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Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

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Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#121

Post by zozbot234 »

treis wrote: post #105
godot wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 buss…

You're paying either way - the time you'd otherwise waste on finding a parking spot has a direct value, which makes 'free' parking even more costly than paid-for parking.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#122

Post by suyjuris »

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…

> Given the mix-use urban buildings I've encountered recently [...] I don't see how removing off-street parking requirements would address anything.

It would allow the developer to choose the appropriate amount of parking spaces for their building, instead of being forced to follow the requirements resulting from central planning by the city administrators.

They cannot simply rely on on-street parking instead, since (per the second bullet point) the prices would for those parking spaces would increase dramatically, providing the developer with a competitive disadvantage.

I could see this working out perfectly fine for businesses who compete for customers, as those will likely be very sensitive to the cost of a parking space. However, for buildings where people do not have a choice of whether to travel there, this seems more problematic. Imagine e.g. a courthouse – missing parking spaces would just impose a negative externality on the unfortunate “customers”. I guess the question is in which category office buildings and residential areas fall into, arguments could be made either way.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#123

Post by tzs »

ars wrote: post #39
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 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 So basically you don't want me to go there. Ok, I won't. I'll take my business somewhere else. I personally never shop at small local stores in my area because of lack of parking. I go to the huge stores 10 minutes away that have parking lots.

He was specifically talking about street parking.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#124

Post by donjoe »

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.

Well, this is exactly the opposite to an urban environment - this is urban sprawl.

Is it better to construct and maintain 75 miles of roads (and all the other infrastructure) for a couple of hundred folks?

I highly recommend this video on the finances around urban sprawl and their long term consequences:

https://youtu.be/XfQUOHlAocY

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#125

Post by Symmetry »

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…)

Why do that when you could send it somewhere where parking is cheap? The behind anti-cruising laws is to prevent cars from jamming up popular locations, if you send it somewhere other than your destination block then the law is working.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#126

Post by analog31 »

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…

The university near my house uses a parking app that requires all sorts of permissions to install. So I think there needs to be a hard limit with teeth (e.g., auditing and stiff penalties) on collection and storage of personal data.

Another idea is some kind of open API standard, where you can use the app of your choice in a particular locale, rather than being locked to a particular vendor. Then the apps can compete on which one has the best user experience, privacy, and so forth.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#127

Post by hardolaf »

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…

> 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 people have jobs all over the metro area; to live here, take a job anywhere but the center of the city, and rely on public transit, you'd have to commute downtown and then back out, adding 45-90 minutes to your commute each way. Even if you don't drive every day, most people still need cars. Taking one of the few existing affordable apartments here essentially requires you to kick in several hundred dollars extra per month for a parking spot somewhere else in the area.

This is more of a problem with our lackluster transit network than a problem requiring cars. If we just stopped investing into car infrastructure and instead focused on build new train lines to increase interconnectivity and updated our current train lines to run at least 80-100 MPH in the city, you'd be singing a different tune.

I'm personally of the opinion that Chicago itself should have a massive congestion fee for the entire Central Business District and that the parking taxes should be ramped up massively both inside the district and anywhere in the city with a population density of 20,000 people/sq. mi. or higher even without increasing our transit capacity. That system should include an exemption for people with disability tags or placards; delivery vehicles performing a delivery to the area; and registered and taxed taxi and livery service vehicles. Currently, it's a $6/exit tax on parking structures in the Central Business District. I see no reason why that shouldn't be $20/exit or even $50/exit to truly discourage individual passenger vehicles there.

Now, where you live, you're well below that 20,000 people/sq. mi. metric and not even in the city. So no need to get extreme on modifications. But, if we invested more in high-speed, highly inter-connected transit, you would not need a car.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#128

Post by davidw »

beaconstudios wrote: post #97
zip1234 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoning means someone that owns a property cannot do with it as they see fit. How does allowing individual people to make their own decisions about their land have anything to do with forcing people into high density?

Zoning is good. It came about because industrialists were building factories next to people's houses and they were dying of pollutant inhalation. You need rules for what kind of buildings can go together, but the historic mistake (intentional or not) was to zone retail away from housing and force everybody to drive to get to anything that isn't a single family home.

I don't want to live in 'libertopia', where there are no rules at all, but zoning always had a component of keeping 'those people' away from 'nice neighborhoods'. In the city I live in, right now there's a group fighting to keep duplexes out of their wealthy neighborhood. That has nothing to do with legitimate concerns about truly noxious smells or noises. And, ironically, the whole town grew up around a smelly, noisy, river clogging mill.

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#129

Post by Symbiote »

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…

> The Tysons development in Northern Virginia is an example of this hell

That's insane, and even more that when I searched for it it's being marketed as "liveable".

Google Maps shows business names, but flip to Open Street Map [1] and two things stand out: motorways and car parks.

> also near a metro ... most everyone else who visits must have [a car]

Um... the metro?

But you're clearly right. To get from Tysons Corner metro into the mall you must climb stairs, cross an 8+-lane highway in a tube, then another road, then cross a plaza. They didn't think of connecting that tube straight into the mall building, or connecting it to the opposite end of the platforms.

Outside North America, the parking garages for a mall like this would be below (sometimes above) the shops and the mall would be oriented to have a very short, covered walkway connection to the metro, and if possible the station would be in the middle of the mall.

There would not be 21 road lanes to the east, 10 to the north, 9 to the west and 4 to the south.

> dystopian future

Looking on Wikipedia, I'm amazed at how recently much of this was constructed.

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/38.9224/-77.2233 (shows railways better).

Re: Charge, Baby, Charge for Parking

#130

Post by alkonaut »

criddell wrote: post #27
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…

If parking gets too expensive, I can imagine self-driving cars circling the block until the owner is ready to go.

Better yet, with some planning it could go quite far to a place with ample parking (or even back home) to wait. Then come pick me up.
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