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

#171

Post by autoexec » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:25 PM UTC

hughesjj wrote: post #157

autoexec wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step one should be creating adequate public transportation so that the people with the fewest options are still able to get to work, doctors, and grocery stores even after existing parking spaces go away and no new ones are built. Parking lots aren't what's keeping people in subdivisions from being miles away from those places. Parking spots aren't what's keeping people in cities from being able to walk to where they…

Why not replace some on street parking with a dedicated bus lane and stops for such? Two birds, one stone

It'd be a good start!

It'll take a massive increase in public transportation infrastructure, and a long and slow redesign of our cities and how we live to fix the mess the auto-industry has put us in. It's a transition that's long overdue, but the reality of the situation now is that people still need their cars.

Making sure that people have something to fall back on before we take their cars away from them or remove the places they put them at night/charge them should be a priority. What these cities are doing is the opposite of that.

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

#172

Post by c22 » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:25 PM UTC

georgeecollins wrote: post #48

In Los Angeles there are ~ 3 parking spaces per car, and < 1 housing unit per person. We mandate a bunch of parking for every new building, but no housing. Its no wonder that people live in cars.

Obviously more than one person can occupy a housing unit (where each parking space can accomodate only one car), but this report from 2020[0] seems to indicate that LA has more than enough housing to accomodate its residents, it's just distributed unoptimally.

It seems somewhat obvious that you may need more parking spaces than cars since they move to different places throughout the day.

[0]: https://www.acceinstitute.org/thevacancyreport

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

#173

Post by avianlyric » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:25 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #69

AlexandrB wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you mean. Even with remote work, living in a high-density area offers advantages - the primary one (in my mind) being that you don't have to own a car.

"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. More seriously though I do think there are benefits to city living if that's a lifestyle you want, but saving money is almost never one of them unless you have a job where you can make a LOT more living in the city, which sort of by definition means you're not g…

> "Let's pay 3x as much for rent [and other things that more expensive with density] to save $300/mo on a car payment"

You must have one of those magical cars that runs on air, never needs to be filled up, never needs to be taxed, never needs to be insured and never breaks down. Wish I could have one of those cars.

In the meantime I’ll settle for using my feet and my bike. Never needed to fill them up with fuel, pay insurance, or tax. And my feet, at least, have never broken down.

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

#174

Post by JumpCrisscross » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:25 PM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #161

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 There is zero evidence for this. There is evidence for parking minimums raising housing prices. I’m curious about the overlap between off-street parking minimum requirement advocates and anti-development NIMBYs who don’t believe in supply and demand.

> There is zero evidence for this. When most people need something, and there is suddenly a much smaller supply of that thing, prices for the now scarce but still needed thing tend to increase. That's basically self-evident. If you have evidence that shows otherwise please feel free to provide it. I suspect that if examples showing otherwise exist at all they won't be remotely representative of the situation these ci…

> When most people need something, and there is suddenly a much smaller supply of that thing

Yes. We have rising, elastic house and stable, inelastic paid parking prices [1[2]]. Due to these regulations, we cannot substitute limited space away from off-street parking towards e.g. housing.

[1] http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/PricingParkingByDemand.pdf

[2] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Funnel-plot-for-the-pric...

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

#175

Post by stetrain » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:25 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #149

chimeracoder wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LA is a disaster for transit and housing, but your numbers aren't a problem on their face. Any car being used will need >1 space at all times: one at home and one wherever it's being parked when its driver has gone somewhere. Actually, those numbers are a problem on their face. They're an illustration of why cars, and societies that are structured around enabling automobile transit as the primary (or even sole) mea…

Why is 3 parking spaces per car inherently unsustainable?

If everyone needs to have a car to get around that's 3 parking spaces per person. Or 6-12 parking spaces per household.

This is nearing the square footage of an apartment to house the same number of people. So for any given unit of housing real estate we need an equivalent or greater amount of parking real estate.

When everyone wants to live close together (ie in LA near where they work, socialize, etc. not in middle of Nebraska) that puts a real pressure on space, and drives up the cost for real estate.

Even if you want to increase density by building higher buildings, the cost of those condo/apartment towers now must factor in a parking garage pedestal taking up 1/3 of its height, and so must offices, shopping centers, etc.

I don't think the ratio of parking spaces per car needs to be reduced. Rather it needs to be recognized, and thus reveal the cost of policies that lead to one car per person. If you can reduce the cars per person ratio, you reduce the number of parking spaces required at a 3x rate.

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

#176

Post by FpUser » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:25 PM UTC

0xfaded wrote: post #141

DoneWithAllThat wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Unfortunately people will fight tooth and nail to maintain their existing expectations and will see public transit as a threat to their cars. You have to take away cars (parking) first so that they start demanding public transportation.

So you want to arm twist people to suit your agenda? It does not work this way. Personally I aways support and would vote for more public transport but not by forcing me to abandon my car. If that is the approach the only vote you'll get from me is fuck you. And I am a nicer guy who mostly uses EUC, bike and feet.

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

#177

Post by arcticbull » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:26 PM UTC

wharvle wrote: post #124

arcticbull wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Further, we should move to a model where the highways are paid entirely by usage fees (gas tax, tolls, etc) instead of subsidized. They're for the benefit of private operators, so the private operators should pay for them. The investments should be in public transit instead.

A great deal of highway spending is subsidizing truck shipping. Most of the damage done to highways comes from big trucks, and taxes on them don't come anywhere near paying for it. [EDIT] Incidentally, maybe we shouldn't subsidize truck shipping! But using usage taxes to pay for highways while not shifting the burden such that truck shipping is paying the lion's share of the cost and is no longer (so very much, at le…

Truck shipping has never made sense to me. It's significantly less fuel efficient than rail shipping, and paying people to just sit there and drive for their entire lives feels kinda torturous to me...

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

#178

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:26 PM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #161

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 There is zero evidence for this. There is evidence for parking minimums raising housing prices. I’m curious about the overlap between off-street parking minimum requirement advocates and anti-development NIMBYs who don’t believe in supply and demand.

> There is zero evidence for this. When most people need something, and there is suddenly a much smaller supply of that thing, prices for the now scarce but still needed thing tend to increase. That's basically self-evident. If you have evidence that shows otherwise please feel free to provide it. I suspect that if examples showing otherwise exist at all they won't be remotely representative of the situation these ci…

> When most people need something, and there is suddenly a much smaller supply of that thing, prices for the now scarce but still needed thing tend to increase.

No one is arguing against the idea that eliminating parking requirements increases (in short-run, first-order analysis) the market clearing price of parking spaces.

The contentious part is that the presence of the freedom to build housing without parking requirements (enabling, e.g., housing plus commercial spaces to be built in a space that would otherwise have the same housing plus parking) does nothing to reduce the demand for autos.

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

#179

Post by shadowgovt » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:26 PM UTC

I yearn for American cities to discover what London has.

The city's mass-transit is intensely effective, and if you have to grab a car from point A to point B, there's never a taxi far away. It turns out if you don't have parking, a professional driver class can afford to make a living on being ever-moving luxury transit for people (and I bet most cities can rought-out a mass transit solution with a clever combination of buses and closing roads to cars / replacing them with delivery-only vehicle access, otherwise open-walkable).

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

#180

Post by stetrain » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:26 PM UTC

georgeecollins wrote: post #48

In Los Angeles there are ~ 3 parking spaces per car, and < 1 housing unit per person. We mandate a bunch of parking for every new building, but no housing. Its no wonder that people live in cars.

The ratio that's the problem here is cars per person, not directly parking spaces per car.

Now reducing parking spaces per car might put pressure to reduce cars per person, or implement alternatives to allow fewer cars per person, which would actually improve land usage.