351–360 of 455 posts
Parking shouldn't be free. If it's to entice customers at a store/shopping mall, they can be provided an hour of parking for every x dollars spent. Under-utilised parking spots should be leased or sold. (They sell for 80-300k where I live)
Given the choice between a mall with paid parking and a mall with free parking, I'm picking the mall with free parking. Even if there's some sort of validation system if you buy something, dealing with the whole ticketing system on entry and exit is annoying, and in the circumstances where I don't end up buying anything I have to deal with paying for the parking. It's much less of a hassle to just avoid all that.
Meh. You also pay for the cost of public parks even if you never use them. You pay for the cost of government elementary schools even if you homeschool your kids. etc. Now, I'm an anarchocapitalist and would love to see all of these costs unbundled, so that we each pay only for what we use. ...but the other 99.9% of folks in our society think that it is reasonable to have one-size-fits-all solutions, where a single b…
> You pay for the cost of government elementary schools even if you homeschool your kids and you receive the benefit of living in a society where most people have a minimum level of education. You can then hire these people and not have to pay to teach them how to read. > You also pay for the cost of public parks even if you never use them Maybe you personally somehow never enjoy seeing nature, I don't know. You stil…
You still enjoy the benefit of a society where people get to choose their transportation and more be productive, rather than everyone living in a bleak grey dystopian city where everyone is riding the bus and can't control when or where they want to travel.
I used to believe this for a long time, but now I dont. Here's why: If there was a Walmart that had zero parking lots, only those without cars would do business with that Walmart. That'd probably be 1/10th or 1/100th the revenue compared to that of a Walmart with a parking lot. Its because people with cars come in and purchase more and larger stuff, revenue goes up. The increased revenue justifies the cost of buildin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For many people, that meander will save them more money than they will earn in any other 10 minute slot of the day. And sitting in a robocab is smartphone media consumption time (or time for a printed newspaper, if you're a Vicky), it's not terribly hard to tolerate minutes that way. A well designed (and sufficiently dense in usage) shared autonomous car system could also support usage patterns a lot more dynamic tha…
> if you're a Vicky What does that mean? Like someone from the victorian age? I think they are all dead.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many of the benefits you listed are good examples of how people are actually pretty bad at predicting what will make them happier. We have a lot of data on the subject. - People think that living in a larger home will make them happier than a shorter commute. Cohort studies show the opposite is true. We adapt most quickly to things (good/bad) that stay the same (like the size of your house), and poorly to things that…
> We know people in cities are, on average, happier and healthier. I've lived in both and had a happy, healthy life in both. When I was young, the city was definitely where I wanted to be. I loved the energy and the density. I was close to my friends and because of easy transportation, could get to them anytime I want. Almost thirty years later, I'm now living in the 'burbs and I never want to leave. It's quiet and I…
Most of the commenters on this thread don't appear to have lived in a country with the opposite problem. Consider what happens when development and car ownership expands in a country without adequate government parking mandates. You routinely find at least two road lanes blocked by parked traffic because buildings don't have adequate parking. This leads to very slow bumper to bumper traffic (try Bangalore, Mumbai, Ca…
You don't even need to live in another country to see that problem. That happens right here in the USA. In Michigan, lots of new buildings are exempt from parking minimums, as part of pretend initiatives to be "transit-oriented". But there's no actual public transit, everyone still has to drive. So, for businesses/residents in these buildings, people now just park their cars anywhere Along both sides of streets? Cars…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but what compelling public interest is there in forcing subsidized parking? Other countries get by just fine with far less parking.
They aren't forcing subsidized parking. They're forcing the construction of parking lots and structures. As for public interest. The idea is that without regulation, new apartments and condos would choose not build parking pushing their residents to park on the street. This causes congestion (cars circling trying to find parking) and makes going to these areas less pleasant. And I'm sure some would say these regulati…
The part where they're required to build these lots virtually always results in subsidized parking. Yes, technically you could charge for spots, and then they wouldn't be subsidized, but in practice that's so much effort that it's much easier to just let the spots be free. For most businesses, running a paid parking scheme involves too much overhead to be worth it.
> This causes congestion (cars circling trying to find parking) and makes going to these areas less pleasant.
Then the city can charge; since they'd be doing it in many areas (and many cities already charge for this anyway in a section of their core), it's much less of a burden for them to do it than for individual businesses.
> How do these other countries deal with the lack of parking?
In Tokyo, you can't buy/register a car unless you can prove you have an off-street space.
> I think simply suggesting better public transportation and redesigned cities does not solve problems that people are having right now.
Well yeah, actually implementing those things is what's important.
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.
Or you could move to a city with more reasonable housing costs, like Minneapolis where 2br apartments <$2k/mo.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
enacting the regulations has no direct cost to the public. Public housing is a line item on the government budget. Some towns purposely dont want to vary from the public standard b/c if something where to happen they would not have to justify them altering the standard.
How could that possibly be the case? Suppose the regulation states every new unit needs 10 parking spots--now that single unit must carry the cost of those additional parking spots.