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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

#271

Post by ryukafalz »

deutschepost wrote: post #67
oceanplexian wrote: post #22

> "I think our country has used its land wastefully, like a drunk lottery winner that's squandered their newfound wealth," said resident Tai Hovanky. This sounds like a comment from someone who lives in a city and doesn’t get out. There is an incredible, vast, mind-boggling amount of empty space in the US. I have flown and driven across the country many times. City dwellers are occupying a fraction of 1% of the space…

This is about arbitrary parking regulations. Not about dense cities. The idea that we must live between enormously huge parking lots is nonsense. If you like that lifestyle, great, but it’s not reasonable to force it on everyone else.

This is precisely it. Those of us who would like more density and walkability have very limited options in the US, because those who prefer to drive everywhere have their preferences enshrined in law.

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

#272

Post by thex10 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #211
pavon wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without other rules or planning to compensate, it creates a tragedy of the commons where every builder wants to offload their parking needs onto the rest of the neighborhood in order to save money. I lived near a neighborhood that had older denser development, that originally served just that neighborhood, but later became a hip place for people to go, thus exceeding existing parking. It was very frustrating that res…

> It didn't help that the urbanism activists in our area seem to consider parking garages to be a tool of the devil and protested any plans to build one in the area. So Alice wants to build a high-density housing tower without having to build a ten-story parking structure beneath it, and we prohibit Alice from doing that, even though Bob wants to build a ten-story parking structure right next to it, because we prohib…

No one is prohibiting Alice from building the 10-story parking structure. The change is she's no longer required to build it.

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

#273

Post by bluGill »

avianlyric wrote: post #187
codybontecou wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've never had social interaction before the modern city /s

Erm, you realise that before the “modern city”, every urban area was small and walkable, on account of the car not being invented. The “modern city” or at least the US’s version of a “modern city” is the first time humans have ever lived so far apart at such scale. Enabled only because the car has conditioned so many people to think that driving 30mins to get anywhere interesting is “normal” or “natural”.

200 years ago 98% of humans were farmers and lived either on the farm or in a small village in walking distance of the farm. Todays cities are nothing like how people lived before modern days. If you were a substance farmer (as was your best case) you had about 5 acres of land - about what you get in the exurbs (though a modern exurb house is a lot bigger/nicer). If you were a slave (not unlikely) you lived in a very crowed boarding house with the other slaves on more land. Sure ancient Rome had 1 million people, but that was not the norm and even then most people were farmers in little villages not living in the city.

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

#274

Post by stetrain »

adrr wrote: post #199
georgeecollins wrote: post #48

In Los Angeles there are ~ 3 parking spaces per car, and < 1 housing unit per person. We mandate a bunch of parking for every new building, but no housing. Its no wonder that people live in cars.

Have you been to neighborhoods that don't have parking mandated parking spots? Anything built in the 60s to 80s. Drive around for 1/2 hour trying to find a parking spot every day, pay hundreds/thousands of dollars a year in fines because you forgot to move you car on street cleaning day. Repeat if you work at place in these old neighborhoods, like Venice or West LA where all the tech companies are located. The issue…

Driving and parking my car in a place that was designed in a world where not every household had 2+ cars to drive and park is annoying!

To fix this we should bulldoze things and build more room for my car!

I have to be able to park my car! What else could I possibly do instead?!

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

#275

Post by chung8123 »

0xfaded wrote: post #141
DoneWithAllThat wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not. I’ve lived in neighborhoods that did this and it was a nightmare. All street parking filling up by 4pm. Half hour walks to your car. Neighbors keying each others cars for taking up a space for too long. Guests basically just being SOL - you’d literally be unable to have guests over because if you left to pick them up there’d be no spot when you got back, and if they drove themselves they’d never find a spot…

Unfortunately people will fight tooth and nail to maintain their existing expectations and will see public transit as a threat to their cars. You have to take away cars (parking) first so that they start demanding public transportation.

The problem with public transport is it serves too many masters. Is it a system to allow the disabled to get around? Is it a system to enable everyone in town to get around? Is it a commuting system? Should it be subsidized or revenue neutral? Trying to solve all these problems makes the public transport systems not work for any of them well.

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

#276

Post by chung8123 »

tuna74 wrote: post #151
DoneWithAllThat wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not. I’ve lived in neighborhoods that did this and it was a nightmare. All street parking filling up by 4pm. Half hour walks to your car. Neighbors keying each others cars for taking up a space for too long. Guests basically just being SOL - you’d literally be unable to have guests over because if you left to pick them up there’d be no spot when you got back, and if they drove themselves they’d never find a spot…

The easy solution to this is to make (street) parking more expensive.

Street parking should have a price attached to it in my opinion. It is a public resource that should be charged for use everywhere, including out in front of your suburban home. We push these prices on everyone when it should be the people using them that pay.

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

#277

Post by dylan604 »

chimeracoder wrote: post #251
kube-system wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Carrying things home from the hardware store is not conducive activity with my e-bike. Large item purchases, blah blah blah. If I were to rent a car suitable each time, I could just pay the monthly car payment Do you have on-demand car sharing in your city? Like Zipcar or similar? You could go on a heck of a lot of hardware store trips in one of these cars for the price of a car payment + parking + insurance + taxe…

> Do you have on-demand car sharing in your city? Like Zipcar or similar? You could go on a heck of a lot of hardware store trips in one of these cars for the price of a car payment + parking + insurance + taxes + maintenance. I think you're replying to the wrong person. I do use Zipcar on the rare occasion that I need a car. It's way cheaper than car ownership (not even including parking).

On the chance they were meaning to reply to me, no, I don't think a Zipcar is going to help me carry sheets of plywood or other similar large items. However, I'm not familiar with Zipcar, so I just took a look. Near me, there's a Kia Soul or a Toyota Prius. Nope, neither of those helpful for my needs. I'll continue with the "hey buddy...got another sixer-request", although, some requests become cases.

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

#278

Post by jmye »

hughesjj wrote: post #166
kilotaras wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not what artificially inducing means. London for example have buildings which are prohibited of having parking (or getting street permit). Providing an option not pay for parking space when buying an apartment is not that.

IDK, pure speculation, but maybe 'autoexec' isn't arguing in good faith here and may have a conflict of interest

Assuming bad faith is somewhat ironic and kind of a crummy way to interact online. Do you not think it's conceivable that someone could possibly think this is a bad idea honestly?

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

#279

Post by dave78 »

vel0city wrote: post #242
detourdog wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I here this a lot but in the North East at least those extra spots can be used during the winter for snow management. Snow management can be done in other ways but that is a cost analysis exercise.

Can you elaborate on the snow management aspects?

Parking lots are a common place to store excess snow when it is plowed. Obviously from the parking lot itself, but also sometimes snow is hauled in dump trucks from other areas where there is no space to store the snow.

In snowy areas the piles can grow quite large and take up a sizable amount of parking lot space. These large piles then take considerably longer to melt away than snow in surrounding areas, sometimes lasting well into Spring.

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

#280

Post by dragonwriter »

autoexec wrote: post #270
dragonwriter wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When most people need something, and there is suddenly a much smaller supply of that thing, prices for the now scarce but still needed thing tend to increase. No one is arguing against the idea that eliminating parking requirements increases (in short-run, first-order analysis) the market clearing price of parking spaces. The contentious part is that the presence of the freedom to build housing without parking requ…

> The contentious part is that the presence of the freedom to build housing without parking requirements does nothing to reduce the demand for autos. Why would it? Without alternatives to cars as a means to get people to where they need to go, people will still require cars. As long as people are required to own and drive cars not having enough available parking does nothing to help reduce the amount of cars being ow…

> Why would it?

Because it would both enable and incentivize development patterns where people need cars less.

> Without alternatives to cars as a means to get people to where they need to go, people will still require cars.

Dense mixed-use development puts more of the places people need to go in places that don't require cars to get to them. (It also mass transit to other places more viable.)

Your focussed on alternatives ti cars to get to a fixed set of locations, but a big point of dense mixed-use development is to provide alternative locations.

> You can't solve the problem of people needing cars by not addressing the reasons people need cars

The reason people need cars is that the places they need to be a far away because of development patterns; one of the key features of development patterns that causes this is...the space use created by parking requirements.

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