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Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

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Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#11

Post by jimbob45 »

chizhik-pyzhik wrote: post #7
bognition wrote: post #3

I can't help but think that many of our economic, social, and environmental issues stem from a culture of cars. Cars push out urban sprawl weakening economies of scale, cars take up a massive amount of expensive real-estate (roads and parking), cars produce a tremendous amount of pollution in addition the environmental impacts of the previous two points. At least in the US, I do not see a path forwards tho. The house…

The path forward is zoning changes. Make it legal to build small apartments in a neighborhood, make it legal to run a corner shop, etc. We can build walkable environments in suburban hellscapes if we tweak the laws.

I like this framing of the zoning issue much more than “build build build on every scrap of land you can get your hands on”.

Ownership of land is really important for ensuring everyone in America is literally bought into the American Dream. Until you’re ready to buy a house, I feel no compunction forcing you into high-density housing in the meantime (paired with greatly increasing low-income mortgage assistance).

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#12

Post by davidw »

burlesona wrote: post #5

If this topic interests you, Strong Towns is a national non-profit working on parking reform as one of its top issues. The movement is growing, and there's a lot you can do to support it! Some relevant content: 1. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/11/20/the-many-cost... 2. https://www.strongtowns.org/parking

They are great! Other groups worth looking at:

* https://yimbyaction.org/2021/

* https://parkingreform.org/

It's possible to make progress: here in Bend, Oregon a recent code update removed some parking requirements for "middle housing"!

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#13

Post by davidw »

newaccount2021 wrote: post #6

remove or charge for parking and people park on the street...no one is giving up their cars, all of the social engineering just ends up creating more problems in many Bay Area communities you will see cars as tightly aligned on both sides of residential streets as is physically possible...homeowners don't even have room to put out trash bins without blocking their own drives. and why? because apartment complexes and…

> all of the social engineering

Do you mean forcing, by law, business and homebuilders to provision parking?

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#14

Post by newaccount2021 »

davidw wrote: post #13
newaccount2021 wrote: post #6

remove or charge for parking and people park on the street...no one is giving up their cars, all of the social engineering just ends up creating more problems in many Bay Area communities you will see cars as tightly aligned on both sides of residential streets as is physically possible...homeowners don't even have room to put out trash bins without blocking their own drives. and why? because apartment complexes and…

> all of the social engineering Do you mean forcing, by law, business and homebuilders to provision parking?

no, I mean the laws that mandate that they can only build a maximum of 80% of parking needed

these laws aren't new...when Yahoo's "new" campus was built in 1999, only 8 parking spots per 10 employees were allowed to "encourage mass transit use" (lol)...so people just wasted hours driving around aimlessly

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#15

Post by 0_____0 »

jimbob45 wrote: post #11
chizhik-pyzhik wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The path forward is zoning changes. Make it legal to build small apartments in a neighborhood, make it legal to run a corner shop, etc. We can build walkable environments in suburban hellscapes if we tweak the laws.

I like this framing of the zoning issue much more than “build build build on every scrap of land you can get your hands on”. Ownership of land is really important for ensuring everyone in America is literally bought into the American Dream. Until you’re ready to buy a house, I feel no compunction forcing you into high-density housing in the meantime (paired with greatly increasing low-income mortgage assistance).

Where I live, lots of people own a unit in a multi-family house as either a condo or a co-op. Coming from California, I thought of housing as always being a SFH on .25ac or something like that, but for what you get in terms of quality of life, I would be very happy to own a co-op in a triple-decker in my neighborhood.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#16

Post by chizhik-pyzhik »

newaccount2021 wrote: post #6

remove or charge for parking and people park on the street...no one is giving up their cars, all of the social engineering just ends up creating more problems in many Bay Area communities you will see cars as tightly aligned on both sides of residential streets as is physically possible...homeowners don't even have room to put out trash bins without blocking their own drives. and why? because apartment complexes and…

> no one is giving up their cars

When you live in the downtown of a city, and parking at your apartment is $300/month, that's a strong incentive to give up your car

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#17

Post by davidw »

jimbob45 wrote: post #11
chizhik-pyzhik wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The path forward is zoning changes. Make it legal to build small apartments in a neighborhood, make it legal to run a corner shop, etc. We can build walkable environments in suburban hellscapes if we tweak the laws.

I like this framing of the zoning issue much more than “build build build on every scrap of land you can get your hands on”. Ownership of land is really important for ensuring everyone in America is literally bought into the American Dream. Until you’re ready to buy a house, I feel no compunction forcing you into high-density housing in the meantime (paired with greatly increasing low-income mortgage assistance).

You can own a home without owning the land. It's pretty common in denser parts of the world. I recall a wealthy family in Padova, Italy where I lived that had a flat on the 3rd floor of some building right in the historic downtown. It was both large and very nice.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#18

Post by devchix »

The core of this post is the linked article The Pseudoscience of Parking Requirements. The core of that article is three bullet points:

• Remove off-street parking requirements. Developers and businesses can then decide how many parking spaces to provide for their customers.

• Charge the right prices for on-street parking. The right prices are the lowest prices that will leave one or two open spaces on each block, so there will be no parking shortages. Prices will balance the demand and supply for on-street space.

• Spend the parking revenue to improve public services on the metered streets. If everybody sees their meter money at work, the new public services can make demand-based prices for on-street parking politically popular.

Given the mix-use urban buildings I've encountered recently, hotels from floor 1-5, offices from floor 6-10, condos up to the top (or something like that), street level shops, office space, I don't see how removing off-street parking requirements would address anything. If you have office workers you must allocate off-site parking space. You're still building for cars, cost of parking is subsidized by the employer or the business. The Tysons development in Northern Virginia is an example of this hell, it's attached to a giant mall and also near a metro (so there's commuter parking involved). I suppose the people who can afford this enclave will not need cars but most everyone else who visits must have one. Every time I go there I think I'm in a dystopian future where the swells live and work in shiny high towers and take futuristic transport to "the country" to take in the air and their children can pet goats. It's not a space for built for humans, at all, but I bet the architectural model looked great.

Point (2), you have to make charging for parking frictionless. There's another development in Northern Virginia called Reston Town Center, they switched from free parking to paid with an app and that caused in an unexpected furor that hasn't died down yet, I think renters are still suing the developers over that. People may be willing to pay cash but making them pay with an app, and a crappy app at that, took them over the edge. Still don't know why you just can't pay with a swipe. Also, payment systems are vulnerable to theft. People who had a choice of driving there or not, decided to not. It's mixed with condos so the people who live there, shop there, but then you've only made an enclave, have you solved anything?

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#19

Post by [deleted] »

newaccount2021 wrote: post #6

remove or charge for parking and people park on the street...no one is giving up their cars, all of the social engineering just ends up creating more problems in many Bay Area communities you will see cars as tightly aligned on both sides of residential streets as is physically possible...homeowners don't even have room to put out trash bins without blocking their own drives. and why? because apartment complexes and…

[deleted]

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#20

Post by [deleted] »

devchix wrote: post #18

The core of this post is the linked article The Pseudoscience of Parking Requirements . The core of that article is three bullet points: • Remove off-street parking requirements. Developers and businesses can then decide how many parking spaces to provide for their customers. • Charge the right prices for on-street parking. The right prices are the lowest prices that will leave one or two open spaces on each block, s…

[deleted]
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