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U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums

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Re: U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums

#91

Post by fzeroracer »

DoneWithAllThat wrote: post #13
coldpie wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before: If you build a building of this size, you MUST also build at least X parking spaces. Now: If you build a building of this size, you MAY build as many parking spaces as you think you need. Seems like a strict improvement to me.

It’s not. I’ve lived in neighborhoods that did this and it was a nightmare. All street parking filling up by 4pm. Half hour walks to your car. Neighbors keying each others cars for taking up a space for too long. Guests basically just being SOL - you’d literally be unable to have guests over because if you left to pick them up there’d be no spot when you got back, and if they drove themselves they’d never find a spot…

What neighborhoods, exactly? Parking minimums have been the de facto law for cities, it's only in the past decade that trend has been starting to be reversed in the US.

Re: U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums

#92

Post by [deleted] »

jmyeet wrote: post #7

The amount of money we collectively spend subsidizing driving is utterly insane. Yet every public transit measure is jet with the same tired dogma of “it’ll raise our taxes” or “it will run at a loss”. Street parking tons at a loss. Why is this never brought up? Significant money is spent by the likes of the remaining Koch brothers to fight public transit infrastructure in every city. Yet taking drivers off the road…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums

#94

Post by tellsomething »

_dain_ wrote: post #31
tellsomething wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems silly to think infrastructure means subsidising. Why don't you switch to dial up so that all the cables underneath the ocean can be slowly removed in order not to bother wild life over there? But really, your whole life is sustained by providers driving. Taxes in the city comes from humans being able to physically move their bodies to the right location. I mean, wouldn't it be ideal to get all the benefits of a…

>But really, your whole life is sustained by providers driving. Taxes in the city comes from humans being able to physically move their bodies to the right location. because the only way to get around in a city is by driving, right?

It will sure do great to inflation when your plumber has to take the bus and instead of having 5 customers per day only has 2.

Re: U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums

#95

Post by everforward »

tmaly wrote: post #93

Cities obviously cannot or do not build housing. Given that, beyond say SimCity, has anyone developed simulations of how these new regulations / incentives would actually affect housing?

This seems like something where the outcome of the simulation is dramatically influenced by the starting assumptions to the degree that the results are useless.

It allows plots of land to be smaller, but is the extra space taken up by housing or businesses? Is the housing single family or high density? How do wider economic trends interact with developers' interest in building/not building? I would think interest rates interact with developers' willingness to build and what they want to build.

Those factors feel very subjective to me.

Not to mention that if a model existed that could accurately predict this, I would eat my hat if the model wasn't immediately bought out by a fintech firm for some absurdly large sum. Being able to accurately predict the housing market is a blank check for printing money.

Re: U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums

#96

Post by tellsomething »

ta_1138 wrote: post #60
tellsomething wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems silly to think infrastructure means subsidising. Why don't you switch to dial up so that all the cables underneath the ocean can be slowly removed in order not to bother wild life over there? But really, your whole life is sustained by providers driving. Taxes in the city comes from humans being able to physically move their bodies to the right location. I mean, wouldn't it be ideal to get all the benefits of a…

Of course infrastructure is subsidizing those who use it. Even more so when it comes to infrastructure that takes a lot of space, as every square foot of surface dedicated to one thing cannot be dedicated to another. And infrastructure induces demand by lowering some prices relative to others. In an extreme case, imagine that your typical, currently congested highway gained another 6 lanes in each direction, and we r…

> One can like one tradeoff more than the other, but the fact that infrastructure means subsidy, and that urbanism choices are picking some people's interests over others is just factual.

You do have a point.

But, do you think cities prosper in spite of this subsidy? It seems like an investment that pays off in second error effects. I mean, why aren't cities without infrastructure growing like mad? Because it's not possible and cities with infrastructure outcompete them.

Only way to make this work is if you outright ban infrastructure and then make competition impossible in that domain.

Re: U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums

#97

Post by dylan604 »

pc86 wrote: post #84
throw0101d wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Let's pay 3x as much for rent [and other things that more expensive with density] to save $300/mo on a car payment" is certainly an interesting life choice. Try $1000/mo on average: * https://money.com/owning-new-car-cost-total-2023/ If you're making >$100K that may not sound like that much, but the average/median US salary is lower. (That probably doesn't include externalities either: health, climate change, comm…

$1k/mo is a new car with no down payment, most people aren't doing that. It's literally the most expensive way to get a vehicle! Maybe #2 depending on your views on leasing and how you calculate cost there. And even using the $1k/mo number, you're still paying thousand s more in rent to save that.

$1k/month doesn't just necessarily mean the financing on the car. When I look at the monthly requirements for the car, I include insurance in that number. If the place I'm living requires a parking fee, I include that number. I don't include gas/maintenance as those are variable, so I'm only including the fixed costs fees.

You can also get higher payments with money down if you have no to low credit ratings. Been there, done that. You play the game using the online calculators that dealers provide on how much your payment can change based on credit score and down payment, and the credit score will dramatically change compared to the down payment.

Re: U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums

#98

Post by dylan604 »

coldpie wrote: post #90
pc86 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty nice in my experience, dude. But I don't live in a city so it's more of a necessity and none of these downsides are really an issue - which is sort the entire point.

Ditching cars feels like giving up regular alcohol use did, where the scales fell from my eyes and I see how much better my life is without it, but I can't quite communicate it to others without seeming like a huge judgmental prick :)

I've been without a car for 4 years now, and it is becoming a burden. For the first 2 years it wasn't so bad because of lock down. Now, even with my e-bike (which I love and would continue to use if I had a car) there are certain things I just cannot do. Inclimate weather is a big one, and in my location, June-September is inclimate weather of 100°+ weather. Carrying things home from the hardware store is not conducive activity with my e-bike. Large item purchases, blah blah blah. If I were to rent a car suitable each time, I could just pay the monthly car payment

Re: U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums

#99

Post by hnaccount_rng »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #68
hnaccount_rng wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment just said, that the function of N that gives the number of parking spots (really it's just going to be a proportionality factor) is "set nearly randomly". Nothing in your comment counters that assertion. Which I personally don't find implausible (although that is without any exposure to the decision process in Austin in particular)

It's not "set nearly randomly". It's a function of the estimated number of adult occupants, based on the number of bedrooms I believe. Besides, the argument isn't "let's look at the calculation for required number of spots and tweak it if necessary", it's "let's get rid of parking altogether and pretend like people won't just still drive and park on the street."

It’s also not “abolish all parking” it’s “don’t force parking”. Or rephrased in a libertarian way “if there is a need for parking the market will provide it” (I make no comment on whether to expect a positive or negative outcome of this experiment)

I mean, you seem to be adamantly opposed. I assume for good reason (at least in your mind). Why not make an argument that actually relates to the proposal? At least I would give your opinion more weight that way

Re: U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums

#100

Post by busterarm »

coldpie wrote: post #8
voisin wrote: post #3

It’s one thing to ditch parking minimums, but it has to be matched with investment in public transit. Simply eliminating parking spots doesn’t eliminate demand when there are no other options for getting around. And I suspect the public transit investment will be way more controversial and difficult to implement.

Before: If you build a building of this size, you MUST also build at least X parking spaces. Now: If you build a building of this size, you MAY build as many parking spaces as you think you need. Seems like a strict improvement to me.

When it comes to property development, anything that you leave to optionality in code enforcement ends up being a thing that never happens ever.

For something to be available it has to be required by building codes.

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