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American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

usa.streetsblog.org

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Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#201

Post by dsnuh »

jdietrich wrote: post #154
dsnuh wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with licensing requirements in other countries, are they more rigorous?

Here in the UK, you need to take a multiple-choice theory test and a practical driving test. The practical test takes about 40 minutes and is conducted on public roads. The pass rate for both the theory and practical test is about 50%. It's not uncommon for learners to fail the practical test several times. You're not required to have professional instruction but the vast majority of people do, because it's extremely…

That doesn't sound all that different from requirements in CA, save the special license plate tags.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#202

Post by haste410 »

DINKDINK wrote: post #126
jjeaff wrote: post #123

This article tries to make the (weak) point that there is plenty of parking simply because averages show they spots sit empty most of the time. But that type of analysis ignores the obvious fact that most parking is built to support peak times. Most mall parking lots sit mostly empty, except on the weekends when everyone goes to the mall or restaurants or whatever. Corporate lots sit empty on the weekends. Cut any of…

>...averages show they spots sit empty most of the time. But that type of analysis ignores the obvious fact that most parking is built to support peak times. The word, that not enough technical and non-technical people know, that describes this issue is ergodicty: > an ergodic dynamical system is one that, broadly speaking, has the same behavior averaged over time as averaged over the space of all the system's states…

Seems like a useful term to know. Too bad the wikipedia article is too dense to understand.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#203

Post by nmoaenm342nt »

ryanSrich wrote: post #40
mattlondon wrote: post #34

I always thought it was weird how there is so much parking in the centre of US cities. When I talk to colleagues in various US cities and they say they drive to work it just Does. Not. Compute . In central London, driving to work is essentially unheard of unless you are the Prime Minister. There is parking available in London, but the prices are fairly high - I just had a quick look on parkopedia [1] and it looks lik…

A few points: 1.) A lot of employers offer some percentage of parking reimbursement. 2.) A lot of employees live 1+ hour away. The bus doesn't work in these situations. 3.) Often times the bus is extremely dirty and dangerous. Risking injury or confrontation isn't worth saving a few dollars a day on driving.

> 2.) A lot of employees live 1+ hour away. The bus doesn't work in these situations.

I live in large dense city in the US (Los Angeles). I live a 15-20 minute car ride from work. The city is going to be doing some construction on my route and have asked the businesses to encourage their employees to take public transit, walk, bike, etc. during the construction. I looked into taking the bus, which for the first time in my life, is a reasonable walk from my home. It would increase my commute time (one way) from 20 minutes to 50 minutes! Sorry, but I don't have an extra hour I can take out of my day for that. It would be better to just work from home, but my employer won't let me do that for the duration of the construction which is supposed to last a year or two.

EDIT: For about a month, my office was at the Santa Monica end of the train. (Like literally right next to the train stop.) Sadly it no longer is. Even then, a coworker decided to take the train once from his place in Pasadena. His normally 45-60 minute commute increased to an hour and 50 minutes taking public transport. Sorry, but he'll just drive instead.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#204

Post by [deleted] »

beefalo wrote: post #80
mattlondon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in the UK, employers offer things like interest free loans for season tickets or buying a folding commuter bike etc. 1+ hour away is fairly common in London, even on public transport. Not only is London itself pretty large, but it has a big catchment area for people coming in for work from elsewhere. Buses can be made safer and cleaner and more comfortable with investment. Would I prefer to drive in my own car i…

The people commuting 1 hour in the US usually don’t even have a public transit option or it would take 4 times as long. In my city, a trip that would take 1 hour by train/bus would probably be 20 minutes by car and parking is plentiful and cheap.

[deleted]

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#205

Post by lostlogin »

beefalo wrote: post #80
mattlondon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in the UK, employers offer things like interest free loans for season tickets or buying a folding commuter bike etc. 1+ hour away is fairly common in London, even on public transport. Not only is London itself pretty large, but it has a big catchment area for people coming in for work from elsewhere. Buses can be made safer and cleaner and more comfortable with investment. Would I prefer to drive in my own car i…

The people commuting 1 hour in the US usually don’t even have a public transit option or it would take 4 times as long. In my city, a trip that would take 1 hour by train/bus would probably be 20 minutes by car and parking is plentiful and cheap.

This is the same where I live but I think it’s a little misleading. Public transport doesn’t have to be faster or more comfortable to be better than taking a car. Cars are a pain in other ways (maintenance, insurance, up front cost, you can’t park right at your destination, you can’t read etc while commuting etc) and so individual journeys don’t have to be faster to be ‘better’ than taking the car.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#206

Post by AnthonyMouse »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #124
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“You have very very different kinds of people living in close physical proximity who often want nothing to do with each other.” Knowing that the US is probably one of the most segregated countries, this makes me smile :-)

The US is a widely diverse country, including internally. Milwaukee is quite segregated, Sacramento isn't. There is a wide spread, depending on where you are. Overall, the US is about average diversity compared to other countries.

> Overall, the US is about average diversity compared to other countries.

I don't think that's accurate. Europe is almost entirely European, Asia is almost entirely Asian, Africa is almost entirely African. Even Wisconsin at 86.5% white is less white than most European countries. And Milwaukee itself is 40% black and 17.3% Latino.

The countries that come anywhere close to the US on diversity are predominantly the other countries in the Americas.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#207

Post by mygo »

narrator wrote: post #46
erikpukinskis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (Softwa…

The reason that everything is so not integrated is because of the American culture of containment. You have very very different kinds of people living in close physical proximity who often want nothing to do with each other. Think East Palo Alto and Palo Alto for example, especially in the 90s when East Palo Alto had the highest murder rate per capita in the U.S. Nowadays, physical proximity means less and less. Rela…

> The throughly modern American asks "Why would you need to be in physical proximity to someone anyway unless it was necessary for work? That's so creepy!".

If that’s the case then I disavow all things “modern.” Nothing exciting to me at all about putting up walls between me and the people I actually see in person.

Maybe this is why I deleted my facebook a few years back, call when a few texts become a back and forth conversation, push for meet ups, and don’t use Tinder. I really don’t want to live in a world where the majority of our human-to-human communications is tapping on glass.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#208

Post by vilmosi »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #206
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is a widely diverse country, including internally. Milwaukee is quite segregated, Sacramento isn't. There is a wide spread, depending on where you are. Overall, the US is about average diversity compared to other countries.

> Overall, the US is about average diversity compared to other countries. I don't think that's accurate. Europe is almost entirely European, Asia is almost entirely Asian, Africa is almost entirely African. Even Wisconsin at 86.5% white is less white than most European countries. And Milwaukee itself is 40% black and 17.3% Latino. The countries that come anywhere close to the US on diversity are predominantly the oth…

> I don't think that's accurate. Europe is almost entirely European, Asia is almost entirely Asian, Africa is almost entirely African

This has to be sarcasm, right?

If not, this view is very wrong because it views diversity in a manner that's purely and literally skin deep.

Re: American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage

#210

Post by nmoaenm342nt »

extralego wrote: post #21
burfog wrote: post #3

It is highly misleading to point out that "In Des Moines, for example, there are 18 times as many parking spaces per acre as households". Well sure, commercial areas don't have households but they still need parking. Not even questioning the numbers, which might be carefully picked, I come to the opposite conclusion. To me, "In Seattle, the parking occupancy rate downtown is 64 percent." means that there is very litt…

Talk about gridlock ! Literally and figuratively... I don’t think anyone is missing your point, but it sounds terribly short-sighted. For one, what’s good for business is commonly catastrophic to other systems. An effort to prioritize here is critical. For some reason, baby-boomers have an odd propensity for ignoring more systematic, hollistic concerns brought by the shift to dependency on automobiles. I think I can…

Wow, your prejudice is both shocking and disgusting.
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