Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 455 posts

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#211

Post by jstanley »

JDDunn9 wrote: post #165
closeparen wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Residents of NYC pay $3000/mo for 1-bedroom apartments, while their suburban counterparts pay $1000/mo for 3-bedroom houses. You could buy quite a few solar panels and lease several electric cars for less than it would take to move to NYC.

Housing prices are often a related to geography. Manhatten is an island, SF and Boston are peninsulas. You could have a high density city that didn't have a high cost of living.

Could you, though?

Manhattan, San Francisco, and Boston aren't where they are because of random chance.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#212

Post by briandear »

yason wrote: post #166
jedberg wrote: post #16

There was a study a while back that showed that the USA has eight times as many parking spaces as it has cars. At first that seems crazy, but it makes sense if you think about the fact that all the places you go in a day need to have enough parking to meet their peak demand all year, so places like malls have huge empty lots most of the year until Christmas rolls around. And then there is the spot your car is in at w…

Also roads are built for the peak consumption. Outside the peak, there's generally excess capacity quietly eating away space from pedestrians and human beings.

Roads are built for average consumption. If they were built for peak consumption there'd be no such thing as rush hour or traffic jams. You could make the same argument about sidewalks -- at 4am, sidewalks have excess capacity eating away space that could be instead planted with foliage and serve as a habitat for animals. Unless there's 24/7 equal use of everything, there's always going to be excess capacity at some point. Your bathroom is unused probably 90% of the day, so why not open it up for neighbors to share? That would be far more efficient than having every house with their own bathroom.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#213

Post by mahyarm »

djsumdog wrote: post #158
an_account wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Los Angeles had dedicated bus lanes seperate from traffic (orange line) which is almost as good as rail for a fraction of the cost of laying track.

> as good as rail for a fraction of the cost of laying track It's really not. Even long/double decker buses carry a fraction of the people a streetcar can. Streetcars are still faster given other things being equal (dedicated lanes). The maintenance of streetcars is much better. You have no tyers, fully electric engines, high torque and lower energy consumption. Buses are good for short term routes, but long term a r…

Don't you get most of that with electric busses then? I can see the argument although for automation and how you can multicar trams with one driver.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#214

Post by briandear »

makecheck wrote: post #138
honkhonkpants wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building a parking lot will in no way save you from the imminent domain powers of people who want to build roads and railroads. This strikes me as some kind of urban legend. Every place I've lived has mandated some ratio of parking to floor space in new office buildings, which is why office buildings are surrounded by parking.

Maybe a railway isn’t a realistic example. A nature preserve might be a better one; they can’t decide to cordon off an area for wildlife if you’ve already destroyed all the trees, whereas untouched land might fall into that category. The examples I can think of were in Texas and I’m sure the rules vary by region.

I highly doubt people in Texas are building parking lots to protect against a nature preserve. It's generally because of parking requirements established by building codes.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#215

Post by mahyarm »

desas wrote: post #178
cameldrv wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're underestimating all of the ways self-driving cars will increase efficiency relative to parking, which are multiplicative. 1. Much higher occupancy per car. Based on my personal observations, at rush hour the average occupancy of a car is something like 1.3. I don't see any reason that can't increase to 2.6 or more without significantly slowing anyone down -- 2x 2. Yes, a lot of people need to get to work at 8,…

Do you think people will prefer to use a self driving car that gets them to the office ten minutes faster or one that meanders around picking up other people and dropping them off?

Well like uber pool / uber X, it will have 2 price points and people can choose what is more important.

Also with more people using it, the less meandering it does. If everyone uses the "uberpool" system, it will probably pick up everyone in about 5 minutes in a 2 block radius and drop you off at one spot 1 block from your work. The more dense it is, the more efficient it gets.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#216

Post by briandear »

So we could argue that drivers are subsidizing the cost of mostly unused handicapped parking spaces as well. I'll see a parking lot with dozens of these spaces almost chronically unused, but since the ADA requires a certain (arbitrary) number of handicapped spots, businesses are forced to build an excess capacity of these spots despite many of them sitting unused, except occasionally by the Jaguar owner who is friends with a doctor.

A strange thing is that you have handicapped parking requirements yet the NYC subway is still not even close to being Accessible for those in wheelchairs. A suburban Target is required to have something like 90 handicapped spaces (obviously I'm exaggerating,) but the NYC subway still has huge swatches of stations that are accessible only by stairs. How NYC gets away with this is beyond me -- they can force businesses to bend over backwards to accommodate the disabled, but they themselves don't do much of anything to improve the public transportation situation for the disabled. (or even moms with strollers and kids.)

If anyone wants to know why public transportation isn't a bigger thing for families -- it's because going to a grocery store with a kid(s) in a stroller via the subway is a nightmare. -- not even talking about carrying your purchases home. Buying a weeks worth of groceries and then carrying all that home on a crowded bus or train with a kid in tow? No thanks.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#217

Post by verbify »

closeparen wrote: post #152
JDDunn9 wrote: post #98

This topic is discussed at length in the book, "Green Metropolis". It's part of a bigger issue of always putting cars first. You can't build a large building without first doing a traffic study. If you bring too much traffic, you can't build it. Never mind that traffic is about the only cost in America that you can increase to make public transportation more appealing. Generally U.S. building codes include a maximum…

I propose a fundamental principle that should be obvious, but apparently isn't. Public policy should aim to improve average quality of life in the short, medium, and long terms. We live in low-population-density areas because we get more, higher quality housing for less money, shorter lines, less crowded public places. We drive instead of taking transit because we get where we're going faster and more comfortably, si…

> You can already make these tradeoffs for yourself by moving to SF or Manhattan, which is generally ill-advised unless you make so much that the astronomical housing costs don't hurt too badly.

The shoe is on the other foot. The reason why rent is so high in these places is because there's a lot of demand to live there - people do find it desirable.

If more cities were built like SF or Manhattan (i.e. there was more supply) then it would be more affordable to more people.

The reason these places should be built is because people clearly like it. That's the advantage.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#218

Post by lorenzhs »

christianmann wrote: post #112
CalChris wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that's the basis of a comparison. Cost of cash vs cost of credit cards over the economy. I can't resist an aside. A buddy of mine was in a well known cash business. You can imagine. Anyways, hanging out with him, we'd be driving around and he'd need gas. He'd pull out 2 or 3 $20s, hand them to the attendant pump gas and go. Some gas stations gave a cash discount. It seemed to me that credit cards were supposed to…

> It seemed to me that credit cards were supposed to be fast and convenient, but if you're choreographed for cash, it ain't so. This is very apparent in (many parts of) Europe. Cash is so much faster there than in America, for a few reasons. The primary cause, I think, is the fact that the prices are generally round numbers, with tax included. This means that you can, in most cases, pay with a small number of coins o…

Euro notes also have different colours and sizes, making it much easier to get the correct ones right away. I find Euro coins more useful, too (highest commonly used denomination is 2€ vs 25¢). I'm annoyed by the 1 and 2 cent coins, though, and am in favour of abolishing them. They only clog wallets.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#219

Post by Decade »

closeparen wrote: post #156
JDDunn9 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, we are seeing a return towards urbanisation globally, which is a positive trends, since it's a vital component for curbing global warming. Residents of NYC use 1/3 as much electricity as their suburban counterparts, use a tiny fraction of the carbon emissions on transportation, and produce less garbage. All without convincing New Yorkers to recycle or drive electric cars. Environmental responsibility is bak…

Residents of NYC pay $3000/mo for 1-bedroom apartments, while their suburban counterparts pay $1000/mo for 3-bedroom houses. You could buy quite a few solar panels and lease several electric cars for less than it would take to move to NYC.

The high prices are an artifact of misguided past policies, defended by NIMBYs, to encourage suburban sprawl.

Some increase in per-square-foot prices are natural and expected, just due to right-sizing the environmental costs and benefits, but the very high prices are insane and fixable.

http://www.sfyimby.org

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#220

Post by lorenzhs »

detaro wrote: post #180
Symbiote wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't German stores accept debit cards? The cost is much lower on a debit card transaction.

Yes, debit cards are more widely accepted than credit cards, but many places take neither. Not just stores, bars and restaurants as well.

It's quite uncommon for stores not to accept debit cards in my experience, but next to nobody pays by card in bars and restaurants.
Post reply on HN