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The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

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Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#281

Post by bugglebeetle »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #259
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…

The excess of cars in cities is bad enough, but I do wonder whether underground parking would at least help. It can be more expensive, especially for taller buildings, but it would eliminate the eyesore and recoup the valuable urban real estate and potentially free up the streets. Realistically, we have to accept that we've spent almost a century creating a situation that has enabled car dominance and that many peopl…

> but the car-centrism that has wrecked the urban environment cannot be undone simply by enacting hostile legislation.

This is exactly what happened in the Netherlands, but the US is a wildly corrupt country with very little in the way of actual representative democracy, which is the primary reason why this (locally) correct. In many other places, it is in fact possible to achieve these outcomes through state power.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#282

Post by ubermonkey »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #210
ubermonkey wrote: post #207

My whole life I've struggled with the need for cars in the places I've lived. Very few US cities have the right infrastructure to go car-free, and the places I personally have lived feature such unrelentingly hot summers that going anywhere without AC is pretty much a nonstarter. But it exists as a low-grade "well this sucks, but I can't do much about it" fact of existence, like hangnails or tax audits. Then, last ye…

The problem with bikes is that you are subjecting yourself to a 6x higher deathrate. Thanks partially to the cars next to you on the road.

It's definitely more dangerous, but so is bicycling on those roads, which I do far more frequently.

It's worth noting, too, that motorcycle casualty rates are somewhat distorted by the 19-year-old dumbass factor. Anybody with money can get a moto license and buy a used liter bike with WAY WAY WAY more power than anyone should realistically have on public roads. An astonishing number of motorcycle fatalities and injuries are solo accidents due to misadventure.

I'm old. I did all my stupid stuff already, and have a healthy respect for being effectively naked in traffic (ie, from cycling). It's still more dangerous than being in a car, but the overall stats mislead about HOW much more dangerous.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#283

Post by TeMPOraL »

davidw wrote: post #255
coding123 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's not just about storing the vehicles, it's also about making your life miserable in a 2 hour commute going to a 3 hour commute. There IS more space in the united states, believe it or not.

Since there is more space, you'd expect that the market would allocate more of it for parking where needs be and that you don't need the government dictating parking minimums. Also, not all space is equal: even in the US, well-connected space with lots of amenities like the downtowns of cities is not infinite.

The market allocates only as much as users can bear, which is about epsilon above the line of "for average user, the parking situation is so bad and unbearable that they chose to go without the service". Anything above it is money left on the table.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#284

Post by 93po »

EricDeb wrote: post #194
kibwen wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I dislike car culture, but owning a car is not that expensive unless you own a newish one.

And buy a new one every few years like some Americans do

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#285

Post by jabroni_salad »

MezzoDelCammin wrote: post #21
pc86 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what percentage of people in rural or suburban America do you think "move to the Netherlands" is a realistic suggestion?

Just out of curiosity - how big of an issue is parking in rural US?

Warm season: no problem, go anywhere anytime and park for "free" except maybe at certain neighborhood churches on Sunday and big school functions.

cold season: if the lines are covered by snow, all bets are off. Some capacity is lost to The Pile, but even more is lost due to nobody knowing how to just park next to somebody else.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#286

Post by vel0city »

throw0101a wrote: post #268
vel0city wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GP said "convince people to live in smaller houses and share walls", you retort back "completely unnecessary". Your first two examples are...smaller houses and shared walls.

Define "smaller houses". Smaller than what ? I can find tiny(er) houses compared to what I posted in recent developments/sub-divisions in the suburbs of Toronto (Mississauga, Oakville, Brampton, Pickering, Oshawa, etc ). All the streets in question have big(er) and small(er) houses, with both semi- and fully-detached houses. Some areas have more of some kind than another. Next time I'll re-arrange the order of the li…

I'm not sure what the average square footage of that Geoffrey location is, I'm not great at eyeballing that. But the average US SFH is what, almost 2,500sqft these days? I imagine these are less than that figure?

EDIT: I just did some quick Google Maps measuring on that 159 Geoffrey St, I estimated about 60x20 floor plate, maybe less. Lose some space from the stairs, two mostly full floors and maybe a finished attic, probably close to that 2,500ish sqft.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#287

Post by ars »

tekla wrote: post #38
josephcsible wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it'd be good to make cities painful to drive in This is the wrong approach. Don't intentionally make driving worse for anyone, anywhere, ever. If you want people to use transit instead, then improve it until it's a better option than driving is today.

Nope. This is why pedestrians die. Force cars to go slower in cities. They recently added a pedestrian island in the road near where I live. It is not unnoticeable. With paint lines, high reflective markings, and literally a concrete wall. Literally on day 1, a car made an illegal left turn and hit the clearly marked island at 20mph faster than the speed limit. It jumped the 3 foot high barrier, but the pedestrian on…

> Make car life in cities miserable.

Make life in cities miserable, is more accurate. The reason is that transit is worse than cars always. If you make travel in cars worse, then all you did is make life worse for everyone.

And in reality it simply means that fewer people go there, because going there is miserable. The city starts converting to low income because anyone with income goes elsewhere.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#288

Post by Sharlin »

microtherion wrote: post #280
Sharlin wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> of course you'd need bigger parking lots than seating space There is a tacit assumption in your statement. Of course you don't need vast parking lots around stadiums, and there are plenty of real-world sports arenas that don't have those (some examples [1][2][3]). The parking that there is is structural, and most people simply use public transit to reach these places, which are often located in moderately densely b…

Or Letzigrund in Zurich, with a capacity of up to 50,000 people for concerts, and absolutely zero street parking available: https://goo.gl/maps/kPye3VdVB9ZLpPsx8

Oh, very nice example!

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#289

Post by tfandango »

mikrl wrote: post #11

I visited metro Detroit for the first time on Saturday and the parking situation was abysmal but this is perhaps understandable in a large city. I thought my small city in Canada was bad! 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 recently took a roadtrip about 1500 miles to visit some family. On the way to/back we wanted to stop and check out some cities the kids wanted to visit and it's amazing the anxiety I had every time we drove into a large urban area, all about traffic and parking. Most of the time, like you said, there was no place to park so I drove around and around with hundreds of other people while the kids complained about not being able to get out. It's like you said, if you knew where you were going you may be able to map it out, which also gives me anxiety (ok kids, we need to leave now to get to the next parking spot). I don't know, each time I was glad to leave.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#290

Post by throw0101a »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #269
vel0city wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GP said "convince people to live in smaller houses and share walls", you retort back "completely unnecessary". Your first two examples are...smaller houses and shared walls.

I'm becoming increasingly convinced a significant portion of HN comments are made by folks who spend the barest minimum of time to post a reply. This might be one of those cases where random links were copy pasted without consideration for the actual claims.

> This might be one of those cases where random links were copy pasted without consideration for the actual claims.

Or it could be because the same silly tropes about urban living are trotted out regularly (which is why Oh the Urbanity made their video) and some of us counter them with the same silly replies we've posted numerous times before.

There are a number of examples in the posted links that are not "smaller houses and share walls", and I could find more if I didn't value my time. I could also find a whole bunch of "smaller houses and share walls" in suburbans developments in my area to show that "smaller houses and share walls" is not exclusive to (so-called) urban living; see for example "Why American Yards Are Shrinking":

* https://cheddar.com/media/why-american-yards-are-shrinking

Small and big things are found in both cities and suburbs.

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