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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

#251

Post by chimeracoder »

kube-system wrote: post #233
chimeracoder wrote: post #133

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 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 + taxe…

> 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.

I think you're replying to the wrong person. I do use Zipcar on the rare occasion that I need a car. It's way cheaper than car ownership (not even including parking).

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

#252

Post by Modified3019 »

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…

Yeah, the local college planners in our city wanted to “discourage” vehicle use, and deliberately had only a few parking lots put in, mostly reserved for faculty of course. What has actually happened is every residential street within 4-5 blocks absolutely choked with vehicles parking on the curbside during the semesters. It’s a shitshow.

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

#253

Post by Eisenstein »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #64
Eisenstein wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is there a barely any decent "existing public transit lines" in Austin. Existing public transit line, singular, perhaps, and in a decade or so we'll get some more. In the meantime it just means traffic gets much shittier with no real alternatives. "Let's keep doing the same thing that doesn't work and complain when anyone decides to try something else".

Except there is no real sane plan to actually do something else. If they were, say, replacing street parking with light rail lines, I'd be onboard. This is basically just ignoring the problem and pretending like "alternative transportation methods" will magically spring up.

You are basically saying that markets don't work and we should ignore them. If we let developers decide how much parking they can allocate why would they allocate less than would be needed to sell their properties?

By making it less likely that places are further apart for no reason then the need for cars is reduced.

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

#254

Post by chung8123 »

mint2 wrote: post #45
1-6 wrote: post #21

I thought a generation of remote work would change attitudes about cities. Why are we still trying to cram into small spaces?

Because it’s nice to have practically every amenity possible in easy walking distance I.e 5-10 minutes walk. Probably 20 restaurants, 20 small shops, coffee shops, ups, usps, fedex, hardware stores, museums, parks etc etc all within 10 minutes walk. It’s nice not having to drive for everyday errands. driving and parking is soul draining and causes suburbs to be ugly, not to mention freeways. Those are ugly as sin.

You don't need all of that to have every amenity at a walking distance. I live in the suburbs and I still have almost every amenity walking distance. Do I need 20 restaurants and coffee shops?

Having space for your hobbies is nice so if your priority is hobbies that need space living out of the city is nice. If your priority is going out for things it is probably better to live in the city.

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

#255

Post by foxyv »

njarboe wrote: post #112
foxyv wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parking, Roads, Gasoline, Pollution, etc... We so heavily subsidize people's cars for no reason. For the cost of all of it we could have free healthcare and amazing public transportation then lower taxes with the left over money.

Um... Just US healthcare spending is 17.3% of GDP. $4.5 Trillion per year. No way this works.

A large part of that is inflated health care costs. US citizens have to pay more than twice as much on average. Some services such as ER visits can cost 10x as much. US spends twice as much per capita than UK but get much less from it. Also keep in mind that the amount spent on roads is only a fraction of the total cost of cars in the USA.

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

#256

Post by bluGill »

avianlyric wrote: post #173
pc86 wrote: post #69

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. 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…

$400/month is probably a reasonable average to cover the cost of a car though. Sure a new car will be over $1000/month, but a used car will be much cheaper. In ever city I've looked downtown housing is a lot more than that. Of course most cities let you live much cheaper just outside of downtown, if you can do that you have reasonable rents and good access to transit and so a car would be a large extra cost.

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

#257

Post by jonfw »

throw0101d wrote: post #195
pc86 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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/mo is a new car with no down payment The average monthly payment for a used car is $500/mo, and $700/mo for a new car: * https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/average-... Then add maintenance, insurance, depreciation, fuel. And that's just the stuff that shows up on a spreadsheet (of which depreciation most folks don't really think about).

You wouldn't consider depreciation a cost in addition to your car payment, depreciation is on your balance sheet and your car payment is on your cash flow.

Your balance sheet would factor in only your interest payments and depreciation, the principal on your loan is irrelevant there because it's being realized as equity.

The average monthly payment for a used car being $500 does not mean that somebody on a low income has to pay $500 to own a car. I'd imagine that the average price paid for a cup of coffee is around $5, but that doesn't mean that that's what coffe costs. It just means that a lot of people pay way more than neccessary for coffee. Similarly- lots of people drive cars that are bigger, faster, newer, more luxurious, and more capable then necessary.

The bare minimum cost to own a vehicle is not $500 a month by any means- my 5000 dollar car has lasted me 6 years now as an example. Even if we consider it is now worth half of it's original value, that comes in at about $70 a month in depreciation. Hardly unaffordable

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

#260

Post by bluejekyll »

c22 wrote: post #172
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.acceinstitut…

> since they move to different places throughout the day.

The question people are asking is how can cities make it easier both for people to live in them as well as move around them without needing a car to do so. By removing parking minimums, it implies that people will have a harder time driving, which will entice them to use other means to get around. But, the big issue is that cities also need to invest in those other means of getting around. That means making micro-mobility easier with protected infrastructure, more bus service, more light-rail, etc. LA had a light rail service until GM, Standard Oil, and Firestone Tire organized a shell company to buy out the system and eventually tear it out. They did the same thing to the Key System in the East Bay of the Bay Area. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_City_Lines

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