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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

#231

Post by brewdad »

autoexec wrote: post #181
hughesjj wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK, pure speculation, but maybe 'autoexec' isn't arguing in good faith here and may have a conflict of interest

I really don't. I'm not even sure what kind of person would have a conflict of interest while supporting that we keep the requirement until actual alternatives are available to everyone. While I have a car, and enjoy having one, and have a nice parking space in a heated underground garage, I also work remotely and don't drive all that much. I'm in a privileged position and could afford to uber (within the city anyway…

Do you pay for that spot? Would you keep the car if it was costing you $150/mo to park it there? If not, then removing parking minimums accomplishes exactly what it is intended to do.

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

#233

Post by kube-system »

chimeracoder wrote: post #133
dylan604 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 condu…

> 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

Do you have on-demand car sharing in your city? Like Zipcar or similar? You could go on a heck of a lot of hardware store trips in one of these cars for the price of a car payment + parking + insurance + taxes + maintenance.

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

#234

Post by autoexec »

tuna74 wrote: post #163
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…

Yeah it sucks that you might have to pay for parking to do free activities like shopping or visiting medical services.

Leaving aside that neither groceries or medical services are free, the problem isn't that parking will now cost something. There won't be enough parking to go around and many people will be entirely priced out. People will be unable to park near the services they need and many will have no place to park/charge the cars they still require at the end of the day when they're at home.

That's not a good situation for anyone except for a very small number of people who will make more money than they have been, and small number of already wealthy people who will find lots of available parking they can easily afford now that they don't have to compete with the poors. Everyone else gets screwed and the problem of people needing cars doesn't change at all.

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

#235

Post by TexanFeller »

crote wrote: post #78
screye wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Bike infrastructure means some brick separators and painted lanes. The biggest issue with bike infrastructure is that the people responsible for infrastructure genuinely believe this . The end result is usually a scattered bunch of stupidly dangerous "bike lanes" which aren't of use to basically anyone. You need a separate biking network , which interfaces with car traffic as little as possible. This means you're e…

Thank you for saying this, the half measures currently being implemented most places are indeed woefully inadequate. The “bike lanes” near me are just painted lanes that frequently intersect turning cars. I would LOVE to bike to work, but not if I have to fear serious injury every day.

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

#236

Post by lukas099 »

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…

Don't forget the price of all the extra healthcare you need if you don't walk or bike anywhere.

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

#237

Post by ryukafalz »

adrr wrote: post #199
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.

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…

> Have you been to neighborhoods that don't have parking mandated parking spots?

I have, I've lived in such a place. I walked to work, about half an hour each way. It was quite pleasant.

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

#238

Post by Eisenstein »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #70
Eisenstein wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not really convinced of the counter argument, at least it Austin. Public transportation (or, basically any transportation) is notoriously bad in Austin, and for decades we've basically had the stance "if you don't build it, they won't come", but that hasn't quite worked out. Well, since what you have been doing hasn't worked, maybe let's try the other tactic.

The other tactic would be to actually build out viable public transportation.

The other tactic is 'do something to reduce car dependency'.

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

#239

Post by tomatocracy »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #56
_dain_ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like the parking was underpriced. EDIT I am rate-limited so can't reply, but this part: "If you have 200 cars" This is only the case if the demand for parking / driving is perfectly inelastic, which would be quite extraordinary. Empirically, when you charge for parking or institute toll roads, traffic tends to fall, in some cases sharply (because many journeys are low value). I repeat: if the parking spaces…

I'm not sure why you are being downvoted. The reason people keep buying cars after prices rise 57% in a decade: the extra $10,000 amortized over 10 years is less than living even 1 year near the things you drive to. Things you drive to includes your parking space! It doesn't make any sense to own a car and live in a dense urban development. What more needs to be said? Live in the suburbs if you have a car. Fortunatel…

> It doesn't make any sense to own a car and live in a dense urban development.

Public transport can be good but it's never that good. I live in zone 1 (ie very centrally) in London and there are still many journeys where it is quicker and cheaper for me to drive than to take any kind of public transport. This is true for longer journeys (going outside London) especially but surprisingly it's also true for quite a few short journeys (even going a couple of miles) - it depends a lot on the layout of the public transport network and the roads, and this is before considering journeys where I might want to bring bulky or heavy things with me which are basically impossible to do by public transport. I end up driving enough that the cost of car ownership vs short term rentals makes sense in pure economic terms but the convenience difference of ownership vs short-term rental is also pretty big.

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

#240

Post by lukas099 »

pavon wrote: post #140
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.

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…

> 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.

Good. Then more people will choose different forms of transportation or internalize their costs. If parking becomes scarce, providing parking will become more profitable and people will pay the actual (enormous) cost of temporary car storage downtown.

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