80+ days a year (almost 1 out of every four days) downtown will be flooded with 10,000 - 20,000 extra cars.  This will cause horrible gridlock and mean that hardworking residents won’t have anywhere to park.  Many spots will likely even be roped off the night before or morning of each home game.

The Rays' "traffic study" indicated parking would be plentiful.  Unfortunately, almost half of the locations they listed had no idea they had been included.  They certainly hadn't agreed to be part of the Rays' plan.

In their study, the Rays claim parking could be handled by about 30 different locations, all providing some of their parking to baseball fans. 

Let's think about this for a moment.

If there are 30 different places to park, spread out all around downtown and the surrounding area, how in the heck will people coming into the city know which locations have availability?  Likely they will be forced to drive around in circles for a considerable amount of time looking for a spot. 

Perhaps the city will put up large digital signs everywhere telling people which lots still have open spaces.  That would certainly make St Pete a more beautiful place to live.

Even with obtrusive digital signs, people everywhere handing out parking maps, and an AM radio station announcing which lots have availability, the number of lots people will be forced to choose from will significantly increase the amount of time they will have to spend driving around looking for a place to park. 

Instead of 10,000-20,000 cars driving into downtown and parking, we'll have 10,000-20,000 cars driving into downtown, driving around in circles for a half an hour or more and then parking. 

Certainly, as far as regular street parking goes (you know, the kind people who live and work here use anytime they go downtown) you can count on those spots going first and going fast.  Might as well forget about going downtown 80+ days a year.

What a headache!