The force that shapes everything around us: Parking • Hacker News Board

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#391

Post by Spooky23 » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 3:46 AM UTC

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…

There’s plenty of parking in Manhattan, it just isn’t free. Parking isn’t the force that shapes the world. Free parking is.

Suburbs have zoning standards that usually require more parking than required. The average big box lot has parking stalls that have never used for anything other than piling up snow.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#392

Post by Spooky23 » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 3:50 AM UTC

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #314

tivert wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...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.

Maybe for construction, if the building is designed around the need for parking. Parking garage operations are expensive. Self park doesn’t generate enough yield in a dense urban environment. You need to stack cars in there, maybe offer valet contracts to hotels, etc.

Even in cheap city, urban monthly covered parking is around $150.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#393

Post by fragmede » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 3:57 AM UTC

stronglikedan wrote: post #26

xnx wrote: post #13

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.

> share walls with their neighbors I honestly don't know why anyone would ever want to do that. To me, it's only done out of necessity, and is a driving force in motivating people to get the hell out of that situation asap. But the cool thing is, some people can choose that, if that's what they desire, even though I can't understand why.

The problem is that the US doesn't know how to build proper walls. It's a wall. I don't have X-ray vision, I don't know what's happening on the other side of it. You don't either. So why is it a problem to share a wall? Noise. But if you use building materials that aren't paper, then sharing a wall becomes not a problem. If one neighbor wants to blast their music at 3am, and another neighbor has to wake up at 4am to go to work, and the building they're in lets them, what, then, is the problem?

Unless it's just the knowledge that there's people on the other side of the wall bothers you, but that seems silly.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#394

Post by fragmede » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 4:03 AM UTC

criddell wrote: post #382

fragmede wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why pay to have a house then though. Just have a self-driving RV and live wherever you want. You can live in the office parking lot during the week, and in the park the rest of the time.

Because I do want a home base. I want a large workshop for woodworking, painting, and maybe ceramics. I want a place to have musical instruments. I want a great home theater, gym, sauna, and an amazing kitchen. I want space to work on my motorcycle. Land is important. I want a big garden and lots of space between me and my neighbors. I want quiet nights and a dark sky. I could never afford this near a city, but once…

I want a lot of things too but unfortunately I have a limited amount of money. I'd like all those things, but I'd rather have money so I can live off the interest and not have to work, so I have the time and energy to do any of those things.

To each their own.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#395

Post by developerDan » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 5:08 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #376

gremlinunderway wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only we had a means of transportation that could efficiently move large quantities of people into dense areas of living. It would be like a really big car that could fit lots of people. You could then put it on tracks so it had its own right-of-way or even underground. Oh well, one day we'll figure it out. I'm sure instead what we should be doing is expanding our highways and building more parking lots. It'll fix…

except that one big car is not controlled by you, and you have to schedule your trip around it, rather than have the convenience of any-time availability. Not to mention you can't really carry much onboard.

Do people not have to schedule around 15-30 minute drives? How is that any different from “I can be there in 15 if I make the S3 train otherwise about 25 since I’ll catch the 86 bus that runs shortly after”? There really is no defense at all for being car dependent. Literally every other country in the world proves you don’t need them.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#396

Post by midoridensha » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 5:14 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #376

gremlinunderway wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only we had a means of transportation that could efficiently move large quantities of people into dense areas of living. It would be like a really big car that could fit lots of people. You could then put it on tracks so it had its own right-of-way or even underground. Oh well, one day we'll figure it out. I'm sure instead what we should be doing is expanding our highways and building more parking lots. It'll fix…

except that one big car is not controlled by you, and you have to schedule your trip around it, rather than have the convenience of any-time availability. Not to mention you can't really carry much onboard.

Where I live, the subway comes every 3-5 minutes, like clockwork. Is that really so inconvenient?

On the rare occasions you have more stuff than you can carry, you can just pay for delivery. It's far cheaper than the ongoing total-cost-of-ownership of a car.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#397

Post by midoridensha » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 5:32 AM UTC

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.

>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

While your assertion about a lack of actual representative democracy may have truth to it, in my view, most Americans hate public transit and really like cars, despite all the clear negatives that come with them (and which those people deny). There are great cities in the world that are walkable and have excellent public transit: I live in one of them myself. But in my observation, most Americans simply don't want this kind of lifestyle, and in fact don't believe it exists. So as far as car-centric planning goes, I think that Americans really are getting what they vote for.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#398

Post by developerDan » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 5:37 AM UTC

WheatMillington wrote: post #265

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…

Don't you feel confined to your little area? In the weekend my wife and I drove out to a rural hike, 40mins out of town. I couldn't imagine giving up that kind of convenience and missing those kinds of opportunities. What if you don't live near a pool? Your kids just don't learn to swim? My local pool is a 15 minute drive, but a harrowing cycle route.

Sydney has metro rail lines that go out into the mountains as an alternative to driving.

Do you need a personal vehicle to carry a few sandwiches, some water and a first aid kit? If you are going camping can’t you rent a vehicle, how often do you realistically go camping that it justifies the cost of ownership over renting when you _truly_ need it?

If you really do need a car, that’s totally acceptable! But how many people don’t actually need it for anything other than weekend grocery shopping and work commutes? Hint: a very large portion of the population.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#399

Post by midoridensha » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 6:04 AM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #233

davidw wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> incredibly expensive proposition for many cities I lived in Italy for a number of years. It is a poorer country than the United States in a lot of ways, and yet they manage this quite well. It still comes back to zoning and parking: by allowing denser development, you can plan transit routes that serve a lot more people, some of whom don't even own an automobile.

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…

I live in Tokyo: there's over 40 million people in the greater metro area. It's the largest metro area in the world. There's hundreds of train/subway stations and most of the population gets around by public transit, along with cycling and walking.

Population size isn't the problem, the problem is the way American cities were built. If you want public transit to work, you have to make cars extremely inconvenient, which means little or no parking (and the parking that exists is very expensive), high density, and zoning that allows all this.

Re: The force that shapes everything around us: Parking

#400

Post by DropInIn » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 6:41 AM UTC

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…

I'm anticar.

Most people are too negligent/inept to safely operate them and there is genuinely no need for private vehicles if adequate infrastructure is put in place.

More people die due to automobiles every year than from cigarette induced cancer, and that's without addressing the elephant in the room of misattribution to second hand smoke that which is actually/more reasonably explained by chronic car emission exposure (take a look at that stuff, it's insane).

We don't actually need cars, people just Want them too kuch to do the right things to protect our children.