I found some time and stopped by The Kate Gleason Auditorium at The Rochester Public Library (115 South Ave.) for the presentation of a Center City Circulator Feasibility Study for Rochester by C&S Companies. They are surveying employees and full-time residents of the area inside the Inner Loop to determine if a circulator (a short, fixed transit route for moving people around a small area) is feasible. They presented the current survey results and asked for suggestions which they wrote on two large easels.
Their results indicated that they were surveying people on how they presently commuted to downtown. The vast majority (some 80%) drove alone in a car and used a parking lot. They unfortunately included Kodak so the results skew strongly toward Kodak's behaviors.
More importantly, though, they seemed genuinely mired in the car-plenty, cheap-fuel, 1960's thinking that inspired the city's infrastructure. For instance, I was met with surprise when I suggested they examine the possibility of removing automobiles from the area in the Inner Loop, serving it only through a circulator and foot-traffic, perhaps starting with a trial area. My thinking is that fuel costs and the costs associated with a car-culture are going to increase, and it would be wise to examine options that look past the status quo. It becomes a question of whether we want to be more like Denver or more like Palmyra.
Most of the suggestions from others revolved around providing free parking (so I suspect C&S's presentation to the City will strongly endorse free parking). I thought it unprofessional to watch one of the camera crews recommend that the media should be able to park with impunity without being ticketed. I'm not surprised on either front. In the first case, if you ask people what they want, they will start from what they know; it will take leadership to create a better situation that is not simply more of the past. In the second case, I have been nothing but appalled at the lack of quality in television news, and this is just more of the same.