Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

vox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 683 posts

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#161

Post by commandlinefan »

falcolas wrote: post #6

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…

> People needing to move non-trivial distances for periodic tasks

Or being required to even if their job can be effectively done from home (and consists entirely of slack message and zoom calls with remote coworkers whether they pollute the planet driving into the office or not).

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#162

Post by chimeracoder »

mlyle wrote: post #127
dopidopHN wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paris is closing the already pretty closed downtown ( along the Seine ). Does that qualify as large metro area? What are the actual piece of reality that makes it impossible in US cities?

It's totally possible, but not as a step change. Heavy car traffic is a stable system that's actively unfriendly to pedestrian and bicycle uses. You need to slowly claw away space for bicycles and increase ridership; and then work to densify and intermix commercial and residential for things to work well. It takes decades, and the initial steps make things worse even if the new equilibrium is better.

> Heavy car traffic is a stable system that's actively unfriendly to pedestrian and bicycle uses. You need to slowly claw away space for bicycles and increase ridership; and then work to densify and intermix commercial and residential for things to work well. > > It takes decades, and the initial steps make things worse even if the new equilibrium is better.

Your point about the stable equilibrium is correct, but there's no reason it has to take decades. If you look at pictures of cities like Amsterdam, Paris, and Vienna from not long ago, you can see how much more pedestrian-friendly they were made, and much of those changes actually happened more or less overnight.

The actual changes are pretty easy to implement. Red tape slows it down, but that's a feature of our own invention, not an inherent limitation.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#163

Post by cscurmudgeon »

catgary wrote: post #121
UtopiaPunk wrote: post #30

There's an interesting interview with a designer of SimCity, where he discusses parking: Geoff Manaugh: While you were making those measurements of different real-world cities, did you discover any surprising patterns or spatial relationships Librande: Yes, definitely. I think the biggest one was the parking lots. When I started measuring out our local grocery store, which I don’t think of as being that big, I was bl…

I think anti-car activists would do great to mod SimCity to have realistic parking lots.

Why not go all the way to the source of the problem to make it realistic?

E.g., NIMBYism

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/democrats-blue-st...

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#164

Post by retzkek »

josephcsible wrote: post #71
CalRobert wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how do I walk in to a shop from this walkway?

By walking back down the ramp from it to the regular sidewalk. I just meant I want to add elevated walkways to cross streets with, not for them to replace sidewalks entirely.

I assume you mean for crossing busy roads and highways, not city streets? Certainly there are places for that, like Chicago's Lake Shore Drive. They're expensive and take a lot of space themselves, though, especially to meet accessibility requirements, and they can add considerable distance to the pedestrian's route.

Otherwise, what you're describing sounds like someone looked at this well-circulated cartoon and said "hey that's a great idea! Just raise the planks by 15 feet!" https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/18/7236471/cars-pedestria...

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#165

Post by amanaplanacanal »

davidw wrote: post #156
catgary wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think anti-car activists would do great to mod SimCity to have realistic parking lots.

I don't think many people are truly anti-car activists. Just that we need to redimension their absolute centrality to so many policies and budgets. I'm involved in pro-housing politics and it's just amazing how many people are like "well, ok, sure, people need a place to live and all, but let's think FIRST about where to store the automobiles. If that works out, then I guess we can build some housing". They don't say…

It’s mostly because of zoning. If you separate retail from offices from housing, you force people to have cars to get around. Which then requires large parking lots and wide roads to deal with all the cars, in a big feedback loop. Those who can’t drive (about a third of the population are too young, too old, or disabled) are just forced to make do. Not to mention how difficult it is for the poor. Owning a car is really expensive for those living on very little money.

I feel like fixing zoning would at least make possible fixing the rest.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#166

Post by 8note »

david2ndaccount wrote: post #132
Cockbrand wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments like this make me appreciate living in a city that has a pretty comprehensive public transport coverage, and where bicycling is at least tolerable. The city you describe seems to be only usable by car.

Many cities in the US are only usable by car. You can’t just leap from a car-based city to a non-car-based city, you have to provide transitionary options (also even car-optional cities still have parking garages).

What it takes is tearing down large swaths of current car infrastructure and the buildings surrounding it. Eg. Seattle tearing down the viaduct a few years back

Which is what it took to turn American cities into car based to begin with.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#167

Post by BluePen7 »

kibwen wrote: post #106
elijaht wrote: post #51

I live car-free in NYC. A large appeal of NYC to me was not having to park. I don't ~mind~ driving, but I absolutely hated having to deal with finding parking when I lived in other cities. Parking generally makes me feel stressed (competition for free spots), or makes me pay (using something like SpotHero makes it easy to find a spot, but costs me). It's not even just major cities either- I'm frequently in a college…

Sold my car years ago and moved to Boston. I'll never go back to live anywhere that requires me to own a car. I bike or walk everywhere, and what makes me hopeful is that biking infrastructure in Boston (and neighboring cities like Cambridge) has improved dramatically in the years since I've been here and just keeps getting better. Google tells me that the average TCO of car ownership in the US was $10,728 in 2022. B…

This is the same reason I moved out of the city.

Rents are very high because they assume you can live there without a car, but as someone who frequently drove far out of the city I was paying for the worst of both worlds.

I agree with your TCO assessment, thanks to pandemic/WFH myself and my partner were able to switch to sharing a car and we saw about 10k in annual savings.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#168

Post by OGWhales »

falcolas wrote: post #64
SamBorick wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People needing to move non-trivial distances for periodic tasks shapes everything. Cars, and thus car parking, come about because of this need. 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 b…

> Every city in the US used to have a robust public transit system. Every major urban center, perhaps. No city in Montana (I'll go so far as to say the midwest, minus perhaps Chicago) has a "robust" public transit system. And even when we create a perfect 15 minute utopia, people will still need one-off transportation on a periodic basis to spots more than 15 minutes away. Doctor visits, specialized purchases, bulk o…

> Every major urban center, perhaps. No city in Montana (I'll go so far as to say the midwest, minus perhaps Chicago) has a "robust" public transit system.

Your comment is talking about the present tense while theirs is not. I’m sure they would agree with you that non-car transportation options are lacking currently. I don’t know what Midwest transportation options were before we entered this car dependency era, from a quick search it appears streetcars were a thing there (which is what their linked article was about).

> And even when we create a perfect 15 minute utopia, people will still need one-off transportation on a periodic basis to spots more than 15 minutes away. Doctor visits, specialized purchases, bulk orders, building materials, recreation, etc.

You can include options for cars without making them the main method of transportation for everything. Having cars as an option is not the problem, designing everything around cars and letting other options fall to the wayside is the problem.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#169

Post by nradov »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #126
nradov wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I travel around the USA a fair amount. In the vast majority of cities, parking just isn't a problem. I drive my car where I want to go and park. Sometimes I have to pay. But the places where no parking is available are very rare. I am fully in favor of walkable neighborhoods and reducing the need to drive. But lack of parking is just not a stressor that most Americans worry about.

> I am fully in favor of walkable neighborhoods and reducing the need to drive. But lack of parking is just not a stressor that most Americans worry about. Tell that to my local Facebook & Nextdoor groups.

You aren't looking at a representative sample. Spend some time talking to people outside of dense cities. Parking doesn't even make their top 10 list of concerns.

Even in regions like the SF Bay Area outside of San Francisco proper there is abundant parking near most homes, retail, and workplaces. Now I agree that devoting so much valuable real estate to parking is rather wasteful and we ought to eliminate some of those asphalt wastelands, but as a practical matter today it means most people don't get stressed about parking. If you tell them to get rid of their cars so that they don't have to worry about parking they're going to think you're crazy.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#170

Post by 8note »

falcolas wrote: post #64
SamBorick wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People needing to move non-trivial distances for periodic tasks shapes everything. Cars, and thus car parking, come about because of this need. 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 b…

> Every city in the US used to have a robust public transit system. Every major urban center, perhaps. No city in Montana (I'll go so far as to say the midwest, minus perhaps Chicago) has a "robust" public transit system. And even when we create a perfect 15 minute utopia, people will still need one-off transportation on a periodic basis to spots more than 15 minutes away. Doctor visits, specialized purchases, bulk o…

Those one-offs have specialized folks to do the job - taxis and delivery drivers and the like.

You don't need everyone to have their own car when a couple cars can serve everyone

Post reply on HN