Unfinished, working title: Grousing again about motorcycle parking

This started off as a Facebook post, preceded a few days by a series of tweets on a field trip, but I will transmogrify it into a semi-intelligible blog post.

Topic: It's still difficult to park a motorcycle downtown after 7:45 a.m. on a nice day. I posted about this last year, but nothing has changed, and it's not on anybody's radar, and needs to be.

I've already said I want to see these dozen metered car spaces on Fifth Ave by the free motorcycle parking become metered motorcycle-only parking, while also keeping the 50 free m/c spots under the bridge. I'd like to see that happen in 2015. The next thing I want to see happen is to take that lot across Fifth, currently Somebody's Fenced-In Gated Lot, evict them, take it over, and make _that_ motorcycle-only parking, probably free. Also with a lane across it so cycles can get to outbound Forbes easier.

Just so we're clear on the area we're talking about, here is a Google Maps link to the area in question.

There's a kindasorta sidewalk from Fifth to Diamond now, but then you have to go the wrong way on Diamond for 100 feet to get to Shingiss St, which gets you to Forbes without having to deal with the fustercluck of 6Av/Diamond/Forbes/Liberty Bridge. A nice simple path across that lot from the m/c area on 5Av would solve all that.

What we really want to get to is parking for 500 m/c and scooters in that area under Crosstown Blvd. I don't care whose lot it is. Take it over by eminent domain, if necessary. There can't be more than 100 cars in all that space right now.

At the absolute very least, can we please have someone from the city inventory the amount of space, and estimate how many m/c and scooters would fit in this space, with an egress to Forbes as described above?

Problem is, there is parking at the end of that sidewalk I mentioned above, so you really can't get a m/c down that sidewalk, never mind the 100 feet the wrong way on Diamond to get to Shingiss. The day I did it, I had to negotiate getting my m/c around a pickup truck. Had the truck owner been there, he would have had a fit, I was so close to it. As in, leaning the m/c sideways to fit under his mirror. That kind of close.  

Earlier tweets:
* By my est, 40-50 motorcycles could fit comfortably in the curbside parking on 5Av by where m/c's park now. Only 10 cars now. @billpeduto
* Could fit another 10-15 m/c's in the dead spots of that fenced lot across 5Av wo removing a single car space.

This parking lot holds about 30 cars. Think it could hold 200 motorcycles?

And across Diamond, between it and Forbes, is another badly underutilized space, storing maybe 20 cars where we could easily fit another 75 to 100 motos.