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Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

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Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#131

Post by trimethylpurine »

If only 75% of spaces are empty, while sad, that seems shockingly efficient. If you have a car you need at least one place to park for each location you will ever visit with it. That means most people are only driving their cars to 4 places. Home, work, school and the grocery store? Hopefully for store owners, not all at the same time. I would have expected a lot more unused spaces in parking lots. If we have cars we should be expecting a hell of a lot of empty parking lots. Maybe cities should just require some minimum amount of plant life in the lots themselves. I'm sure customers would approve.

Also any expectation of "the demise of malls and the decline of brick-and-mortar retail" is hasty. Globally, during the pandemic, 80%+ of retail was brick and mortar [1], and it actually increased in 2021, though it appears to be correcting. Research shows consumers don't trust stores with an online only presence [2]. I think banking on that will be too little too late. We need better solutions sooner.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ECOMPCTSA/

[2] https://www.kbbreview.com/6657/news/consumers-lack-trust-onl...

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#132

Post by seanmcdirmid »

uoaei wrote: post #124
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are located in the north of the city and need to get somewhere south of the city, or vice versa. You only have a few roads to do that east or west of Lake Washington. In most cases, people aren't going to downtown Seattle, downtown Seattle is just in the way.

Why are those services not available in the north of the city? This is as much a planning issue as traffic is.

I think it has to do with the way the city grew out north and south, with the city itself as a chokepoint (since it is surrounded by water otherwise). Common reasons people need to go from north seattle to south seattle: IKEA, Southcenter, Seatac. I'm sure there are reasons for people to go north as well, but I have a harder time thinking of them (other than that they went south and now have to come back north).

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#133

Post by seanmcdirmid »

sfpotter wrote: post #127
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing worse than having I5 is not having I5. There really isn't enough north-south corridors to replace it (15th, 99, east/west lake...really that's it), given that I5 is close to the water and a huge hill as it comes in across from UW. It is already non-viable to expect a 20-30 minute commute into the city. We saw what happened when the Palestine supporters blocked off I5 a few weeks ago...on a weekend with…

There are no major highways through Manhattan. The city is better for it. Drive around the lake if you need to get past the city.

I used to commute from westchester county into midtown, and there were definitely parkways in, although I never needed to go all the way down to Manhattan itself. I would usually try to take the train though (often not possible given how westchester county is poorly connected to train stations).

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#134

Post by eropple »

avianlyric wrote: post #108
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a serious proposal to remove the interstate entirely and replace it with a street. I'm afraid that this would wind up like Vancouver, which lacks freeways through the city and has pretty bad traffic as a result. Better maybe to tunnel it under if possible? That works well for Seattle, although we still have I5 to contend with that divides the downtown from Capitol Hill (there is talk of lidding the entire…

How does a freeway through a city improve traffic in a city vs building a freeway around a city (no need to bother with the expense of tunnelling under). Cars on a freeway are either headed to your city as a destination, in which case the speed at which you deliver them into the city doesn’t make much difference, they’re always going to cause traffic when they leave the freeway. Or the cars are headed through the cit…

The highway under Boston has turned out to be one of the better solutions that the area could've had, I think. It doesn't mean that the highway that goes around (I-95) is unused, or even underused, but I-93/the former Central Artery going underground has allowed some really important revitalization of parts of the city while also giving pretty direct and (outside of the worst part of rush hour) quick access to most of Boston and Cambridge by car.

As forward-looking as much of the area is, we weren't getting away with "less car", and I don't think most places will today either.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#135

Post by seanmcdirmid »

avianlyric wrote: post #108
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a serious proposal to remove the interstate entirely and replace it with a street. I'm afraid that this would wind up like Vancouver, which lacks freeways through the city and has pretty bad traffic as a result. Better maybe to tunnel it under if possible? That works well for Seattle, although we still have I5 to contend with that divides the downtown from Capitol Hill (there is talk of lidding the entire…

How does a freeway through a city improve traffic in a city vs building a freeway around a city (no need to bother with the expense of tunnelling under). Cars on a freeway are either headed to your city as a destination, in which case the speed at which you deliver them into the city doesn’t make much difference, they’re always going to cause traffic when they leave the freeway. Or the cars are headed through the cit…

You can't build a freeway around Seattle unless you plan to make it float. Well, there is 405, but that is way around (and is its own chokepoint on the east side). Vancouver has much of the same problem with hills and water making it act as a choke point. I'm not sure how the Twin Cities compares.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#136

Post by trimethylpurine »

wtp1saac wrote: post #4

Strong Towns has called a good amount of attention to the mandatory parking requirements in many cities (and shockingly, many downtowns). Thankfully, it seems a fair number of cities are removing such restrictions, but hopefully it becomes more widespread. In general I hope the US can urbanize, the older I get the more I realize it’s not really enjoyable living in this country. I don’t think I want hyper dense, but h…

I've long suspected that this model is meant for cities to make money on DUIs. They close the public transit before the bars in almost every city across the country, and they ensure the bars are far enough away and restrictive enough that you have to drive. Then they tax the hell out of taxi services to ensure that there aren't enough cabs to take you home and rides can exceed $100 (which is a lot in most of the country by area, not population). It's zoned this way where bars and restaurants aren't near houses, in summary.

If they did it like Spain, for example, where you can just walk out of your home, sit on the street at any restaurant, and drink wine with your friends, we'd have exactly what you're describing.

But then they wouldn't be able to rake in DUI profits.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#137

Post by trimethylpurine »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #79
coldpie wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having more places to walk, bike, and explore that aren’t just cookie-cutter boilerplate-esque suburbs and freeways would be really nice. We're at a critical juncture here in the Twin Cities. The state DOT needs to re-build the interstate that cuts right through the entire metro area (I-94) for the first time since it was first built 50 years ago. There is a serious proposal to remove the interstate entirely and re…

> There is a serious proposal to remove the interstate entirely and replace it with a street. I'm afraid that this would wind up like Vancouver, which lacks freeways through the city and has pretty bad traffic as a result. Better maybe to tunnel it under if possible? That works well for Seattle, although we still have I5 to contend with that divides the downtown from Capitol Hill (there is talk of lidding the entire…

I was just driving around in Seattle and couldn't help but notice everywhere I went was just a few miles away but it took 20-30 minutes because there was no highway in between. I have to wonder if that reduces or increases emissions. I suspect it's the latter since you have more cars running longer and stop/starting more often.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#138

Post by resonantjacket5 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #107
sfpotter wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating I-5 was really contentious at the time. It destroyed neighborhoods. My family has lived in the area for several generations and my parents can attest to this. Lidding it would be great, but removing it would be better. There are loads of people who live in the suburbs north and south of Seattle and expect to be able to drive 20-30 miles each way day-in-day-out to commute. If the city continues to grow, this…

The only thing worse than having I5 is not having I5. There really isn't enough north-south corridors to replace it (15th, 99, east/west lake...really that's it), given that I5 is close to the water and a huge hill as it comes in across from UW. It is already non-viable to expect a 20-30 minute commute into the city. We saw what happened when the Palestine supporters blocked off I5 a few weeks ago...on a weekend with…

It's actually a bit interesting to see WSDOT's plan for i-5.

For capacity they aren't expanding I-5 directly, but expanding i-405 and sr167 instead for people trying to go past Seattle.

For i-5 within Seattle area, there are some 2030s plans to convert the hov lanes to toll lanes and reconfiguring the reversible express lane system. * I-5 Managed Lanes: SR 16 to Pierce/ King County Line * I-5 Managed Lanes: Pierce/ King County Line to I-405 * I-5 Managed Lanes: I-405 to US 2

https://www.psrc.org/media/4840

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#139

Post by com2kid »

uoaei wrote: post #124
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are located in the north of the city and need to get somewhere south of the city, or vice versa. You only have a few roads to do that east or west of Lake Washington. In most cases, people aren't going to downtown Seattle, downtown Seattle is just in the way.

Why are those services not available in the north of the city? This is as much a planning issue as traffic is.

Seattle is a narrow city bordered by water on the west and the east, so a lot of its expansion has happened along the north/south axis.

If I want to buy furniture, I need to go either to the far north or far south of the city to a suburb just outside the city limits (cheaper land).

Culturally, lots of food can only be found in certain areas of the city, which means north/south traveling.

In regards to services overall, obscene land prices means that not much new is being built that isn't owned by large corporations, so we are pretty much stuck with what we have, and what we have is rather quickly disappearing.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#140

Post by dfxm12 »

wtp1saac wrote: post #4

Strong Towns has called a good amount of attention to the mandatory parking requirements in many cities (and shockingly, many downtowns). Thankfully, it seems a fair number of cities are removing such restrictions, but hopefully it becomes more widespread. In general I hope the US can urbanize, the older I get the more I realize it’s not really enjoyable living in this country. I don’t think I want hyper dense, but h…

I don’t think I want hyper dense, but having more places to walk, bike, and explore that aren’t just cookie-cutter boilerplate-esque suburbs and freeways would be really nice. More places to meet people too, there’s so few third places. And not needing to drive would be a really big convenience.

What does hyper dense mean? And how is that detrimental? Tokyo meets all of your requirements, for example, but you would call that hyper dense for sure, right? The article is "about" Baltimore, MD. Does that city meet your threshold of hyper dense?

As with most things, a lot of this comes down to money. The more dense an area, the more use the things you want are used, and the more money they make, they more likely they are to thrive. The more dense an area, the bigger the tax base, the more money there is for nice things that maybe don't make money on their own.

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