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American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

usa.streetsblog.org

11–20 of 310 posts

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#11
>> Parking spaces are everywhere, but for some reason the perception persists that there’s “not enough parking.”

I imagine most people will perceive that there's not enough parking unless there's an open spot right out front of where they're going when they get there.

Services that facilitate parking further away from your destination might help.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#12

Until cities have a better alternative to driving than "use our terrible mass transit in our poorly-designed cities," this will remain a problem. American cities are designed for cars, so that bicycles, scooters, or any other human-scale transportation is not just inconvenient, it's dangerous. Forcing skateboards, scooters, gyros, bicycles, etc., into the road with 4,000 pound cars is insanely dangerous. If you're ri…

Kind of a weird argument that nobody wants to take the bus or the train because it's too crowded. Very Berra.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#14
post #2

I visited the US (particularly the bay area) for the first time recently, and I was baffled by the sparsity of buildings. Suburbs and shopping areas are so far away that you need a car to go anywhere, and in turn you need massive expanses to held all those vehicles, which means that stores are even more spread apart, which essentially becomes a snowball. Being used to high density housing and underground parking spac…

This is just an example of 'path dependency', i.e. 'history matters'. It's not baffling if you consider that sparse, car-driven infrastructure makes a lot of sense in a country with low population density, and population density has tripled in the US since 1930 [1]. At that time, Germany's population density was about 6x the US's.

However, changing transportation infrastructure is a chicken and egg problem.

People get upset if you take away their parking spaces and build densely when efficient public transport doesn't exist yet and they still need to own a car.

Yet building efficient public transport is at least a decade-long endeavor and requires either buying out or leveraging eminent domain to carve out space for the necessary infrastructure.

Local and state officials aren't going to stick their heads out to support this unless voters will politically reward them for starting a project, but probably not being around to see it finished.

If you want a regime that can efficiently bulldoze its way to the public transit and cheaply, then one way is to copy China, give power to governments to 'strongly encourage' the sale of any rights of way needed, don't open it up to public review and leave it completely in the hands of more-or-less capable technocrats. Is that a price you're willing to pay?

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183475/united-states-pop...

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#15
post #2

I visited the US (particularly the bay area) for the first time recently, and I was baffled by the sparsity of buildings. Suburbs and shopping areas are so far away that you need a car to go anywhere, and in turn you need massive expanses to held all those vehicles, which means that stores are even more spread apart, which essentially becomes a snowball. Being used to high density housing and underground parking spac…

It's infuriating to me living in North America (I'm in Canada but it's as bad or worse in the US) watching cities develop this way. Mention this to almost anyone here and you will be met with blank stares. There are countless places that contain many stores that share parking lots that we so huge you still have to drive between them.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#16
post #2

I visited the US (particularly the bay area) for the first time recently, and I was baffled by the sparsity of buildings. Suburbs and shopping areas are so far away that you need a car to go anywhere, and in turn you need massive expanses to held all those vehicles, which means that stores are even more spread apart, which essentially becomes a snowball. Being used to high density housing and underground parking spac…

This is how we have had such economic growth. We use our own population as a testbed where we disintermediate all of our own cultural support systems so that everything must be hired out. Food, transport, entertainment, self concept, family, all of it has been reformed in the U.S. over the last 100 years to replace community labor with commercial relations.

This means we get first dibs on these new industries (Software As A Service, Family Mental Health As A Service, Guiltlessness As A Service, etc) as they catch on globally. Sometimes naturally because we discover some actual value. More often just by finding a practice which is addicting and then just dumping product until a population is addicted.

Great recipe for success, much wealth has been stockpiled.

It’s possible we sold out some cultural knowledge in the process, but the U.S. is a young country so most of our culture was pretty raw in the 19th century.

The bulk of our old growth culture we just slaughtered on arrival.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#17

Until cities have a better alternative to driving than "use our terrible mass transit in our poorly-designed cities," this will remain a problem. American cities are designed for cars, so that bicycles, scooters, or any other human-scale transportation is not just inconvenient, it's dangerous. Forcing skateboards, scooters, gyros, bicycles, etc., into the road with 4,000 pound cars is insanely dangerous. If you're ri…

Kind of a weird argument that nobody wants to take the bus or the train because it's too crowded. Very Berra.

It just means there aren't enough bus routes or busses on the route.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#18
post #15
post #2

I visited the US (particularly the bay area) for the first time recently, and I was baffled by the sparsity of buildings. Suburbs and shopping areas are so far away that you need a car to go anywhere, and in turn you need massive expanses to held all those vehicles, which means that stores are even more spread apart, which essentially becomes a snowball. Being used to high density housing and underground parking spac…

It's infuriating to me living in North America (I'm in Canada but it's as bad or worse in the US) watching cities develop this way. Mention this to almost anyone here and you will be met with blank stares. There are countless places that contain many stores that share parking lots that we so huge you still have to drive between them.

Reno is an awesome example of this, and this is true even of the latest developments. It's like developers in Reno have never seen pictures of other cities, even here in America. This problem has been solved time and again... and Reno builds large and small shopping malls and then they're empty and under-utilized, so they build another new one and the results are the same.

Having lived overseas a few times in my life, I really am looking forward to leaving NorCal/NV and heading somewhere more sanely organized.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#20

Once automated vehicles take over (eventually), most people will switch to taxis. Taking taxis everywhere will be cheaper than owning your own vehicle. So the need to park will be greatly reduced. Eventually, mass transit will fail and underground subways will be repurposed for AVs. Parking will be built underground for off peak storage of vehicles, allowing the repurposing of surface parking spots. Maybe agricultura…

Yeah taxis don't have sufficient capacity. You'd just double the cars on the roads. Autonomous buses on the other hand could make a dent (since the primary cost of buses in rich countries is labor).
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