11–20 of 683 posts
We couldn’t even park downtown since it appears you need to book it in advance and the trip was somewhat spontaneous. I just ended up pulling over (by a no stopping sign ha) on a quiet side street and setting the GPS back to Windsor.
I think you need to go one level deeper: People needing to move non-trivial distances for periodic tasks shapes everything. Cars, and thus car parking, come about because of this need. Even before cars existed, roads and parking (such as hitching posts and stables) still existed because people needed to move. And even bicycles (electric or not) need parking too. There are startups dedicated to creating automated bike…
This is not true. Every city in the US used to have a robust public transit system. No cars or parking lots needed. You can hitch 2 horses per car space, and 10-20 bikes in the same space.
Those pre-car public transit systems were bankrupted by artificially low fares, and because a small number of cars literally got in the way: https://www.vox.com/2015/5/7/8562007/streetcar-history-demis...
What else can be done? Universal lot sharing agreements, shared parking, and annulling reserved parking stipulations. Especially the later is a structural factor in the oversupply of parking. It's the parking equivalent of circuit-switching networks - which naturally results in the oversupply of circuits. Mutatis mutandis for all things parking. If one is to admit that these played a role in the oversupply of parking…
I think you need to go one level deeper: People needing to move non-trivial distances for periodic tasks shapes everything. Cars, and thus car parking, come about because of this need. Even before cars existed, roads and parking (such as hitching posts and stables) still existed because people needed to move. And even bicycles (electric or not) need parking too. There are startups dedicated to creating automated bike…
Why do I need to go to the mall? Because there is no retail zoning closer to my home.
Seems like parking is a side effect for people's preference for larger houses and yards. Convince people to live in smaller houses and share walls with their neighbors, and the parking situation would change dramatically.
Doing either of those things makes your standard of living worse.
What else can be done? Universal lot sharing agreements, shared parking, and annulling reserved parking stipulations. Especially the later is a structural factor in the oversupply of parking. It's the parking equivalent of circuit-switching networks - which naturally results in the oversupply of circuits. Mutatis mutandis for all things parking. If one is to admit that these played a role in the oversupply of parking…
What is this "oversupply of parking" you speak of? In every city I've ever been to, parking was very scarce and expensive.
What else can be done? Universal lot sharing agreements, shared parking, and annulling reserved parking stipulations. Especially the later is a structural factor in the oversupply of parking. It's the parking equivalent of circuit-switching networks - which naturally results in the oversupply of circuits. Mutatis mutandis for all things parking. If one is to admit that these played a role in the oversupply of parking…
What is this "oversupply of parking" you speak of? In every city I've ever been to, parking was very scarce and expensive.
And yes, parking is scare in cities, because cities use the space for more efficient purposes.
Come to the Netherlands. Sell your car. Buy a bike. A car is not really a status symbol here. Its more like a liability.
The Amsterdam metro was very comfortable though and I can’t wait to ride it again.