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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

#331

Post by bombcar »

jonfw wrote: post #257
throw0101d wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $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…

Most people who do this math are horribly bad at it.

Somehow poor people can afford these cars that cost way more than they make.

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

#332

Post by bombcar »

shortsunblack wrote: post #249
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…

According to American Automobile Association, annual cost of car ownership is 12182 US$[1]. That is 3x montly than that you claim. [1] https://newsroom.aaa.com/2023/08/annual-new-car-ownership-co...

> the average cost of owning and operating a new vehicle in 2023

The average vehicle on the road is 12 years old.

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

#333

Post by seanmcdirmid »

I'm ok with this, but I wish they would do something about on street parking as well. People are still renting apartments and buying homes without parking, and they just use on street parking. Which is fine and all, but try being a pedestrian crossing the street when a car is parked way too close to the intersection (or be a driver where pedestrians seemingly pop into view from behind cars quickly). You really can't have your cake and eat it to, streets are not the solutions to our parking problems.

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

#334

Post by bombcar »

bluGill wrote: post #273
avianlyric wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Erm, you realise that before the “modern city”, every urban area was small and walkable, on account of the car not being invented. The “modern city” or at least the US’s version of a “modern city” is the first time humans have ever lived so far apart at such scale. Enabled only because the car has conditioned so many people to think that driving 30mins to get anywhere interesting is “normal” or “natural”.

200 years ago 98% of humans were farmers and lived either on the farm or in a small village in walking distance of the farm. Todays cities are nothing like how people lived before modern days. If you were a substance farmer (as was your best case) you had about 5 acres of land - about what you get in the exurbs (though a modern exurb house is a lot bigger/nicer). If you were a slave (not unlikely) you lived in a very…

Even today a small “rural” town (which the census considers urban, mind you) can be quite the walkable paradise, if your demands for what is nearby are adjusted to be reasonable (say, a target OR a Walmart, but not both).

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

#335

Post by bombcar »

chinchilla2020 wrote: post #314
lukas099 wrote: post #258

I vote we ban all free public parking and let the free market determine how much parking there is and where.

The free market will reward massive retailers with lots of parking space that exist in the suburbs. There is no pre-existing infrastructure to bring customers to these parking-free locations in most cities. Furthermore, semi-urban neighborhoods and alleys will enter a battlefield between tow trucks and illegally parked cars.

Let it run! Those who want suburbs will have them, and the cities can become dense urban utopias.

Wait, you say it doesn’t end up that way? Strange.

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

#336

Post by bombcar »

pavon wrote: post #220
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. So Alice wants to build a high-density housing tower without having to build a ten-story parking structure beneath it, and we prohibit Alice from doing that, even though Bob wants to build a ten-story parking structure right next to it, because we prohib…

It is certainly a place to start! Although in this case I never heard of a developer wanting to build a parking structure on their own (and don't know if existing code would have prevented them). It was always the city wanting to build an adjacent parking structure as part of revitalization efforts to extend the success of that neighborhood further down the street.

The lack of developers building parking garages tells us that the actual value of the parking is not as high as we think it is in most areas - and in fact parking garages are often built more to protect the vehicles than to provide extra parking.

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

#337

Post by bombcar »

Modified3019 wrote: post #252
pavon wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The local residents need to retaliate with requiring permits for street parking. Fight fire with fire.

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

#339

Post by sokoloff »

lukas099 wrote: post #240
pavon wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I live on the edge of Cambridge, MA. I can leave my house and go east into the city or west into the suburbs. Almost all of my voluntary spend is done to the west because of the dramatically higher convenience.

Parking becoming difficult and/or expensive pushes patrons to places where that's not the case.

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

#340

Post by sokoloff »

jandrese wrote: post #213
BobaFloutist wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if we had a way of making buildings of a given size, or, say, value, contribute cash to the local and state governments, that the governments could then distribute as needed to transit, emergency services, infrastructure, schools, etc? We could even make it an annual fee so that they have to contribute to ongoing costs, and maybe periodically we could reassess the value of the property.

Sounds like it would be wildly unpopular and politicians would mess with your figures to get votes, even when that would ruin the budget. Sometimes specifically to ruin the budget because what they really want is to reduce/remove those services.

GP described the current property tax system, which seems to work pretty well in non-blighted towns and cities.
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