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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

#341

Post by bombcar »

tstrimple wrote: post #170
tellsomething wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One can like one tradeoff more than the other, but the fact that infrastructure means subsidy, and that urbanism choices are picking some people's interests over others is just factual. You do have a point. But, do you think cities prosper in spite of this subsidy? It seems like an investment that pays off in second error effects. I mean, why aren't cities without infrastructure growing like mad? Because it's not p…

The investment only pays off in areas with the tax base to recoup the upfront cost. Largely this isn't the suburbs or rural areas and only some parts of urban environments. Massive suburbs are built without the ability to maintain their infrastructure in the future based off of the taxes of its residents. There is an interesting image in this article ( https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason... )…

The absolute abundance of suburbs and relatively few bankruptcies thereof indicates the math is off somewhere.

Hint: the cost to build something is not the cost to maintain it.

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

#342

Post by sokoloff »

ryanmcgarvey wrote: post #143
busterarm wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marble countertops aren't competing for space that you could otherwise use to build more apartments to sell/rent. Parking is. Until parking spaces cost more than apartments do, developers are going to favor building apartments over parking one hundreds times out of one hundred.

Isn't this (part of) the point? We have an abundance of parking required by law and not enough housing units - removing the requirement should encourage more money to be invested into anything but parking no? Seems like letting businesses decide whether or not it's worth opening a business with the available parking would cause one of two things to happen: 1. We wind up with the actual correct amount of parking requi…

Multiple means of egress from bedrooms, fire-rated walls between units, accessibility requirements, auto-closing doors, fire suppression systems, CO and smoke detectors, are all things that we could remove the requirements for and also leave to the businesses and builders to decide whether or not the market demands those things.

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

#343

Post by sokoloff »

anamax wrote: post #323
dublinben wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing inherently incompatible with living an a walkable community and participating in hobbies like woodworking. For example, after just a few minutes of searching, here's the first listing I found of a condo in a building that includes an expansive workshop among other amenities. (See photo 52.) This is in a location with a 92 walk and bike score, and a 78 transit score.[0] If that's not to your liking, he…

> There's nothing inherently incompatible with living an a walkable community and participating in hobbies like woodworking. Okay, so there are 10 buildings (out of several thousand) with woodworking in Minneapolis, but how many of them also support what my spouse likes to do? This is a case where you don't want it in the building, which gets us to the "there's not enough space within a 5 minute walk for a wide range…

This is a case where I do want my woodworking or hobbies in the building, but I probably don't want your woodworking or other noisy/dusty hobbies in the building. Having a basement where I can tinker and a garage where I can do projects and car repairs and having that directly on my property where I can empty the rag bin, turn off the lights, and come back to it tomorrow or four weeks from now is exactly what I wanted (and why I'm not living in a denser part of the city).

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

#344

Post by bombcar »

QuercusMax wrote: post #310
kjkjadksj wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly because good transit implementation is so expensive only like a half dozen cities in the US are financially capable of building new rail transit or hiring a lot more bus operators. Also the fact bike lane projects in this country are seemingly done like a half mile at a time to the lowest standards, rather than a one shot whole network wide rollout of lanes that would make suburbanites feel safe to bike to err…

Compared to adding more lanes for cars, buying/leasing buses and hiring drivers has gotta be way cheaper. Road construction is expensive, especially if you have to get additional space in the right-of-way.

Do the math and run the numbers; the roads are usually much cheaper because once built the maintenance is relatively pedestrian.

Whereas the cost of a bus line usually has as a yearly maintenance/labor a significant portion.

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

#345

Post by sokoloff »

chung8123 wrote: post #276
tuna74 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Arguably property taxes, being the main way roads are funded in my city, pays for at least part of the access to the parking portion of those roads.

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

#346

Post by bombcar »

Moldoteck wrote: post #210
thelastgallon wrote: post #116

Lot of comments on building public transit first, before removing parking minimums. Public transit takes forever to build and its impossible to build usable transit with suburban sprawl. Usable transit --> reach destination in a reasonable time. Instead of public transit, cities should encourage Uber/Lyft. Car payments + insurance + gas + repairs/maintenance + parking might be close to $800 - $1000/month for most peo…

Public transit can be built fast. Replacing ppls cars with uber is nonsense: most trips are when ppl go to work and to home, so at peak hours all ppl need cars, so you need abt the same nr of cars with uber just like with personal cars, you don't solve congestion. That's why public transport wins, you get one unit to transport a lot of ppl, that's why uber/lyft are total bs for replacing good transit. There's no way…

The average passengers per bus-mile in the USA is incredibly depressing.

(It is very hard to have a transit system that handles capacity at load and still provides short enough head times as to not be annoying off-peak.)

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

#347

Post by sokoloff »

notatoad wrote: post #9
voisin wrote: post #3

It’s one thing to ditch parking minimums, but it has to be matched with investment in public transit. Simply eliminating parking spots doesn’t eliminate demand when there are no other options for getting around. And I suspect the public transit investment will be way more controversial and difficult to implement.

this doesn't eliminate parking spots. they're eliminating parking minimums , which in most cases are not backed by any sort of science or study - parking minimums get set mostly randomly, as a roadblock for development that people don't want in their neighbourhood. there's no good reason for most of these parking minimums, and they're not necessarily parking spots in places where there is any demand. steet parking, p…

Parking minimums either serve no purpose (meaning developers would naturally provision at least that many parking spaces on their own accord, making the minimums a no-op) xor eliminating parking minimums will eliminate some parking spots.

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

#348

Post by amluto »

bombcar wrote: post #329
mint2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s nice to have practically every amenity possible in easy walking distance I.e 5-10 minutes walk. Probably 20 restaurants, 20 small shops, coffee shops, ups, usps, fedex, hardware stores, museums, parks etc etc all within 10 minutes walk. It’s nice not having to drive for everyday errands. driving and parking is soul draining and causes suburbs to be ugly, not to mention freeways. Those are ugly as sin.

A ten minute walk is half to 3/4 of a mile. I doubt you can find all those things in that distance except in the densest of cities. And even then you might be quite restricted as similar stores seem to clump together.

A 3/4 mile radius is a lot. There are quite a few small cities in the Bay Area that have this and more, although maybe not the museums. And they’re not very dense.

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

#349

Post by lotsoweiners »

mint2 wrote: post #45
1-6 wrote: post #21

I thought a generation of remote work would change attitudes about cities. Why are we still trying to cram into small spaces?

Because it’s nice to have practically every amenity possible in easy walking distance I.e 5-10 minutes walk. Probably 20 restaurants, 20 small shops, coffee shops, ups, usps, fedex, hardware stores, museums, parks etc etc all within 10 minutes walk. It’s nice not having to drive for everyday errands. driving and parking is soul draining and causes suburbs to be ugly, not to mention freeways. Those are ugly as sin.

I have all of that in 10-15 minute walks in my extremely suburban neighborhood. Hell I’ve got regular full sized grocery store and a super sized grocery store within a 10 minute walk and a super Walmart in a 15 minute walk.

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

#350

Post by dylan604 »

earthling8118 wrote: post #315
dylan604 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's yet another reason city dwelling in a multi-tenant building is just not conducive for many people. I couldn't imagine not being able to work on projects. Of course, having the desire/inclination of having that kind of hobby is probably something a city slicker just isn't going to do. I have wood working and machine working tools that I'm just going to lean towards not being allowed by whatever building rules.…

I find this kind of false dichotomy to be unimaginative. Nobody said you couldn't work on projects in this circumstance. Other commenters have shown this already. And if this was true, why would it have to be? We shouldn't lock ourselves into that kind of world. There's no reason that people shouldn't be able to have access to workspaces just because they don't want to live in unsustainable car centric areas.

Okay, so someone has posted links to mythical urban workshops so that you can attempt to live without a car. So, since I'm so unimaginative, riddle me this Batman, how does one go about getting large materials to/from this workshop?
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