U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by kjkjadksj » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 6:58 PM UTC

kleiba wrote: post #108

Where I live, politicians are also all for reducing the availability (amount + affordability) of city parking. At the same time, they cry about city centers (with their traditional shopping miles) dying out. Go figure.

Mostly because good transit implementation is so expensive only like a half dozen cities in the US are financially capable of building new rail transit or hiring a lot more bus operators. Also the fact bike lane projects in this country are seemingly done like a half mile at a time to the lowest standards, rather than a one shot whole network wide rollout of lanes that would make suburbanites feel safe to bike to errands. A robust bike network seems difficult only if you forget its just a matter of how you put paint on a road thats probably already regularly budgeted in routine road surfacing work, over having to spend real money and actually expand budgets. This all goes to show how timid politicians have become in recent years towards stepping off into the unknown and actually diverging from the status quo.

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

#132

Post by jandrese » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 6:58 PM UTC

screye wrote: post #46

TexanFeller wrote: post #12

A big problem with this is the incredibly long payoff time. You make parking go from miserable to insufferable, but it will take a decade minimum for good public transit and making popular areas bikeable/walkable. Sad experience with government projects tells I’m being generous on the timescale. If you make the infrastructure problems in Austin more painful for a decade there will be a migration away and we might hav…

Bike infrastructure means some brick separators and painted lanes. It takes less than a month to build city-wide rudimentary protected bike lines. BRT is similarly quick to implement, if a little more expensive. Remove 1 lane of parking from major downtown roads & replace with a painted BRT lane. Order about 50 buses to run in 1 way loops around the downtown area. Have high frequency BRT between the out-of-downtown p…

> It takes less than a month to build city-wide rudimentary protected bike lines.

Citation needed. Maybe a month of actual painting time once you've done all of the planning, but planning the routes and going through all of the approvals and meetings is absolutely not possible in a single month. Not even a single year.

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

#133

Post by chimeracoder » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 6:59 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #98

coldpie wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conduci…

> 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

You haven't specified where you live, but from the details you've written, we can narrow it down far enough to safely conclude that you're not living in a place that's designed to support a car-free lifestyle.

I have lived for over fifteen years without a car. Not only do I not miss it, but I'd pay to be able to live like this. I can rent a car whenever I need it (something like once or twice a year) and the total annual cost is a fraction of what a monthly car payment would be almost anywhere in the country: gas, financing, repairs, fees, other expenses, etc. all add up to way more than people realize[0].

When you're living in a place that's designed with cars in mind, it's hard to imagine living comfortably without it, but when you're living in a place that's designed for other means of transportation, it's hard to imagine ever going back to cars.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/10/07/business/car-...

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

#134

Post by autoexec » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:00 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #109

autoexec wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, but is a point where 50 can park simultaneously and nobody who wants to park there and can afford to is denied that ability. That sucks for the people who are denied the ability to park there because they can't afford it though. Telling people that they need to walk miles to get to a doctor or a grocery store and that only the wealthy deserve to have access to 90% of the city doesn't seem like a good idea to me…

> only the wealthy deserve to have access to 90% of the city There parking minimums drive up housing costs. They’re why that person has to drive longer to get to that place. Perhaps why they need to make a car payment at all.

Not true, at least not for most people anyway. People need cars to get to where they need to go. When the developer of an apartment complex has to provide parking for its residents everyone has a place to put the cars they need. When those developers don't have to provide parking space anymore, people will still need cars, but will now have no place to put them at night. This will drive up the price of apartment complexes that provide parking, pricing many people out, while doing nothing to eliminate the need for their cars.

You can't solve the problem of "I need a car" just by taking away the places people put them at night.

The problem we have is built into the design of our cities from the ground up and it impacts every aspect of how they are structured and used. Eliminating parking spaces while the absolute need for cars continues to exist doesn't solve the problem at all.

This is the kind of move that should be done selectively, and only after alternative options are created, if it's done at all.

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

#135

Post by busterarm » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:00 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #101

busterarm wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's great. Should increase demand for transit.

Effective public transit isn't something you can bolt onto a city after the roads are all built. Cities like Austin that were designed for cars from the outset are hopeless lost causes.

Old world cities can have great public transit because they were dense long before cars existed and have hundreds of years worth of civil projects designed to get people from A to B.

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

#136

Post by NoZebra120vClip » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:01 PM UTC

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…

My parents live in a residential, SFH neighborhood that's basically designated overflow parking for revelers. Especially during Pride Week, motorists will fill every street parking spot, only to stroll into the drunken debauchery, and then stagger back and attempt to locate their vehicles.

They've also seen ZipCar type services where short-term rental vehicles are just abandoned. Once, I woke up to find a luxury Alfa Romeo sedan that had taken a joy-ride across the border and was abandoned in front of our place.

The main street there dead-ends, and so the highest traffic is from lost motorists vainly attempting to hook up to the freeway.

My parents jealously guard their prime parking spots, I mean insanely: they love to walk but if they need to tote cargo more than 1 yard out of the way, we never hear the end of their moaning, and I live hundreds of miles away. They participate in Neighborhood Watch and won't hesitate to get cars tagged, inspected and towed if someone tries to mess with their "public street parking" spots. (Recently renovated "garage" is full of junk.)

As a holder of a driver's license who hasn't owned a car since 1997, I also never hear the end of their moaning about rude cyclists, oblivious pedestrians, City-sponsored transit lanes, or repainted roads to encourage sharing with pedestrians and multi-modal transport.

Around here, most of the moaning and screaming is directed at light rail, without considering for a moment how it takes drunks and inept drivers off the road and completely out of their way.

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

#137

Post by saiya-jin » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:01 PM UTC

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.

Here in Switzerland I've seen the opposite - the amount of parking requested by the developer (true, this was for local bank growth and not condos) was slashed significantly by municipality, as in 'don't bring your cars to your work', effectively removing 1 underground level of parking and some more, right under the bank.

There are very few countries out there that would see such behavior flying, when facing a wealthy developer (it used to be the biggest company in this village/small town) who gives a lot of local work, for just parking spots that are anyway completely hidden under the building.

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

#138

Post by kgermino » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:02 PM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #119

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anything that you leave to optionality in code enforcement ends up being a thing that never happens ever No code requires marble countertops. Yet they get installed because buyers want them. Cities like Austin have regulated themselves into a housing-cost crisis. It’s almost a miracle that rational economic policy is being given space by voters.

Marble countertops aren't competing for space that you could otherwise use to build more apartments to sell/rent. Parking is. Until parking spaces cost more than apartments do, developers are going to favor building apartments over parking one hundreds times out of one hundred.

Eh, Milwaukee has fairly lax parking requirements (including no minimums for most downtown developments) but most developments have more than legal required. Developers are pretty open about the reason (it's not uncommon for neighbors to push back on parking due to traffic concerns): they lost money on the parking, but without the spots they can't rent the apartments at all. Walmart doesn't build parking because the city makes them, they do it because their target market has cars and won't visit without a parking lot.

And even if this does drive up parking costs to match rents, is that such a bad thing? Why should we legally mandate that developers subsidize parking?

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

#139

Post by arcticbull » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:03 PM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #135

arcticbull wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great. Should increase demand for transit.

Effective public transit isn't something you can bolt onto a city after the roads are all built. Cities like Austin that were designed for cars from the outset are hopeless lost causes. Old world cities can have great public transit because they were dense long before cars existed and have hundreds of years worth of civil projects designed to get people from A to B.

> ... have hundreds of years worth of civil projects designed to get people from A to B.

We better get started right away then, huh.

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

#140

Post by pavon » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:03 PM UTC

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.

Without other rules or planning to compensate, it creates a tragedy of the commons where every builder wants to offload their parking needs onto the rest of the neighborhood in order to save money. I lived near a neighborhood that had older denser development, that originally served just that neighborhood, but later became a hip place for people to go, thus exceeding existing parking. It was very frustrating that residents could never find a place to park because all the parking was taken local businesses patrons, and patrons couldn't find parking because that one collage bar was having a busy night and taking all the parking for five blocks around.

It didn't help that the urbanism activists in our area seem to consider parking garages to be a tool of the devil and protested any plans to build one in the area. To me they are an ideal compromise/stop-gap solution. They allow you to build dense walkable neighborhoods today even when most people will be driving. And once public transit has improved to the point where less parking is needed, you just have a few buildings to tear down instead of entire areas to redevelop.

Edit: And to be clear I think the "best practices" that most of the country used for the past 50 years to set parking minimums were massively inflated, and created many problems. I'm absolutely in favor of revising them, but I firmly reject swinging around to the other extreme of "to solve the public transit chicken-egg problem, we must make car use intolerable".