BUT FREE PARKING IS MY GOD-DAMNED CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT!!!

Or maybe this is showing that the current prices being charged by pay lots are too high and that consumers still find that it's worth more to them to drive around for 15 minutes looking for a spot than to just pay to park. I feel that what you're showing here is a failure of right-of-way policy and market forces to reach an adequately acceptable equilibirum.

What Graham's second and third sentences said.

Or it proves that wealthy former yuppies (is there a catchy term for old-urban-professionals?) are a huge pile of detestable cheapskates that will kick your dog if it saves a buck.

That, or their shitty suburb-coddled parking skills make for Mercedes station wagons straddling multiple spaces all day, every day. So instead of parking spaces, we need big open parking "areas" where the mommy bloggers and socks-and-sandals dudes can just haphazardly aim at and hope for the best. Crash barriers in front of every store might help cut down on shopping fatalities, too. Maybe Crate & Barrel makes an attractive stainless steel model?

I agree with Graham's point about price. A Smart-Park in the area, at $1.50 hour would be really popular.

Just put in meters in NW. then there will be plenty of open parking. start near the commercial areas and expand from there

Reymont,
Good call. Unfortunately, Smart Parks generally work on the premise that on-street parking is priced at a premium rate and Smart Parks are more affordable. As long as there's publicly-subsidized free parking on the streets of NW Portland, a Smart Park, no matter how cheap, won't really do the trick.

PARKING METERS

Also, in built-up city environments, up to 40% of traffic is people circling around looking for a parking spot. In NW it's probably more like 60%. Charge for parking, since everyone seems to agree it's valuable. More empty spots means fewer people looking for them, easier to cross the street, more pleasant for cyclists. All that works if you take all the money people pay for parking and burn it; if you spent it on something useful, you would have a win-win-win-win-win-win.

Chunty wins.

The street parking for residents really sucks though.

@Mike: The street parking for residents has been fixed in many other major metropolitan locations through parking permits being available to people who are able to prove they live in the area. No reason why we couldn't do the same thing.

As long as we're fantasizing, what about making 21st and 23rd one-ways (in opposing directions) with one lane for traffic and one lane for angled, metered parking?

I know this would kinda screw cyclists, but we definitely shouldn't be on NW 23rd anyway. I've seen too many near misses between dum dum drivers and clueless, helmetless idiot cyclists to be convinced otherwise.

@Colin - I have no idea why they aren't already one way. Capital idea!

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"Northwest Portland has 193 pay-to-park spaces available to shoppers in seven parking lots just off of 23rd Avenue between Flanders and Thurman streets."
...and if you look at the Examiner's graphic, it lists the four lots they surveyed at the top.

Resident parking permits were already being issued (at least to tenants in my building) when I lived in NW way back in 2002-2003.