of Seattle)

Seattle’s 72-hour parking rule is back fully in effect.

The City of Seattle announced last week it has resumed “full parking enforcement for any vehicle that has remained in one place unmoved for longer than 72 hours, returning to the normal standards which were temporarily paused in 2020 due to COVID-19 public health guidelines.”

“While full enforcement is resuming now, parking enforcement officers will continue to provide official warning notifications on vehicles allowing owners and occupants to move them before enforcement occurs,” the announcement from City Hall notes.

CHS reported here in October on the city’s plans to resume enforcing the rule suspended as part of changes made in 2020 to help reduce exposure and maintain essential services during the pandemic. Continue reading →