The background noise of this talk of whether to give more money to the PBIA (and here) and the demise of free parking downtown is that someday, in the future, we'll build a parking garage downtown. Which makes me scratch my head, because it seems like somone has already built a parking garage downtown. As I pass Chesnut on my way to the library, I take a look at the new building, known as Cherry St. Plaza, and notice an attached 540 stall parking structure there.

So, instead of  building a new, public parking structure downtown or charging for parking so some day we can build one, wouldn't it be easier to gain access to the parking structures that already exist downtown? Maybe open them to public parking during the evenings and weekends?

In addition to the new Cherry St. Plaza parking garage, there is also a huge parking garage underneath the east end of the Capital Campus. Wouldn't it be easier to open up that garage at night and extend Dash Service to 9 p.m.?