Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees • Hacker News Board

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#221

Post by jimberlage » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 4:50 AM UTC

travoc wrote: post #22

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…

Parking minimums are required by cities because underparked development projects dump their parking problems on the surrounding neighborhoods. These types of externalities shouldn't just be hand-waved away in the name of "urbanization." The lack of parking creates real problems for residents, police and businesses in growing cities every day.

I’ve lived in areas with this parking problem in multiple cities for over a decade now.

I can confidently say, I don’t care about this problem at all. Parking further up the street from my house is a small, small, small price to pay for the benefits of being walking distance from interesting things.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#222

Post by buildsjets » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 4:58 AM UTC

resonantjacket5 wrote: post #146

uoaei wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).…

Light Rail to Lynnwood will be open by September of this year, which gets you to within 2 miles of Alderwood Mall. Light Rail to Alderwood? 2040, suckers.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#223

Post by jmward01 » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 5:04 AM UTC

jimberlage wrote: post #221

travoc wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parking minimums are required by cities because underparked development projects dump their parking problems on the surrounding neighborhoods. These types of externalities shouldn't just be hand-waved away in the name of "urbanization." The lack of parking creates real problems for residents, police and businesses in growing cities every day.

I’ve lived in areas with this parking problem in multiple cities for over a decade now. I can confidently say, I don’t care about this problem at all. Parking further up the street from my house is a small, small, small price to pay for the benefits of being walking distance from interesting things.

Exactly. Pretty much every argument I see against removing parking boils down to 'The city gets denser with more nice things to the point I can't drive my SUV there any more!' A lack of parking is a symptom of a thriving location, not a problem. A real solution is more transit and more transit oriented development. Removing parking is a start through.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#224

Post by throwawaaarrgh » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 5:30 AM UTC

Baltimore has no money, ain't nobody paying for that.

In cities outside of Baltimore, where there aren't 20,000 abandoned buildings (when last I lived there), where there's a public housing shortage and a rising cost of living, they need affordable homes, not trees. I love trees but they're better for cities that don't have housing shortages, yet have the money to pay for trees.

Baltimore (and Philly, similar in some respects) has large concrete and brick deserts. But they also have large and small parks with lots of trees. That's where you get mugged after dusk (and sometimes during the day). You don't walk through Patterson Park at night.

IMO it's a privileged thing to think of first. Certain websites that cater to this kind of post don't seem to discuss civic issues from the perspective of the people who need the most help. It's more a certain kind of person who's more interested in a closer walk to the Starbucks and Trader Joe's.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#225

Post by dghlsakjg » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 5:35 AM UTC

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…

You completely leave out that the trans-Canada highway has a six lane bridge, and a train bridge less than 5 miles east of the downtown peninsula, and there was a conscious decision to not route the freeway through the peninsula.

Any freeway through Vancouver would have to cut through all of east Vancouver and then the downtown core then Stanley park, and they would have to completely rebuild the lionsgate bridge since it is only three lanes total, and then tear out a huge portion of the residential neighborhood on the other side of the bridge.

Why in the world would Vancouver, which is on a much narrower strip of land want to do what Seattle did and divide their city in half so people can get to Whistler 15 minutes faster.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#226

Post by dghlsakjg » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 5:41 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #135

avianlyric wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There’s the trans Canada highway that skirts around Vancouver. It’s the fastest route by far whether you are going into the city or through it.

The I5 meanwhile turns into the 99 on the Canadian side of the border, and goes right through the city. It’s a nightmare since it is officially a highway, but in reality just a surface street in the city.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#227

Post by adrianN » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 5:46 AM UTC

trimethylpurine wrote: post #144

marssaxman wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There really are not plenty of places in the US where you can live a good, urban, non-car-oriented life, and you can tell that is true because the ones which do exist tend to be very expensive, showing that they are in high demand. You clearly do not desire an urban lifestyle, and I won't try to change your mind about that, but those of us who do want urban living generally don't find that our choices are either plen…

I think it's because urbanites keep getting suckered into letting builders do "condensed affordable housing" under the false premise that more housing means cheaper housing. Obviously that would only be true if the units were owned by competitors. Where one contractor owns all the units they set the prices, and they have no reason to make them "affordable." Just condensed.

Supply and demand would like to have a word with you.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#228

Post by throwawaaarrgh » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 5:46 AM UTC

1970-01-01 wrote: post #141

ortusdux wrote: post #20

I'd like to see more solar covered parking lots. Bonus points for integrated EV charging stations. They would be great in the hotter parts of the country. How much fuel/energy is spent cooling cars back down after they have sat in the sun for an hour?

Why isn't this actually happening? Parking lots are really 2D spaces, so leveraging the unused 3rd dimension is very smart and profitable.

If it were profitable, they'd be profiting.

Parking lots are parking lots because they require low CapEx, almost no OpEx. You buy some abandoned land, raze it, asphalt it, charge $30 a day per space (at let's say 75 spaces), tow the rest (at the driver's expense). You're pulling in a little under $67k/month. Wait for a commercial developer to come buy and take it off your hands for 3x its value.

You know how much it costs to dig up the ground, install power lines, a box, then bury footings, bolt in legs, install panels, etc, 9+ feet high? For a whole parking lot? $300k-500k, minimum (that's how much it costs just to install a small fleet of EV chargers btw, that's not doing major construction over an area the size of half a football field).

How much you gonna make off these panels? A 200kW panel array generates about 480MWh/yr, which at 1MW/$40 comes out to about $19,200/year in SREC credits. PA energy price is $0.18/KWh, so 480MW is $24/hr. But you're making 80% efficiency and it's not sunny all day all year, so at even 50% usage, that's $24,960/year. Almost a third of what the parking lot makes a month. Before we talk paying back installation costs, assuming your net metering deal is perfect.

It would be cheaper to build a multi-story garage, where you'd make WAY more money.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#229

Post by adrianN » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 5:50 AM UTC

whydoyoucare wrote: post #75

an_ko wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Major European cities with no such minimum parking requirements do fine. They have public transport and bike infrastructure, so many people in dense urban areas don't need cars.

I bet no one in major European cities requires to bike like ten miles each way. The point is the size of American cities is vastly different to European ones, so what works that side of Atlantic rarely translates "as-is" here. (I am disappointed about this oft thrown around comparison, since my city reduced one lane on several major roads and created bike paths. Sadly, we now have major traffic jams and hardly any ut…

If it's too far to bike or the weather is lousy you can always take public transport. Bikeable cities are easy to cover with public transport.

Re: Tear up unused parking lots, plant trees

#230

Post by adrianN » Wed, Jan 31, 2024, 5:52 AM UTC

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #203

Mawr wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anybody need to buy 12 liters of milk when the store is 5-10 mins away on foot? Reality in a lot of european cities is fundamentally different to most of the US.

Because I don't want to go to store every two days, and the prices in local small stores are higher than in a larger, discount store. I buy a pack of milk, and I'm good for a month.

Where I live the prices at local stores are pretty much the same as at the bigger stores farther away.