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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

#411

Post by pandaman »

bluGill wrote: post #407
pandaman wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However if you have a niche interest you may discover not enough people live within range to support a place for your interest even though across the entire city there are enough people. How are the cars limiting here? It's quite the opposite - you can have a special interest shop/venue in a cheap mall in some industrial area and get enough customers who can reach you by car. Without the car ubiquity you'd need to…

Cars work best in low density. Eventually the total area of the city is so great that even though in theory you can drive across it, the total time that takes means some trips are unreasonable to do. If that story that sells Gundam models (I have no idea what this is so I assume it is a great example of a rare niche) is on the other side of the city it may be more than an hour drive at off peak times to get there and…

If it takes more than an hour of car travel then how long will it take without a car? I imagine your argument is that without cars the city wouldn't be as big, but the math doesn't work out: the travel time is proportional to the square root of the area while the additional area is linear. If a city with cars is triple the size of the same one without it would have taken only 1.7 time more to travel through. Public transit is way slower than 1.7x.

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

#412

Post by jonfw »

bombcar wrote: post #331
jonfw wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can't imagine that poor folks in expensive cars are doing any math

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

#414

Post by suburbanwaste »

lotsoweiners wrote: post #349
mint2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have all of that in 10-15 minute walks in my extremely suburban neighborhood. Hell I’ve got regular full sized grocery store and a super sized grocery store within a 10 minute walk and a super Walmart in a 15 minute walk.

I’ve lived in a development in a suburb where it took 10 minutes’ walk (no sidewalks) to get off the property.

Walkable suburbs in the US are by far the exception. They are great though!

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

#416

Post by jjav »

lukas099 wrote: post #372
sokoloff wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't remove parking in isolation, I genuinely wish you could. You have to fix the reason people want it in the first place. This is both blindingly obvious and incredibly frequently overlooked. Here's the 5-step plan for improving our city: 1. Remove parking spots. 2-5. We'll figure it out later; I promise.

You see it that way; I see it as we are taking one major step toward the goal.

I've seen this play out in many old town cores in the 90s. In those cases parking wasn't entirely removed, but it was converted from free to quite expensively metered.

What happened? People stopped going to the small shops in the old downtown and went to the mall instead (free parking). The small shops slowly all died off and the old charming downtown is a boarded up ghost town. Yeah, great first step.

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

#417

Post by jjav »

lukas099 wrote: post #371
chinchilla2020 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is already a lot of private parking infrastructure in cities, and it wouldn't take long for profit-seekers to build new parking garages where demand exists. The new law could include a phase-out period if it's a problem. Over time the suburban big-box retailers will lose as fewer people will drive cars.

> Over time the suburban big-box retailers will lose as fewer people will drive cars.

No, the downtown core will lose when the shopping traffic shifts to the mall as I noted in comment above.

I had a SO whose family owned one of those small shops in the old downtown when parking became restricted, so I've seen first hand what happens to downtowns when parking goes away (all those shops are gone now).

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

#418

Post by jjav »

bombcar wrote: post #329
mint2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A ten minute walk is half to 3/4 of a mile. I doubt you can find all those things in that distance except in the densest of cities. And even then you might be quite restricted as similar stores seem to clump together.

> A ten minute walk is half to 3/4 of a mile. I doubt you can find all those things in that distance except in the densest of cities.

I have all of that (except the museum) within 10 minutes walk in a very suburban (almost rural, but still suburb) area.

This myth that you must live in the densest cities (Manhattan or SF) to be able to walk to shops, restaurants and other daily useful things is just a myth.

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

#419

Post by jjav »

throw0101d wrote: post #82
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" is certainly an interesting life choice. Try $1000/mo on average: * https://money.com/owning-new-car-cost-total-2023/ If you're making >$100K that may not sound like that much, but the average/median US salary is lower. (That probably doesn't include externalities either: health, climate change, comm…

> Try $1000/mo on average

If you're rich and money is no object, do what makes you happy.

But if money is tight enough that you care about cost, it is very silly to look into an expensive new car. Buy an older efficient Honda/Mazda/Toyota for less than $10K, insurance will be cheaper, operating costs very low.

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

#420

Post by jjav »

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).

> The average monthly payment for a used car is $500/mo, and $700/mo for a new car

Average isn't a very interesting number here. I know a guy with a $15K/month car payment, I'm sure people like him push the average up.

If you're trying to save money, don't go for average. Buy a cheap used car, ideally in cash, and your operating costs will be minimal.

The sky is the limit how much you can spend on a car if you wanted to splurge(waste), but you can also a fully functional car for very cheap if you care to save money.

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