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Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

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Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#111

Post by decafninja »

criddell wrote: post #85
forty wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

In Austin, motorcycles generally follow the same rules as cars. The two wheeled vehicles that seem to annoy most people are bicycles and for the reasons you state (except noise).

I think you'll find this true in most places, at least in the US.

The main differentiating factor is probably the consequences - or lack of.

Disobey traffic laws and get caught in a car or motorcycle - you face consequences that can range from harsh to at least significantly annoying enough that you'd rather not.

Do the same in a bike, and most people don't care beyond giving you the finger or a nasty look. Even cops don't care more often than not.

True - you don't have a cage of steel surrounding you like in a car so you also risk being killed or maimed, but I've found most cyclists also have a sense of invincibility until they actually get hurt. I am guilty of this myself.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#112

Post by lkasdjfb09u »

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…

The opposite is true in NYC. Do you have public transit?

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#113

Post by celtain »

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.

I think you overestimate the share of Americans who live in rural communities. If the only people driving into developed areas were coming from that far afield, managing traffic and parking would be trivial problems.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#114

Post by beaconstudios »

ctdonath wrote: post #107
beaconstudios wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have you ever lived or travelled to a walkable city? You'd be surprised how much you can fit into a walkable area. In the UK basically all the cities are walkable just due to historical inertia; you can fit plenty of city into walkable areas. For bigger cities like London there's the underground system to travel further out.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#115

Post by rahimnathwani »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #103
rahimnathwani wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

To disincentivize cars driving around empty.

A toll on all cars (not just empty cars) would already disincentivize driving around empty.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#116

Post by dml2135 »

dpark wrote: post #50
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…

> I don't see how removing off-street parking requirements would address anything. It doesn’t. It allows developers to dump the problem on public streets. Seattle does this stuff now. 42 unit buildings with 5 parking spots. This is great for developers. They get to build more units and let Seattle deal with the additional parking pressure. It’s car hostile, which fine, but then you need to provide alternatives to the…

I don’t understand why this is the developer’s responsibility. People choosing this apartment building will be aware of their parking options and can plan accordingly.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#117

Post by HWR_14 »

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.

And the reason they drive all the way into downtown and crowd up the streets as opposed to the nearest major train stop (with far cheaper lad for parking) is?

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#118

Post by HWR_14 »

ghaff wrote: post #109
donatj wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why is it impractical for dinner and a show?

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#119

Post by kspacewalk2 »

sokoloff wrote: post #43
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passing an enforceable law against that will be a lot easier, since the companies responsible for self-driving car algorithms can be bashed upside the head with it.

Send the car on an errand and have it come back, or even send it “home” and summon it later. (I’m deeply skeptical that we’ll have level 5 self-driving cars in my lifetime, but if we do, we won’t need to pay $50 in today’s money to park anywhere…)

Agreed on the likelihood of having ubiquitous level 5 self-driving cars in my lifetime as well (I'm in my mid-30s). But I'm also very skeptical about the desirability of this kind of a transformation, and the desirability of (re-)building cities around it. Your examples are two of infinitely many that illustrate how self-driven or not, cars fuck things up.

In short, many people agree that the human-driven, gasoline-powered car is the problem. But far too many zero in on the adjectives, implying that solving the "human-driven" part will solve our cities' problems (love the traffic-light-free intersection visualizations, totally want to be a pedestrian trying to live next to those). Then there are people pretending electric cars are more than just marginally better for the environment when the full life cycle of both the energy required to power them and the materials that go into them is considered.

Stop trying to fix the car. The car is the problem. Specifically, at a certain point (you can quantify it as certain population density, or population size) there are too many of them to rely on them for transportation of most people and to have liveable cities. In North America, we sacrificed the liveability of cities to keep the car, in Europe they're sacrificing the car for liveability. There's not too much more to it than that.

Electric self-driving cars change this a bit, but not enough to matter. It's basically the same as above.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#120

Post by decafninja »

jurassic wrote: post #102
decafninja wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

That's an interesting observation! I've noticed from my Instagram feeds that there is a trend of "hackerspace" homes where multiple SWE/tech people will live in a SFH dormitory style. I reckon this might be peculiar to the SFBA and the tech scene?
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