Not a great example since building and maintaining an EV station is not something Seattle should be doing.
Cities have no experience building or maintaining charging stations.
Not a great example since building and maintaining an EV station is not something Seattle should be doing.
Cities have no experience building or maintaining charging stations.
The city runs a municipal electrical utility (Seattle City Light), so building and maintaining electrical infrastructure is absolutely something they both have experience with and should be doing.
Why EV parking spaces and not a laundromat (which uses electricity)?
Because an EV lot is delivering power to a point (the charger) and parking is a business the city regularly operates. There's nothing novel to the city there.
A laundromat does take power routing, and there would be sufficient expertise to do that part, but operating a laundromat is a business the city has never done before. It requires knowledge of machines, customer traffic, laundry care, and a bunch of other stuff the city hasn't done.
Regardless of whether the City of Seattle should be in the EV charging station business, once they decide to, they damn well ought to be in the Getting Things Done™ business