201–210 of 432 posts
I thought a generation of remote work would change attitudes about cities. Why are we still trying to cram into small spaces?
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> 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?
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Yep, good read and wonderful on the vicious cycle that led to the downtowns of most US cities looking like WWII bombed out zones by 1975.
That's not the cause at all. Extreme minority poverty and the potent bifurcation of incomes, education and wealth in the US is the cause. Parking won't fix any of that realistically. You can push minority poverty to the suburbs, which for example is what France does, however it doesn't solve anything about the bombed out look, it merely redistributes the problem to somewhere else. You can gentrify the cities and push…
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…
One would assume you would wheel your wheelchair there. You know, the same way people walk their feet there.
> Car free areas also raise objections about accessibility for the disabled.
What about all the people with disabilities that make driving dangerous or impossible, would love to know how we’re making driving accessible for the blind. There are far more people with disabilities that makes car travel difficult, than there are people for whom direct point-to-point car travel is an absolute necessity (short of someone being rushed to a hospital, I’m not sure what people would need regular, direct, point-to-point car travel).
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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 res…
This is the original tragedy of the commons though: a bunch of people assuming they can just park on the street. The frustration is the solution. Either build yourself private parking, pay for private parking, or ditch the car. Or enjoy the frustration.
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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.
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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.
How about: If you build a building of this size you must contribute $X to the public transit system to expand service to your building, adding drivers and routes if necessary. We have so many subsidies for cars baked into the system, but hardly anything for other forms of transit, and then we complain endlessly about how expensive transit is to run and have to cut service to make ends meet, which of course discourage…
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.
Have you been to neighborhoods that don't have parking mandated parking spots? Anything built in the 60s to 80s. Drive around for 1/2 hour trying to find a parking spot every day, pay hundreds/thousands of dollars a year in fines because you forgot to move you car on street cleaning day. Repeat if you work at place in these old neighborhoods, like Venice or West LA where all the tech companies are located. The issue…
I'm sure we could thrown up a hunk of concrete and rebar in the middle of nowhere in area with no environmental regs real cheap, especially if only care if it stands until the check clears.
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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.
If the cost to provide (guaranteed, protected) parking spots ends up being higher than people are willing to pay for them, maybe they're not actually worth what we're currently paying for them.
Lot of comments on building public transit first, before removing parking minimums. Public transit takes forever to build and its impossible to build usable transit with suburban sprawl. Usable transit --> reach destination in a reasonable time. Instead of public transit, cities should encourage Uber/Lyft. Car payments + insurance + gas + repairs/maintenance + parking might be close to $800 - $1000/month for most peo…