Seattle Times columnist Nicole Brodeur rants in her column today about the end of the Pike Place Market garage’s free first hour of parking. She whines about how the loss of the free parking is really going to cramp her style: It will no longer be so easy for her to pop by the market for a lunchtime quickie. Furthermore, she says, the market is snubbing residents like her”unpaid ambassadors” to the throngs of touristsby charging (horrors!) $3 for parking.

Newsflash, Nicole. Seattle’s got a bus system. For $1.25 during lunch, you can hop on the #70, which stops right outside the Seattle Times’ office. That bus runs every 15 minutes, and will whisk you to 3rd and Pinetwo blocks from the marketin five minutes flat. It’d take much longer to drive and park, wouldn’t it?

And was that free parking really free, considering the gas you had to buy to drive your single occupancy vehicle?