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LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

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121–130 of 174 posts

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#121
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this would be putting the cart before the horse in the US. Failing to put parking in a place with poor walkability and terrible public transportation doesn't seem like it would encourage much of anything.

Not in DTLA. There's plenty of public transit options that exist and more being built, so it seems like the right time to stop building new buildings with tons of parking. I live in Santa Monica and most people I know making a commute between Santa Monica and DTLA are already doing so carless.

I agree with this comment, I also live in Los Angeles and there is tons of transportation options ranging from bus to light rail to Uber to lyft.

We should be pushing people to get rid of their cars instead of keeping them.

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s a crazy idea: let the property owner and developer decide the correct amount of parking to provide. And the size of the apartments. And the number of floors to build. The regulations here should be based around things like structural integrity, egress, and safety. Not views, not density, not what size of apartment is “too big” or “too small.” All of those are things the market can sort out.

I am guessing that you are aligned political to the ideological view of the smallest possible government and regulations. Unfortunately, developers and property owners will care nothing for the wider community. Firstly, at what point would you end regulations? Perhaps zoning and planning permission frameworks are too much? Let the market decide. Electrical, again that really is too much regulation, and we should let…

> Finally, I would add that that charging 5p for disposable plastic shopping bags has had a hugely positive effect on curtailing the use of single use plastic bags.

Although it's increased purchases of garbage bags, which use more plastic in the end because they're thicker.

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#123
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're willing to externalize the costs of making mass-SOV transportation possible, to the advancement of personal gain, yes, “the market” will push people toward taking advantage of that discounted resource. Until there is established some sort of per-use fee for ROW use that offsets those externalities, the market pricing is already critically warped and cannot be used as an oracle for what people are willing…

Do cyclists pay for their road usage? I paid over $600 for my California car registration and I pay significant gasoline taxes. I also pay significant income taxes. And bridge tolls. The taxes and fees that I directly pay for my car (registration and gas taxes) aren’t being used 100% for my road usage. That money is being used for bike lanes I never use or buses I never ride. So I am paying for someone else’s “extern…

> Do cyclists pay for their road usage?

A better question is: do automobile users? And the answer is: no. Roads are subsidized: https://taxfoundation.org/gasoline-taxes-and-user-fees-pay-o...

> when I need to get from Mountain View to the Hayward Airport at 4:30am

Well it sounds like the right tool for that job. But that doesn't mean it's the right tool for every job or even most of them.

> Going from Palo Alto to Livermore on public transport is practically impossible

That's a political choice that those places made. It can be fixed if there's the will to do so.

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am guessing that you are aligned political to the ideological view of the smallest possible government and regulations. Unfortunately, developers and property owners will care nothing for the wider community. Firstly, at what point would you end regulations? Perhaps zoning and planning permission frameworks are too much? Let the market decide. Electrical, again that really is too much regulation, and we should let…

> Finally, I would add that that charging 5p for disposable plastic shopping bags has had a hugely positive effect on curtailing the use of single use plastic bags. Although it's increased purchases of garbage bags, which use more plastic in the end because they're thicker.

I’m under the impression plastic bag bans and use taxes are intended to reduce plastics waste in the environment, not resource consumption.

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#125
post #29
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Removing parking spaces puts more cars on the road -- circling for spots and parking illegally in traffic lanes. If you want faster buses, evict the cars from the bus travel lanes.

Yeah, except no. This is just one of those tropes that motorists use to force cities to subsidize them. Every study on this topic has conclusively shown that parking causes traffic. The construction of parking precedes the worsening of traffic, the amount of parking built is proportional to the amount of traffic observed, and the reverse process is also observed to correct the problem: removing parking alleviates tra…

Hey, do you have anything handy to support this? I can totally do my own research if it's hard for you to recall your sources. Just hoping for a quick lead or two. If you roughly remember the title of the papers or the names of authors or the regions studied, anything at all, it'll help me search faster and I'd be mega grateful.

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#127

Where I live (not in the US) we have parking maximums, not minimums. A new office development will not get planning approval if it has more than 2 parking spaces per 3 employees (based on some obscure measurement of building capacity). This is to reduce congestion and encourage more environmentally friendly methods of transportation.

In London, councils (and TfL, who are responsible for transport and roads) will often fight against developers who want to include excessive parking, or expand existing parking. Getting planning permission for new developments is significantly easier if they're car-free.

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#128
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're willing to externalize the costs of making mass-SOV transportation possible, to the advancement of personal gain, yes, “the market” will push people toward taking advantage of that discounted resource. Until there is established some sort of per-use fee for ROW use that offsets those externalities, the market pricing is already critically warped and cannot be used as an oracle for what people are willing…

Do cyclists pay for their road usage? I paid over $600 for my California car registration and I pay significant gasoline taxes. I also pay significant income taxes. And bridge tolls. The taxes and fees that I directly pay for my car (registration and gas taxes) aren’t being used 100% for my road usage. That money is being used for bike lanes I never use or buses I never ride. So I am paying for someone else’s “extern…

> Putting a tram or high frequency buses in southern France for instance would be ridiculous outside of Marseille perhaps.

Yeah, there's no trams in southern France. Except for in Bordeaux, Clermont-Ferrand, Grenoble, Lyon, Marseille, Montpellier, Nice, Saint-Étienne, and Toulouse. And there are plans for trams in Nîmes and Avignon.

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#129
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're willing to externalize the costs of making mass-SOV transportation possible, to the advancement of personal gain, yes, “the market” will push people toward taking advantage of that discounted resource. Until there is established some sort of per-use fee for ROW use that offsets those externalities, the market pricing is already critically warped and cannot be used as an oracle for what people are willing…

Do cyclists pay for their road usage? I paid over $600 for my California car registration and I pay significant gasoline taxes. I also pay significant income taxes. And bridge tolls. The taxes and fees that I directly pay for my car (registration and gas taxes) aren’t being used 100% for my road usage. That money is being used for bike lanes I never use or buses I never ride. So I am paying for someone else’s “extern…

Perhaps if the "anti-car" argument is framed more precisely, you'll see that it's entirely consistent with using a car for those 4:30 am trips to the airport. What all these efforts seek to minimize is not all car travel for all people, but rather routine car travel for many/most people. That includes, first and foremost, daily work commutes, because that's what dictates road capacity necessary to make traffic jams manageable, so that's the kind of car travel that's a) most expensive for society b) leads to cityscapes that are uncomfortable or actively hostile for pedestrians and cyclists. The way to do that is by giving them a viable alternative, not merely inconveniencing them by, say, neglecting highways and calling it a day. A city where commutes by public transit are a viable option* for, say, 3/4 of the population is a city where the other 1/4 has fewer traffic jams to contend with, and where that same 3/4 can make an economically rational decision to spend $150 a month on Uber instead of owning a car, which will cover airport trips, grocery trips, etc.

Re: LA getting serious about lifting parking requirements in downtown

#130
post #31
post #27

Lost in this can be the specifics of "parking". Put in lots of 3-5 minute zones for ride hailing, add 10-15 minute spots for deliveries. Make sure there are enforced truck parking only for restaurant and business deliveries. Car share only parking. Scooter and bike parking. etc. And yes, if I want full time parking for my car I will pay for it. It's not that expensive if that's my priority. These are generally the ki…

1 shared car is shown to replace between 7 and 20 private cars in various deployments. Building new housing with dedicated car-share parking is a great way to go.

Hmm...source?
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