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

311–320 of 683 posts

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#311

Post by wizofaus »

> parking is perhaps the greatest determinant of whether people decide to make a trip in a car or by some other means

Surely that can't be true in general - I would think the quality/convenience/cost of the alternative would be by far the biggest factor (but yes, you could argue that's rolling multiple factors into one).

But as an example, plenty of offices I've worked at over the years have offered free or cheap parking to all staff, with sufficient space for virtually everyone, yet less than half of the staff chose to drive simply because getting there by car was slower/more expensive than the alternatives (typically train or tram, and a few, like myself, that much prefer our pushbikes!). Actually at my current job in a CBD/downtown building, nobody drives despite the high availability of parking, but it is quite expensive to use (~$18 a day I believe).

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#312

Post by yurishimo »

gruez wrote: post #242
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…

>Google tells me that the average TCO of car ownership in the US was $10,728 in 2022. Between my partner and I, we're saving $20,000 per year not owning a car (and that's assuming a generous expenditure on bicycle TCO). High rents mean nothing when considering how much you save on not needing to own a car. $10k seems suspiciously high. Maybe that's because everyone is buying overpriced pickups/SUVs? If all you want i…

My thoughts too. If you buy a car with cash, the only costs are $1k for insurance (or less), $1k for routine maintenance, and fuel. If you have an EV, the fuel costs drop dramatically.

But most Americans have a car payment; the average amount totaling over $400/mo. So in that respect, I guess 10k isn’t too far off.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#313

Post by Sharlin »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #303
Sharlin wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tran…

I understand and empathize with your frustration, but I did specifically say that there are some prerequisites for car-light city centers to work well. But I felt that you in turn unfairly generalized the unfortunate NA situation¹ when in fact in, say, Europe there are dozens of cities with pedestrian/transit-first historical centers and hundreds more where it would be perfectly achievable – and is slowly being achieved – if not for ideological opposition.

---

¹ Even SF is much less dense than almost any European city of comparable size!

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#314

Post by hypertele-Xii »

tivert wrote: post #307
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 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.

A quick web search puts local underground parking garages including necessary street alterations at about 1.7x the cost of surface parking, per parking square.

Not sure if that falls within the purview of enormously more expensive.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#315

Post by hypertele-Xii »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #185
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…

Is it wrong that I think I would enjoy playing Sim Parking Lot?

Try Mini Motorways. It's a different style of game but certainly captures the futility of car-centric traffic management.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#316

Post by criddell »

geraldwhen wrote: post #231
majormajor wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I know multiple people who bought houses 45 minutes from work that made way, way more money than needed for those houses. They WANTED to be in the middle of nowhere. They could have had a house 11 minutes away with good schools and access to nature, but they choose 45 to be isolated. They live in their cars.

I wish I was further out of the city.

I think if actual self-driving cars arrive, they will fuel sprawl like nothing else before. I wouldn't mind a long commute if I could sleep or work or chill out as my car drove me to work.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#317

Post by Fricken »

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

Edmonton's original light rail line was good for connecting the home of the Oilers with the home of the Eskimos, the former home of the Oilers, as well as the home of the Ooks, the Golden bears, as well as the Saville Sports centre and the Claireview rec center.

The light rail line is not so good for connecting people from their home to their place of work. It was built a long an old industrial rail corridor 40 years ago and the area around all the rail stations is still zoned as industrial.

They've since built massive expansions, which is good, although they are now nearly 4 years behind schedule on the first major leg expected to open. I'm looking forward to an lrt system that's good for more than getting quickly from one sports complex to another.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#318

Post by wizofaus »

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…

> and many people want one

Perhaps that's the main problem. If we were more content to share them they'd be far less of a need for so much parking space (and possibly even road space). I haven't owned a car in 15 years, at least partly because I've been happy to accept there's generally one available within the household to use when I need it.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#319

Post by dabeeeenster »

iso1631 wrote: post #202
davidw wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In the UK we build houses without enough parking and the whole area becomes horrendous. The idea I get from reading about US "pro housing" people is that if you don't provide parking, people will still have a car and still park. In reality in the UK every patch of open space, including pavements (sidewalks) become car storage facilities. housing estates with 4 bed houses with just 1 car parking space (plus a garage w…

Total nonsense. New builds in the UK have ample parking.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#320

Post by wizofaus »

iso1631 wrote: post #202
davidw wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In the UK we build houses without enough parking and the whole area becomes horrendous. The idea I get from reading about US "pro housing" people is that if you don't provide parking, people will still have a car and still park. In reality in the UK every patch of open space, including pavements (sidewalks) become car storage facilities. housing estates with 4 bed houses with just 1 car parking space (plus a garage w…

In all honesty, why is a 4-bedroom house with only a single dedicated car parking space a problem? Is it because families that have decided they must have multiple cars parked close to their home all the time are leaving them parked in public locations that other people value and want to use? If so, it sounds like those parking locations need to be charged for. Said families may then rethink whether they really need those cars parked so close to their homes all the time (or indeed, whether they need so many cars at all).
Post reply on HN