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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

#301

Post by AnthonyMouse »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #283
davidw wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's assuming there is a monopoly on providing parking spaces. Zoning notwithstanding, anyone can build a parking structure and rent or sell parking spaces. Tenants can choose whether to pay more for an apartment that includes parking or less for one that doesn't.

The total cost of a housing unit with parking wouldn't be be more than it is now because the cost of constructing a housing unit with parking wouldn't be more than it is now. It would just cause units without parking to become available.

Which would tend to increase housing availability, which would tend to lower prices including for units with parking. Because the people who want the parking spaces wouldn't have to bid against people who just want housing and don't need parking.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#302

Post by yurishimo »

bugglebeetle wrote: post #281
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It also took 40+ years. After WW2, NL was on a course to model American cities. There are some places that still harken back to that time. Dutch people also really like to drive, which nobody seems to talk about!

But now the trains have been privatized, the ticket prices jacked up, and gas taxes are absolutely bonkers right now. If we’re lucky, maybe the trains can be brought back into more direct government control in the next decade but I doubt it.

Good public transportation and city design is only enforceable through laws on the books. Dutch city planning in some ways is non-negotiable, but very fungible in others. We must stay vigilant if we want to see our small corner of the world continue to flourish and be a beacon of hope to North American and other western societies.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#303

Post by doctorpangloss »

Sharlin wrote: post #218
doctorpangloss wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not saying much that stadiums are weird in a way that games don't model (edited). A stadium's audience loves to drive to places, that's the purpose of the destination, to watch a thing then eat garlic fries and drink and drive home, so whatever. I like the author's politics and agree with her sentiments. But if the author of this thing thinks she can run a business on Main Street without parking, by all means, s…

That's a very North American biased view. In fact, many studies have shown that in reasonably structured cities, pedestrians and public transit users are a more important source of income to downtown commercial services than motorists. Their individual transactions tend to be smaller, but there are more of them. But it's also vital that the city center and its neighboring areas are actually places where people live,…

> But yes, many business owners (and the sorts of politicians they tend to vote) are irrationally attached to the idea that motorists are the ones who bring in the money

If they're so irrational, go and start a business with no parking! I'm not saying they don't exist, I'm saying that you're not appreciating the forces that make people put up with commutes and parking in the first place.

> pedestrians and public transit users are a more important source of income to downtown commercial services than motorists

My family and I bike everywhere. Obviously my dog in this race is more accessible cities.

I'm just being intellectually honest.

Like dude, the company that makes my e-bikes is going into receivership.

I live next to Valencia Street in San Francisco, and there was so much opposition to building new bike lanes, thoroughly vetted by experts, from cyclists themselves. I would almost call it "irrational."

They didn't even build the center lanes very far, because the center lanes from 23rd to Cesar Chavez would have reduced the way the megachurches use the center lane as free parking on Sundays.

The businesses on Valencia Street need those underage CSU revelers trucked in by Ubers. They cannot walk from a side street to Blondie's, the thing they pay for is to be dropped off in front of the door.

Someone has to deliver all that alcohol that sells! Someone has to truck the produce in gas-guzzling trucks to Rainbow. Someone's gotta gas-powered-bus the pickers to pick the produce at Rainbow.

This is my one neighborhood. You are welcome to try to start a new local business on the idea that "[poor people's] individual transactions tend to be smaller, but there are more of them." I can guarantee you will fail.

I appreciate that there are experts studying this. They are welcome to apply for civil jobs in San Francisco! They can go and win elections! I am aligned with those politics and want those outcomes, and I am not saying they are inaccurate at all. I am saying your "studies" an incomplete view on cities.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#304

Post by runarberg »

Reubachi wrote: post #221
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.

There's currently very little incentive to pedestrianize actual problem cities from all concerned parties. Because pedestrians are still largely able to bike, walk, bus etc just fine. And drivers are largely able to commute/park just fine. We need to be honest that the folks most concerned (rightfully so) with urban car congestion are wealthy upper class people who moved TO the cities for their upperclass nature. Sho…

Your class narrative is not a real world scenario.

In many countries (including USA and EU) working class people are pushed out of the cities and into suburbs or satellite cities as the inner city prices are simply to high and they cannot afford rent. This is doubly true for people with kids or otherwise large families. If they still work in the city, they are simply forced to commute. Thankfully many cities have adequate public transit systems so they are not always forced to buy a second or a third car for the household (notable exception here is the Sunbelt in the USA) and move even further away to an even cheaper house to be able to afford that.

It would be a simple narrative if in place of the poor folks moving out of the city, rich folks would be moving in. But that is not the case. In many cases these houses are filled by AirBnB, short term rentals, or simply left vacant by a landlord hoping to rent at a higher price.

Most working class people that I know and commute to work by driving would love to be able to leave their car at home and commute with a bus or rail. For them driving to work saves might save them over an hour a day in commute time, time they would rather spend with their family then waiting at a bus transfer. If they could park their car at a nearby park and ride and save even more time, they would. For them, they are not commuting just fine, they are indeed very annoyed at not having a better option.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#305

Post by mikrl »

brewdad wrote: post #214
mikrl wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re splitting hairs, which I can also do: There’s a giant parking lot with 10,000 spaces and 2 are free. There is ‘no parking’ unless you want to drive around for 2 hours. For enough money you could probably get a permit from the cops and a security detail and park wherever you wanted, like in a city park. There is still ‘no parking’ in parks. Within parameters that apply in the majority of cities I’ve tried to pa…

Saying there's no parking and there's no free (as in money) parking are two very different things. Parking in the downtown of one of the ten largest metro areas in the US is going to cost money. That's just how it is.

I don’t mind paying. In Toronto I’ll pay $20 no problem to park right in the middle of the core in a garage. But I have options to use cash or card at a meter or machine without getting my phone out. I can pay for an hour or 2 or all day.

In Detroit the options were street parking (all full) or flat rate in a garage behind an app. I looked for a ticket machine and there were none. My bad for not doing research but still, I had a good day elsewhere in the metro, was just surprised by the inflexibility in the DT core.

It was the end of the day and I wanted to walk around and scout out stuff for next visit. If I spent all day there I’d happily pay the $20-40 but not for an hour walk, that’s silly when I can look at stuff in Windsor where my accommodation and free parking were.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#306

Post by majormajor »

davidw wrote: post #249
majormajor wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The largest cities in Italy are quite a bit smaller than the largest cities in the US, so it's a very different situation. Rome's metro area is about 4.3 million people. San Antonio's is about 2.6 million. San Antonio also has far more relaxed car-based commutes than the Bay Area or LA as a result. If you dropped Rome's three subway lines in San Antonio you wouldn't get rid of that many car trips, especially since th…

Rome is notable for having kind of not great subway infrastructure for a major European city because, among other problems, they tend to encounter a lot of archeological stuff whenever they dig there. And I'm not even talking about major cities. Where I lived in Padova, it has approximately 200K people in the same area that about 100K people occupy here in Bend, Oregon. Padova has way better transit than Bend does ev…

Is Bend gripped by housing issues and traffic as much as the Bay Area or NYC or wherever?

The folks I know in smaller US towns simply don't have the same concerns about parking spaces as those in high-demand, high-population, central large cities. And comparing those cities to typically-small-to-medium-size Italian cities doesn't result in very actionable practical plans.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#307

Post by tivert »

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 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.

Not just more expensive, but enormously more expensive.

The aesthetic priorities of a video game probably don't map well to real life.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#308

Post by lapetitejort »

Someone wrote: post #264
Reubachi wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's currently very little incentive to pedestrianize actual problem cities from all concerned parties. Because pedestrians are still largely able to bike, walk, bus etc just fine. And drivers are largely able to commute/park just fine. We need to be honest that the folks most concerned (rightfully so) with urban car congestion are wealthy upper class people who moved TO the cities for their upperclass nature. Sho…

> Because pedestrians are still largely able to bike, walk, bus etc just fine. I don’t see how that’s true for most cities in the USA. For walking, in many cases, there isn’t even a sidewalk for pedestrians to use. If there is, crossing stroads is way more difficult (large distances between crossing opportunities) and dangerous (e.g. no pedestrian islands halfway) than needed.

Same goes for biking. If there is a bike lane, you still have two ton vehicles buzzing sometimes inches away from you at twice or three times your speed. The smallest intersection scares me. Turning left requires me to come to a complete stop and wait for a chance to change lanes and turn. It's equivalent to crossing the street on foot. When I arrive, I have to search for a bike rack. My nearest grocery store has one rack for five bicycles tucked in the far corner of the plaza (I have never seen a bike parked there, however). My favorite coffee shop has no bike racks anywhere on the street, so I lock up to a sign in the parking lot.

There's no way to escape this as my house is flanked by two stroads. I hear constant traffic sounds well into the night. I live in a beautiful old neighborhood that predates the Ford Model T. I've seen pictures of ox-driven carriages rolling by historical downtown buildings. We had a cable car that ran down one of the current stroads. My city could drastically drop car dependency if we had the will.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#309

Post by AnthonyMouse »

majormajor wrote: post #173
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 real…

You're not gonna get rid of the need to commute. Once people start forming families, "live next to work" is likely to be very unrealistic for one of the people involved, assuming they both work. One person gets a new job across town and the other doesn't? Setting aside whether or not most people would want to move anytime that happened, there's no longer a single answer. Start throwing kids in the mix and it gets eve…

> You're not gonna get rid of the need to commute.

Higher density enables mass transit.

Moreover, work from home is a thing now. One person lives near their job, the other works from home, no commute.

> build more transit

This is putting the cart before the horse. The suburbs aren't dense enough to justify a transit route and if you install one there it will just go unused.

First you have to rezone all the low density areas to allow higher density. Then you look where people are starting to build once they're allowed to and install transit routes to the places that now justify them.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#310

Post by AnthonyMouse »

treis wrote: post #273
davidw wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to the same amount of services further spread out, infill is far cheaper, and tends to generate a lot more tax revenue compared to the infrastructure needs. Here's a sort of simplified, but real-world example that uses snow clearing: https://bendyimby.com/2021/03/24/snow-and-financial-producti... Something like sewers are more complicated, but the basic equation is that you're adding things in an area that's…

Snow removal is cheap. The expensive things like schools, criminal justice, and health care are all more expensive per person in denser cities.

They're more expensive per person in cities with a higher cost of living, which often correlates with density. But zoning restrictions increase the cost of living by contributing to housing scarcity.

Density isn't the cause of high cost, it's the response to it. It's the market increasing supply in the presence of high demand. When prices are high you want more of it, not less.

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