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Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

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Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#101

Post by dpark »

tptacek wrote: post #60
jurassic wrote: post #24

I think non-residential street parking, paid or not, should probably be illegal. Or at least eye-wateringly expensive and limited to a few minutes at a time (e.g. food pickups). I say this as someone who drives regularly. The lack of visibility street parking creates in densely developed areas is a major safety hazard for all. Cyclists can get doored, drivers have diminished environmental awareness of things such as…

Residential bans on overnight on-street parking are essentially a tool for preventing new affordable housing from being built. It doesn't so much work against housing density as foreclose on it. I live in one of two Chicago suburbs notable for excellent connectivity to Chicago's transit fabric (we're on both the Blue and the Green CTA train lines, a major regional commuter rail route, and a zillion bus routes). But p…

> What we should be doing is eliminating all off-street parking requirements […] and then simply charging for convenient on-street parking

Where does all this on-street parking come from? It does not compute that it’s impossible to build sufficient parking on the lot, but there is an abundance on the street. To the extent there is an abundance of street parking, this almost certainly means that previous development created sufficient off street parking for their residents.

Nor does it makes sense to encourage developers to dump the cost of building those spaces onto the city. Allowing developers to build without spaces means the rest of the neighborhood pays the cost for the parking congestion. As do the residents who now don’t have a legal parking space.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#102

Post by jurassic »

decafninja wrote: post #57
jurassic wrote: post #24

I think non-residential street parking, paid or not, should probably be illegal. Or at least eye-wateringly expensive and limited to a few minutes at a time (e.g. food pickups). I say this as someone who drives regularly. The lack of visibility street parking creates in densely developed areas is a major safety hazard for all. Cyclists can get doored, drivers have diminished environmental awareness of things such as…

I'm wondering if there are cultural practices in play regarding your mention of SFH being used as "overcrowded communal living situations". For example, it's not uncommon in Asia to find multiple generations living in the same household. AFAIK California has a lot of Asians. While not in California, the town my parents live in has had an influx of Chinese immigrants the past decade or so. This has resulted in situati…

Thansk for the comment. I have no problem with multi-generational living. I'm not Asian but I lived with my in-laws for a few years while we were saving up to buy a home and it was great. The problem I have is when there are more people in a given housing unit than it was designed to accommodate and so you make up for that lack by consuming something in the commons, specifically street parking.

The pattern I saw in the Bay Area was not so much multi-generational families as groups of multiple unrelated working adults moving into a single-family home together as roommates, each adult individual having their own car and quickly exceeding the 2 spaces provided by a typical Bay Area driveway. Maybe they could park more in the driveway but nobody wants to block in other vehicles so they park in the street for every car beyond 2. Pretty soon the neighborhood is fully parked up.

This is unrelated, but there was also a guy in my Palo Alto neighborhood who hoarded junk cars. He had them parked in his garage, his driveway, yard, and when he ran out of space he started parking them all up and down the street near his house in front of neighbors houses. It was a real nuisance and the police never did anything about it that I could see. Behavior like that shows a real lack of respect for the commons.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#103

Post by kspacewalk2 »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #88
SECProto wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Send the car on an errand and have it come back, or even send it “home” and summon it later Now imagine what this will do to rush hour traffic - There would be twice as many vehicle trips for the same number of people. Road tolls (particularly on unoccupied cars) would be needed as part of any solution, which everyone loves even more than parking fees.

"Road tolls (particularly on unoccupied cars)" Why should the number of occupants affect the amount of the toll?

To disincentivize cars driving around empty.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#104

Post by celtain »

jurassic wrote: post #24

I think non-residential street parking, paid or not, should probably be illegal. Or at least eye-wateringly expensive and limited to a few minutes at a time (e.g. food pickups). I say this as someone who drives regularly. The lack of visibility street parking creates in densely developed areas is a major safety hazard for all. Cyclists can get doored, drivers have diminished environmental awareness of things such as…

I generally prefer to walk by a lane of parked cars than walk so close to a lane of moving car traffic.

An extra-wide sidewalk with trees and other decoration or a well-protected bike lane can provide a similar benefit, but parking isn't the worst option.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#105

Post by treis »

godot wrote: post #26
emptybits wrote: post #9

> Rational people quickly become emotional about parking ... Thinking about parking seems to take place in the reptilian cortex, the most primitive part of the brain responsible for snap judgments about urgent fight-or-flight issues, such as how to avoid being eaten. Lol. A bit melodramatic, but sure. Charge for it, yes, but give motorists a civilized experience when possible. Some of the emotion and impatience and a…

I feel like that's not all of it; there is a certain expectation for parking to be free from many people and I feel like it's because the demand for parking can be drastically different in geographically nearby locations. For example, in the bay area, parking in SF is difficult to say the least and usually in paid garages. But go less than 30 miles to east bay (far east or south east bay, not Oakland or Berkeley), pa…

Paying for parking changes the calculus of life. It makes everything significantly more expensive and really puts a damper on membership type things.

Like we've got a membership to the children's museum. But parking is ~$15 a time so we go far less frequently than we otherwise would.

Economic arguments about freeloading are good and something I theoretically agree with. But in practice when the other option is 2 busses & 45 minutes you end up not going to as many places as you otherwise would.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#107

Post by ctdonath »

beaconstudios wrote: post #73
nostromo wrote: post #64

People supporting "new urbanism" -- a camp I was in until pretty recently -- should come look around downtown Seattle and see how it's working out. Our downtown is a grim wasteland. Shoppers, workers and residents have voted with their feet -- and they voted to avoid downtown. And it's not just Covid. The suburbs are booming. Walkable areas (most with free parking) in the 'burbs have new stores opening and have crowd…

Isn't that just because people live in the suburbs? I think your example proves the opposite point to the one you're making - people would rather live in walkable mixed developments than have their destinations zoned away from their accommodation.

“Walkable” doesn’t give much room for options. 30 minutes walking covers far less area than 30 minutes driving.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#108

Post by jacobmartin »

I live outside Boston just barely out where walking to the subway is infeasible (30min walk). But, it's only $2 or $7 to park at the T station and take the train in. This is a win-win for me, if I feel the desire/need to go into Boston. I don't have to worry about paying exorbitantly for a parking garage (or finding a parallel parking space and then parallel parking), and it isn't terribly inconvenient, even with a 2-year-old.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#109

Post by ghaff »

donatj wrote: post #91
donjoe wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess we have to ask ourselves a different question if we truly want to create a sustainable urban environment: Why can grandparents only visit by car? Why are there no (better) alternatives?

Because when you live 75 miles from the nearest major city, in a township of a couple hundred, a bus line or really any sort of infrastructure for that matter isn't practical? I think a lot of people forget how sparse much of the country really is.

Or to come into a city for an evening event. I'm actually quite close to commuter rail to the 40 mile away large city. Which I take if I'm going in 9-5 but it's completely impractical to use for going in for dinner and a show.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#110

Post by cinntaile »

forty wrote: post #61
criddell wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we need a lot of investment in transportation alternatives. Some small changes can have a pretty minimal investment. The city of Austin lets motorcycles use street parking for free.

I live in the Paris, France area, and I think most people here that are not themselves driving such things are hoping that motorized two wheel vehicle gets outlawed. I'm not sure why, but people driving those seem to completely ignore driving laws (red lights, stop sign, lanes, etc) which makes them very dangerous and annoying. Not to mention the noise (for those which are not electric)

It would be nice to see them outlawed in city centres but for a completely different reason. Pollution. Those 2-stroke engines pollute a lot more than cars nowadays and with the rise in food delivery services these vehicles have been on the rise. Likely undoing the effects of banning old cars from city centres.
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