Rising gas prices have boosted public transportation use. Now with fewer cars on the roads, and more left in lots, Skagit County faces a shortage of places to park-and-ride.

“All of a sudden I have 38 vans on the road,” said Skagit Transit Vanpool Coordinator Roberta Nelson.

When the program began in 2003, there were five vans. Last year there were 26.

“Obviously with the price of fuel at $4 a gallon, it just spiked,” Nelson said.

In Burlington and Mount Vernon, the 70-space George Hopper Park & Ride, 100-spaces at Skagit Station and even roadside and gravel lots are at capacity, Nelson said.

And the proposed Chuckanut and South Mount Vernon park-and-rides are still years away.

“If there is not somewhere for us to park, and do it safely, then I am going to be forced to drive again,” said Skagit Transit vanpool rider Gini Stowell.

She joined a vanpool last month that leaves the Mount Vernon Safeway each morning for Everett.

With official park-and-rides at capacity, Safeway has been a choice place to park personal vehicles during the day and vans at night. And the grocery store had no complaint as long vanpoolers parked away from the store, at the southern end of the lot, said Stowell.

That was before gas fetched $4.30 or more per gallon.

The number of vanpoolers parking at Safeway has doubled, said fellow vanpooler Deborah Brown. And on some mornings it is hard for riders to find a spot at the end of the parking lot.

As of June 28, Safeway will no longer allow vanpoolers to park at the store.

“We are not a park-and-ride,” said Cherie Myers, director of public and government affairs for Safeway.

Between the 16 vans that use the lot and the personal cars parked there by riders, vanpools take up about 25 percent of the parking lot, she said.
Myers said Safeway plans to review the parking issue again after the busy summer season, but that it is unlikely all 16 vans will be invited back.

“I am not mad at Safeway,” said Brown. “To me it is a community problem.”

“The push is on to use alternative sources of transportation,” she said. “I do not think our community has kept up with the infrastructure to promote those alternative sources of transportation.”

Skagit Transit is aware of the problem.

“There are only a few park-and-rides currently in Skagit County and these are small, over-crowded and often in unsafe locations,” states the Skagit Transit 2008-2013 Transit Development Plan. “The expansion of our vanpool program, our new Connector routes to Bellingham and Everett and the planned expansion of our local routes ... will only fully succeed if commuters have a place to park their cars.”

“During this Plan’s period, Skagit Transit will seek to partner with state and local entities to plan for, finalize funding and complete the new Chuckanut Park & Ride in Burlington and an additional park-and-ride located in South Mount Vernon,” the plan says.

Nelson, vanpool coordinator at Skagit Transit, said paving a lot to create a park and ride may seem simple. But land acquisition, planning, funding and construction can take years.

“I don’t even remember when we started looking at Chuckanut,” she said. “It has been a couple of years at least.”

And the planned Chuckanut Park & Ride, which is to have 350 parking spots on 8.3 acres of land, is still years from completion.

The state Department of Transportation hopes to have it open before the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C. But the project is still short on funding.

In the meantime, vanpoolers are parking at homes, along streets, at churches and, if they can find a spot, existing park-and-rides, said Nelson. She and the vanpoolers are also looking for another private lot to replace Safeway.

“It is not just Skagit County,” she said. “If you drive to Snohomish County and you look at their park-and-rides, there is not anywhere to park. It is a county issue, but it is also a state issue.”