[HN Gopher] The force that shapes everything around us: Parking
___________________________________________________________________
The force that shapes everything around us: Parking
Author : vwoolf
Score : 184 points
Date : 2023-07-17 14:01 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vox.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vox.com)
| ultra_nick wrote:
| A land value tax would fix this.
|
| https://www.thebalancemoney.com/what-is-a-land-value-tax-520...
| staringback wrote:
| The solution to every problem: adding another tax
| enragedcacti wrote:
| LVT is an alternate scheme for calculating property taxes
| which already exist in every state in the US.
| francisofascii wrote:
| > catastrophically mismanaged the way we provide parking in this
| country > it's not properly priced
|
| It is was interesting how complex the parking situation can be.
| So many factors come into play when planning a trip to raise my
| anxiety levels. Factors include: likelihood of availability given
| your timing, safely of vehicle, price (anywhere from free to $60
| a day), time limits, proximity to desired location.
|
| I think I would like some sort of reservation system, but I am
| sure that would come with other unforeseen issues, like rick
| people reserving everything at all times.
| johnea wrote:
| "Why does parking make us so crazy?"
|
| I wonder who he means by "us"?
|
| I guess, in this modern world, making "us" crazy doesn't require
| going very far...
| ubermonkey wrote:
| My whole life I've struggled with the need for cars in the places
| I've lived. Very few US cities have the right infrastructure to
| go car-free, and the places I personally have lived feature such
| unrelentingly hot summers that going anywhere without AC is
| pretty much a nonstarter.
|
| But it exists as a low-grade "well this sucks, but I can't do
| much about it" fact of existence, like hangnails or tax audits.
| Then, last year, I bought a motorcycle in lieu of us getting a
| second car, and I found that EVEN WITH the hassles of weather and
| limited cargo, and EVEN WITH factoring in the need to wear
| protective gear, the dead solid CERTAINTY that I can park in
| seconds without being far from my destination makes the bike my
| preference 80% of the time.
|
| Only 100F or driving rain will make me PICK the car if the
| logistics of the trip don't demand it for other reasons. The
| agility, ease of parking, and absurd fuel economy are all huge
| wins, plus it's always more fun that driving.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| The problem with bikes is that you are subjecting yourself to a
| 6x higher deathrate. Thanks partially to the cars next to you
| on the road.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| It's definitely more dangerous, but so is bicycling on those
| roads, which I do far more frequently.
|
| It's worth noting, too, that motorcycle casualty rates are
| somewhat distorted by the 19-year-old dumbass factor. Anybody
| with money can get a moto license and buy a used liter bike
| with WAY WAY WAY more power than anyone should realistically
| have on public roads. An astonishing number of motorcycle
| fatalities and injuries are solo accidents due to
| misadventure.
|
| I'm old. I did all my stupid stuff already, and have a
| healthy respect for being effectively naked in traffic (ie,
| from cycling). It's still more dangerous than being in a car,
| but the overall stats mislead about HOW much more dangerous.
| wizofaus wrote:
| > parking is perhaps the greatest determinant of whether people
| decide to make a trip in a car or by some other means
|
| Surely that can't be true in general - I would think the
| quality/convenience/cost of the alternative would be by far the
| biggest factor (but yes, you could argue that's rolling multiple
| factors into one).
|
| But as an example, plenty of offices I've worked at over the
| years have offered free or cheap parking to all staff, with
| sufficient space for virtually everyone, yet less than half of
| the staff chose to drive simply because getting there by car was
| slower/more expensive than the alternatives (typically train or
| tram, and a few, like myself, that much prefer our pushbikes!).
| Actually at my current job in a CBD/downtown building, nobody
| drives despite the high availability of parking, but it is quite
| expensive to use (~$18 a day I believe).
| damnesian wrote:
| >You could imagine a world in which streets were pedestrianized
| and where we planted trees and gardens and in what is currently
| space reserved for parking, and closed streets, outside schools,
| so kids can have places to play.
|
| I would love to see a LOT more of this in urban centers.
|
| I live in a college town that is about the same size as Iowa
| City. Iowa City has taken the step of closing off their downtown
| and making it mostly pedestrian space. It's incredibly nice to
| explore the area on foot. Our city has considered the same idea
| but pedestrianizing our downtown has been so controversial when
| it has been discussed, it hasn't come up for over a decade-
| mayors are scared to death to touch it.
|
| Part of the reason is poor past civic planning would make it very
| expensive to correct. The main conduit through the downtown
| business district is also the major East-West artery of town,
| making the street one of those dreaded "stroads-" a street in the
| sense that there is heavy commercial and residential presence,
| resulting in a LOT of local foot traffic and stops all day long;
| mixed with traffic that just wants to get through downtown to
| somewhere else. So half of the traffic is looking for parking and
| the other half is running red lights to get somewhere else as
| fast as possible.
|
| There have been, predictably, many incidents involving cars,
| pedestrians and bicycles. But not one inch moved on what's become
| the 800lb gorilla. I don't think a solution is even possible.
| mturmon wrote:
| Ithaca, New York is another similar-sized town (population
| ~31K) that closed some blocks of its downtown "Main Street"
| (State Street) to make a very pleasant pedestrian business
| district. This happened in the 1970s.
|
| The pedestrianized portion of State Street was part of a New
| York state highway -- highway traffic was re-routed to be on
| parallel one-way streets, separated by 2 blocks, that bracket
| the district.
|
| The somewhat scattered wikipedia page
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaca_Commons) has some of the
| backstory. (I lived there in the 90s and I think it's
| exaggerating the downturn in those years, but whatever.)
| david2ndaccount wrote:
| Part of the problem is you can't _just_ convert an area to a
| pedestrian area as people still need to be able to get there.
| You need to construct low cost parking garages around the area
| so people can still get there.
| notatoad wrote:
| converting an _area_ is hard, but a street is easy. we don 't
| need to pedestrianize whole city centers, just pick the
| streets where it makes sense. cars don't need _every_ street.
| people are perfectly willing to walk a block if that 's their
| only option. if you close a street to cars, people will park
| on the next street over and walk.
|
| the street parking in front of a business is never enough for
| all the patrons of that business anyways, people are usually
| parking and then walking 1-2 blocks to get where they're
| going. removing the street parking in front of a business
| only removes the _hope_ of finding that perfect parking
| space.
| david2ndaccount wrote:
| This sounds like the worst of both worlds. We should ban
| on-street parking regardless.
| Cockbrand wrote:
| Comments like this make me appreciate living in a city that
| has a pretty comprehensive public transport coverage, and
| where bicycling is at least tolerable. The city you describe
| seems to be only usable by car.
| Reubachi wrote:
| There's currently very little incentive to pedestrianize
| actual problem cities from all concerned parties. Because
| pedestrians are still largely able to bike, walk, bus etc
| just fine. And drivers are largely able to commute/park
| just fine.
|
| We need to be honest that the folks most concerned
| (rightfully so) with urban car congestion are wealthy upper
| class people who moved TO the cities for their upperclass
| nature. Should we totally upend one of these groups in an
| attempt to solve an unsolvable problem for both groups?
|
| Bit of rambling but I am fascinated by this problem.
| Someone wrote:
| > Because pedestrians are still largely able to bike,
| walk, bus etc just fine.
|
| I don't see how that's true for most cities in the USA.
|
| For walking, in many cases, there isn't even a sidewalk
| for pedestrians to use. If there is, crossing stroads is
| way more difficult (large distances between crossing
| opportunities) and dangerous (e.g. no pedestrian islands
| halfway) than needed.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Same goes for biking. If there is a bike lane, you still
| have two ton vehicles buzzing sometimes inches away from
| you at twice or three times your speed. The smallest
| intersection scares me. Turning left requires me to come
| to a complete stop and wait for a chance to change lanes
| and turn. It's equivalent to crossing the street on foot.
| When I arrive, I have to search for a bike rack. My
| nearest grocery store has one rack for five bicycles
| tucked in the far corner of the plaza (I have never seen
| a bike parked there, however). My favorite coffee shop
| has no bike racks anywhere on the street, so I lock up to
| a sign in the parking lot.
|
| There's no way to escape this as my house is flanked by
| two stroads. I hear constant traffic sounds well into the
| night. I live in a beautiful old neighborhood that
| predates the Ford Model T. I've seen pictures of ox-
| driven carriages rolling by historical downtown
| buildings. We had a cable car that ran down one of the
| current stroads. My city could drastically drop car
| dependency if we had the will.
| runarberg wrote:
| Your class narrative is not a real world scenario.
|
| In many countries (including USA and EU) working class
| people are pushed _out of the cities_ and into suburbs or
| satellite cities as the inner city prices are simply to
| high and they cannot afford rent. This is doubly true for
| people with kids or otherwise large families. If they
| still work in the city, they are simply forced to
| commute. Thankfully many cities have adequate public
| transit systems so they are not always forced to buy a
| second or a third car for the household (notable
| exception here is the Sunbelt in the USA) and move even
| further away to an even cheaper house to be able to
| afford that.
|
| It would be a simple narrative if in place of the poor
| folks moving out of the city, rich folks would be moving
| in. But that is not the case. In many cases these houses
| are filled by AirBnB, short term rentals, or simply left
| vacant by a landlord hoping to rent at a higher price.
|
| Most working class people that I know and commute to work
| by driving would love to be able to leave their car at
| home and commute with a bus or rail. For them driving to
| work saves might save them over an hour a day in commute
| time, time they would rather spend with their family then
| waiting at a bus transfer. If they could park their car
| at a nearby park and ride and save even more time, they
| would. For them, they are not commuting just fine, they
| are indeed very annoyed at not having a better option.
| david2ndaccount wrote:
| Many cities in the US are only usable by car. You can't
| just leap from a car-based city to a non-car-based city,
| you have to provide transitionary options (also even car-
| optional cities still have parking garages).
| jeddy3 wrote:
| Sure, but many cities in the world are not in the US.
| astrodust wrote:
| Somehow many cities took the leap from extremely
| pedestrian friendly in 1900 to completely car based, so
| "you can't just" is clearly not true. It just takes a lot
| of willpower, or in the case of cars, tons of lobbying.
| 8note wrote:
| What it takes is tearing down large swaths of current car
| infrastructure and the buildings surrounding it. Eg.
| Seattle tearing down the viaduct a few years back
|
| Which is what it took to turn American cities into car
| based to begin with.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| That's not a great example, because Seattle spent
| kajillions of dollars on a ridiculous tunnel under the
| city to replace the viaduct AND THEN built a second
| ground-level highway on the newly available delightful
| waterfront space. Seattle's way of getting rid of the
| viaduct is a colossal waste of money and years of work
| for a terrible shitty result that is 1000% car based. A
| giant failure.
| Cockbrand wrote:
| Absolutely, and while the transition is probably
| desirable, it'll take a long time. And yes, of course
| there's in fact still too much car traffic around here,
| and parking garages exist in great numbers.
| the_doctah wrote:
| Having just returned from Europe I feel like the public
| transportation options are so much better.
|
| On the flip side, Amsterdam is great, but I felt like I was
| constantly dodging bicycles.
| adolph wrote:
| > Part of the problem is you can't just convert an area to a
| pedestrian area as people still need to be able to get there.
| You need to construct low cost parking garages around the
| area so people can still get there.
|
| From what I've seen pedestrian area conversion typically
| includes perimeter parking.
|
| A interesting case similar to conversion to exclude cars, is
| the conversion of very old places to have cars. Guanajuato,
| MX was built up in the 1500's. For the majority of the old
| town residences and businesses alike are inaccessible by car.
| The city did convert some major roads, creeks and mines to
| roads, but parking for many is relatively distant.
|
| [Edit, update from state to city of Gto]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanajuato_(city)
|
| https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g150799-i726-k1701090-.
| ..
| ghayes wrote:
| I never understood why you can't do this to say 10% of city
| roads. That way there's still car accessibility and you can
| continue to grow public transit, as well. Personally I think
| the majority of roads should be reclaimed to pedestrians and
| tracked rail cars. The only exception would be street-local
| deliveries/residents can enter and drive at say 3mph yielding
| to all pedestrians.
| pharmakom wrote:
| People literally took to the streets (ironic, I know) when
| they tried this in London, UK
| _Wintermute wrote:
| A vocal minority, who largely lived outside of London.
| pmg102 wrote:
| SOME people did, yes. Others quietly enjoyed the
| improvements. Things seem to be moving in the right
| direction, despite the usual reactionary noises.
|
| I read that no councillor had suffered at the ballot box
| for their pro-LTN news. Which suggests it's a noisy
| minority.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| A college town's context is very different than that of the
| central business district and inner city of a large
| metropolitan area. Context doesn't just matter, it's one of, if
| not the most, important aspects to consider when selecting a
| development pattern. You can't turn downtown St. Lous into
| downtown Iowa City or even 'downtown' Seoul, South Korea.
| Dreamers hate this reality and will contort their assertions
| every which way they can to avoid admitting any of this.
| hibikir wrote:
| As it happens, a non-trivial amount of Downtown St Louis is
| now failing commercial real estate: It's not just the AT&T
| building, which could be had for cheaper than many Seattle
| single family homes, or the two hotels in receivership, but
| also now Bank of America plaza. Wework exited downtown too,
| leaving two more empty floors in One Metropolitan Square. Its
| current use is basically sporting events, and the few
| government buildings that have to stay there.
|
| Now, I'd not recommend that we centered any serious
| investment making downtown less car-friendly, but mainly
| because downtown's fixes are way too expensive: In its
| current form, it's not doing well, and not trending up.
| Walkability could help, but walkability downtown isn't a
| matter of making Market street narrower, or slower: Many
| buildings themselves are set up to be anti-pedestrian, with
| huge setbacks to the street, and no retail space. Just huge
| office buildings nobody wants to rent. Interventions to help
| the city of St Louis just have to start in parts of the city
| that have better bones. Spend a little to make the somewhat
| successful parts of the city a bit more successful. Allow
| relatively walkable neighborhoods to become denser, bigger
| and more walkable, and see if people vote with their feet.
|
| Downtown? We couldn't afford fixing it, for either cars or
| pedestrians.
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| But those contexts and also such "contexts transformations"
| exist, so why possible at some places and unthinkable at
| others? Just saying "dreamer hits reality hard" is a bit
| destructive, arrogant, and apparently not the complete
| necessary truth?
| dopidopHN wrote:
| Paris is closing the already pretty closed downtown ( along
| the Seine ). Does that qualify as large metro area?
|
| What are the actual piece of reality that makes it impossible
| in US cities?
| mlyle wrote:
| It's totally possible, but not as a step change.
|
| Heavy car traffic is a stable system that's actively
| unfriendly to pedestrian and bicycle uses. You need to
| slowly claw away space for bicycles and increase ridership;
| and then work to densify and intermix commercial and
| residential for things to work well.
|
| It takes decades, and the initial steps make things worse
| even if the new equilibrium is better.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Heavy car traffic is a stable system that's actively
| unfriendly to pedestrian and bicycle uses. You need to
| slowly claw away space for bicycles and increase
| ridership; and then work to densify and intermix
| commercial and residential for things to work well. > >
| It takes decades, and the initial steps make things worse
| even if the new equilibrium is better.
|
| Your point about the stable equilibrium is correct, but
| there's no reason it has to take decades. If you look at
| pictures of cities like Amsterdam, Paris, and Vienna from
| not long ago, you can see how much more pedestrian-
| friendly they were made, and much of those changes
| actually happened more or less overnight.
|
| The actual changes are pretty easy to implement. Red tape
| slows it down, but that's a feature of our own invention,
| not an inherent limitation.
| dublinben wrote:
| Downtown St. Louis used to look like Iowa City though, before
| it was ruined by "urban renewal" and automobiles in the 20th
| century.[0][1] It was deliberately transformed from one into
| the other, and can just as deliberately be transformed back
| again.
|
| [0] https://www.pinterest.com/pin/91127592440641982/
|
| [1] https://www.stlmag.com/history/pedestrian-deaths-streets-
| dow...
| ZitchDog wrote:
| I live in Iowa City - thanks for the shoutout! I can confirm -
| I work downtown, it's great. Boulder has a similar concept.
| paganel wrote:
| > You could imagine a world in which streets were
| pedestrianized and where we planted trees and gardens
|
| This gentrification just kills me on the inside.
| TeeWEE wrote:
| Come to the Netherlands. Sell your car. Buy a bike.
|
| A car is not really a status symbol here. Its more like a
| liability.
| mikrl wrote:
| Are the buses any good if the weather turns? I rode a Dutch bus
| once or twice and it was jam packed. Some old lady even kept
| trying to insinuate that younger ladies on the bus grab onto me
| for support!
|
| The Amsterdam metro was very comfortable though and I can't
| wait to ride it again.
| tzs wrote:
| Yet a heck of a lot of people have cars there. Private car
| ownership in the Netherlands is around 590 per 1000 population.
| It's within 10% of Germany on cars per 1000 population and on
| percentage of families that own a car.
|
| The Netherlands stands out for its excellent biking facilities
| so that people who cannot afford a car are not screwed like
| they are in many places, and people with a car don't have to
| use it is as often, but car ownership there is in the same
| ballpark as most of the rest of Europe.
| ericmay wrote:
| Yea but the cars are smaller and transit isn't designed
| _exclusively_ around moving cars from one place to another. I
| can 't even bike in my city because I'll get ran over.
| Comparing the numbers directly doesn't make a lot of sense.
| wiredfool wrote:
| I've seen more Large US Car/Pickups (think old full size
| van/suburban/pickup) in the Netherlands than anywhere else
| in Europe (with the exception of right outside of a US
| military facility).
| rahkiin wrote:
| And they should be banned as they are wrong on every
| scale and measurement. Our infrastructure is not made for
| those huge machines nor does anyone need one.
|
| If you need a car for a construction job, we have
| autobuses like VW Sprinter or Caddy for that
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Here are the stats
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_...
|
| Netherlands has 38th highest cars/capita. Austria, Scotland,
| Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, Hungary all have lower car ownership
| numbers. Though not that much lower. Why is this?
| c4mpute wrote:
| The Netherlands do have huge bicycle parking lots and strict
| parking enforcement for bicycles. Bicycle parking is as bad as
| car parking over there. I'm glad I've only briefly visited
| there...
| sime2009 wrote:
| ha ha. You clearly don't have the slightest clue what you are
| talking about.
| CalRobert wrote:
| We arrive August 2nd. What would you recommend for newcomers?
| We've signed up with the gemeente and our daughters have spots
| in the Taalschool. Any ideas on how to meet people?
| rahkiin wrote:
| Sports (your own or of your children), school (parent
| gatherings, extra activities involving parents) are great
| ways to meet people that are even in your age group.
|
| Get yourself bikes asap, also your children. No need for
| electrical bikes generally (depends on where you are going to
| live).
| CalRobert wrote:
| Already bringing my Brompton and Bacchetta (I might
| actually feel safe on a recumbent!) but we're sorting out a
| bakfiets when we get there.
|
| I'm delighted there's a lively Halloween group :-)
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| What's funny about this is the Netherlands has some of the BEST
| roads I've ever driven on. They also have some of the best
| sound-damping on their highways and bridges. Wonderful to see
| tax dollars actually going into transit infrastructure.
| lucumo wrote:
| Nonsense.
|
| This is only true if you live in an inner city bubble. Cars are
| pretty popular ways of getting about in the suburbs and rural
| areas.
| throw0101a wrote:
| _Oh the Urbanity_ recently visited the Netherlands and did a
| profile video, "The Fascinating Human-Scale Urbanism of
| Dutch Suburbia":
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nImFJ7KKjAo
|
| > _Cars are pretty popular ways of getting about in the
| suburbs and rural areas._
|
| But how much are cars _needed_ on a day-to-day basis for day-
| to-day errands? I don 't think any is saying that they are
| not _useful_ (at times), but you can have them be less
| _necessary_.
| dahwolf wrote:
| I'm Dutch and I want to push back against the glorification
| of our infrastructure. To comment on that video
| specifically:
|
| Yes, fully on board with the narrower streets, "hiding"
| parking, having some shared public space like playgrounds.
| These are all good things.
|
| But there's a flip side to this coin. This isn't
| necessarily a desired "way of life", it's what naturally
| evolved due to severe space constraints.
|
| I specifically take offense at high cost dense suburbia.
| You pay through the nose but still are not in some cool
| city. You have a tiny house and possibly noisy neighbors as
| well as less privacy.
|
| Suburbia can be denser but than it must be cheap. Dense
| expensive suburbia is the worst of all worlds.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _But there 's a flip side to this coin. This isn't
| necessarily a desired "way of life", it's what naturally
| evolved due to severe space constraints._
|
| There is nothing 'natural' about the evolution of NL
| cities as demonstrated by the fact that (e.g.) Amsterdam
| started to go down the car-centric route:
|
| * https://inkspire.org/post/amsterdam-was-a-car-loving-
| city-in...
|
| It was a _policy choice_ to not go in that direction--or
| rather to _stop and turn_ away--as opposed to some kind
| of physical law of the universe. _Not Just Bikes_ uses
| Rotterdam as an example of how even in NL+ policy can go
| in other directions:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22ovt1EMULY
|
| My dad used to work at the post office facility in this
| area:
|
| * https://www.google.com/maps/place/4577+Eglinton+Ave+E,+
| Missi...
|
| In the early 1990s there used to be strawberries fields
| across the street, and now the entire area is filled with
| generic suburb strip malls. Perhaps agriculture would
| have gone away eventually, but there's no reason why it
| had car-centric, low-density development that replaced
| it. How close is agriculture to some NL cities?
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO6txCZpbsQ&t=9m28s
|
| > _Suburbia can be denser but than it must be cheap.
| Dense expensive suburbia is the worst of all worlds._
|
| No: low-density expensive suburbia is the worst of all
| worlds because it necessitates cars, which has leads to
| all sorts of externality costs. The total OpEx is also
| much more expensive with low densities:
|
| * https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-
| the-publ...
|
| And just because you have sprawl doesn't mean you have
| cheap housing:
|
| * https://thetyee.ca/News/2018/03/23/Urban-Sprawl-Not-
| More-Aff...
|
| See LA and even the Greater Toronto area (GTA) as
| examples:
|
| * https://dailyhive.com/toronto/toronto-ranked-least-
| affordabl...
|
| + I use "NL" in the international ccTLD sense, and not in
| my Canadian sense of the province of Newfoundland and
| Labrador. :)
| enaaem wrote:
| I'm also dutch. Housing is indeed expensive here. There
| are many factors, but it's not because of walkable
| neighbourhoods, biking infrastructure and public
| transport (the things that are promoted). I'd argue that
| without these policies housing and transport will be 10x
| more expensive and inconvenient.
| lucumo wrote:
| Errands? I guess you could get by without a car. But then,
| you could get by without leaving the house for the most
| part, with groceries and other stuff delivered to your
| door.
|
| Still, the average number of cars per household is more
| than 1 in the suburbs. And that's no surprise really,
| because work is not in the suburbs. Especially not the jobs
| that pay enough to live in suburbia.
|
| If you're lucky the one bus line or tram line in your
| suburb goes to near your job. More commonly, it doesn't.
|
| Look, people use cars because they are practical. They are
| fucking expensive, so anyone who reasonably can do without,
| will. People in inner cities do not use cars that often,
| because a car is a heavier burden there. Parking is
| expensive and difficult in the city.
| pc86 wrote:
| For what percentage of people in rural or suburban America do
| you think "move to the Netherlands" is a realistic suggestion?
| MezzoDelCammin wrote:
| Just out of curiosity - how big of an issue is parking in
| rural US?
| sleepybrett wrote:
| In terms of 'will I have space to park my vehicle pretty
| much anywhere', little to none. In terms of, 'we could make
| way better use of all this land that's given over to
| parking' tons.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Warm season: no problem, go anywhere anytime and park for
| "free" except maybe at certain neighborhood churches on
| Sunday and big school functions.
|
| cold season: if the lines are covered by snow, all bets are
| off. Some capacity is lost to The Pile, but even more is
| lost due to nobody knowing how to just park next to
| somebody else.
| tekla wrote:
| It's an issue when it takes 10m to walk to the Walmart
| entrance from the parking lot.
|
| (This is intended as humor)
| MezzoDelCammin wrote:
| Yeah, it's kind of a pity that once the cars vs bikes
| debate comes up, irony is often really not obvious.
|
| The best take on this topic so far I've seen has been
| from "Not Just Cars":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nZh7A7qTPo
| acchow wrote:
| Sadly, sometimes in the US it takes just as long to walk
| _within_ the parking lot as the equivalent _total travel
| time_ would have been in a walkable European or Asian
| city
| synetic wrote:
| Clearly not a lot. It took the comment as a means of letting
| others know that American style asphalt parking jungles is
| not the only option. That there are healthier, more
| aesthetically pleasing, and more environmentally friendly
| alternatives to our way of life.
| CalRobert wrote:
| The Dutch American Friendship Treaty makes it slightly more
| attainable than most other European countries, for those who
| employ themselves at least.
| falcolas wrote:
| I think you need to go one level deeper: People needing to move
| non-trivial distances for periodic tasks shapes everything. Cars,
| and thus car parking, come about because of this need.
|
| Even before cars existed, roads and parking (such as hitching
| posts and stables) still existed because people needed to move.
|
| And even bicycles (electric or not) need parking too. There are
| startups dedicated to creating automated bike parking garages to
| limit theft.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > People needing to move non-trivial distances for periodic
| tasks
|
| Or being required to even if their job can be effectively done
| from home (and consists entirely of slack message and zoom
| calls with remote coworkers whether they pollute the planet
| driving into the office or not).
| ttymck wrote:
| Why do I _need_ to go to the mall? Because there is no retail
| zoning closer to my home.
| falcolas wrote:
| Because some things are too expensive to keep in stock (at
| least with any variety in styles/brands/etc) at local retail
| stores? Clothing, hobby supplies, computer peripherals, etc.
| balfirevic wrote:
| My city has plenty of all kinds of shops where people live,
| but they (and I) still go to malls because shops there are
| larger and better equipped, there are more of them and you
| can walk between them at nice temperature and protected from
| the rain.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, small shops in neighborhoods will never be able to
| match the price to utility ratio of large shopping
| complexes with businesses like Costco, Target, Walmart,
| Best Buy, Ikea, Home Depot, Apple, Kroger, etc.
|
| As long as one has access to a personal car, and those
| above big businesses are available within 30min, even
| 45min, it is basically impossible for a smaller, local
| retailer to compete. And now you have the internet and
| delivery to your door to compete with too.
| hughesjj wrote:
| Thankfully changing retail zoning is as cheap and expedient
| as writing a document. Regrettably legislation takes a while
| to move, but given any solution to this problem will require
| legislation changes anyway, the marginal value for just
| allowing mixed use commercial/residential zoning is
| effectively nil.
| gretch wrote:
| > changing retail zoning is as cheap and expedient as
| writing a document
|
| This vastly underestimates the problem. It's like saying
| all you need to be president is have people write your name
| on their ballots.
|
| Are people in this city amenable to mixed zoning? The
| forces that decided this in the first place still exist and
| have to be disentrenched
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Yep, cars facilitate cities of unsustainably low density.
| Reducing car use results in either migration to restore the
| density equilibrium, transit, or in situ densification. Pick
| at least one.
| MezzoDelCammin wrote:
| this topic is a bit of a rabbit hole. Yes, roads have always
| been there. Massive car infrastructure and parking has not.
|
| Looking back in time, most people would actually walk for most
| of their daily life. That reflected in how cities and villages
| were built. This layout has only changed after we started
| adopting cars as default mean of transportation (mostly 1930s
| and later, with some exceptions).
| falcolas wrote:
| This may be an artifact of where I live, but most rural areas
| have always had a centralized city (post office, bar,
| church), and the vast majority of folks who called that
| village/city their home lived miles away from it on their
| farms.
|
| Horses and carriages were a practical requirement, since
| walking all day one way to visit the grocer was unrealistic.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Rural living traditionally meant living in dense villages
| surrounded by farmland. Lonely farms were more common in
| the frontier. There was safety in numbers, and living next
| to other households allowed sharing things that were too
| expensive for most households.
| falcolas wrote:
| Not really. At least, never in the US. Plantations, for
| example, are fairly distant from each other, and from
| their associated towns.
| SamBorick wrote:
| > People needing to move non-trivial distances for periodic
| tasks shapes everything. Cars, and thus car parking, come about
| because of this need.
|
| This is not true. Every city in the US used to have a robust
| public transit system. No cars or parking lots needed. You can
| hitch 2 horses per car space, and 10-20 bikes in the same
| space.
|
| Those pre-car public transit systems were bankrupted by
| artificially low fares, and because a small number of cars
| literally got in the way:
| https://www.vox.com/2015/5/7/8562007/streetcar-history-demis...
| fatnoah wrote:
| > This is not true. Every city in the US used to have a
| robust public transit system. No cars or parking lots needed.
|
| That WAS true, but that's not the reality that's shaping
| planning now. Further, many central business districts have
| been eroded by cars + big box suburbanization, so that many
| of those essentials are only obtainable in areas that never
| even had transit or didn't exist when transit was still a
| thing.
|
| In the past, I had the good fortune to live car-free for many
| years in a US city with a working transportation system. Not
| having to account for the car was actually liberating,
| despite having to plan my adventures a bit more carefully to
| align with said transit systems.
| hughesjj wrote:
| > That WAS true, but that's not the reality that's shaping
| planning now
|
| Yes, this is indeed a problem we need to fix, agreed. For
| now I'm open to reducing the comical over provisioning of
| parking spots in strip malls by removing minimum parking
| requirements and hopefully replacing the large car parking
| spots with smaller bike and motorcycle parking spots and
| even bus stops.
| falcolas wrote:
| > Every city in the US used to have a robust public transit
| system.
|
| Every major urban center, perhaps. No city in Montana (I'll
| go so far as to say the midwest, minus perhaps Chicago) has a
| "robust" public transit system.
|
| And even when we create a perfect 15 minute utopia, people
| will still need one-off transportation on a periodic basis to
| spots more than 15 minutes away. Doctor visits, specialized
| purchases, bulk orders, building materials, recreation, etc.
| 8note wrote:
| Those one-offs have specialized folks to do the job - taxis
| and delivery drivers and the like.
|
| You don't need everyone to have their own car when a couple
| cars can serve everyone
| dublinben wrote:
| It took me less than a minute to confirm that Billings
| Montana did, in fact, used to have an electric trolley
| system 100+ years ago.[0] Just like nearly every other US
| city at one time.
|
| [0] https://billingsgazette.com/streetcars/image_1048a3b1-2
| 0c3-5...
| matt_kantor wrote:
| So did the tiny city of Bozeman (I just got back from a
| trip there).
| OGWhales wrote:
| > Every major urban center, perhaps. No city in Montana
| (I'll go so far as to say the midwest, minus perhaps
| Chicago) has a "robust" public transit system.
|
| Your comment is talking about the present tense while
| theirs is not. I'm sure they would agree with you that non-
| car transportation options are lacking currently. I don't
| know what Midwest transportation options were before we
| entered this car dependency era, from a quick search it
| appears streetcars were a thing there (which is what their
| linked article was about).
|
| > And even when we create a perfect 15 minute utopia,
| people will still need one-off transportation on a periodic
| basis to spots more than 15 minutes away. Doctor visits,
| specialized purchases, bulk orders, building materials,
| recreation, etc.
|
| You can include options for cars without making them the
| main method of transportation for everything. Having cars
| as an option is not the problem, designing everything
| around cars and letting other options fall to the wayside
| is the problem.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| It is insane how much actual land is used for ground-floor
| parking. You could house every homeless person in the USA with
| like 1/1000th of the available parking space, and park all the
| moved cars in vertical parking structures. But, geez, that costs
| _money_ , and political clout, and homeless people don't exactly
| have a lobbying group.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| It would cost less money than all that is already spent on
| homelessness combined, but violates the principle that real
| estate must function first as a wildly profitable speculative
| asset in expensive urban centers, which is why it's verboten.
| You can set billions on fire with BS homelessness programs that
| both don't compromise the underlying asset prices and provide
| myriad opportunities for graft, which is why they're the
| favorite form of indirect taxation on real estate put in place
| by politicians. We already have and spend the money, just in
| the most corrupt and useless ways imaginable.
| elijaht wrote:
| I live car-free in NYC. A large appeal of NYC to me was not
| having to park. I don't ~mind~ driving, but I absolutely hated
| having to deal with finding parking when I lived in other cities.
| Parking generally makes me feel stressed (competition for free
| spots), or makes me pay (using something like SpotHero makes it
| easy to find a spot, but costs me).
|
| It's not even just major cities either- I'm frequently in a
| college town in Illinois and parking downtown is a nightmare, and
| can easily add 10 minutes to your trip time, AND it's paid.
| Visiting a city I'm not familiar with can add some stress too as
| you don't know the best parking, unlike cities you are familiar
| with.
|
| NYC has problems of it's own (trains are generally reliable, but
| tend to have delays right when you need them), but for $33 a week
| I can get to most major neighborhoods in 30 minutes, walking
| straight to my destination. Add in $40 for a couple cabs when I
| prioritize a quicker trip, and I have amazing access to my city
| for less than $100/week.
| kibwen wrote:
| Sold my car years ago and moved to Boston. I'll never go back
| to live anywhere that requires me to own a car. I bike or walk
| everywhere, and what makes me hopeful is that biking
| infrastructure in Boston (and neighboring cities like
| Cambridge) has improved dramatically in the years since I've
| been here and just keeps getting better.
|
| Google tells me that the average TCO of car ownership in the US
| was $10,728 in 2022. Between my partner and I, we're saving
| $20,000 per year not owning a car (and that's assuming a
| _generous_ expenditure on bicycle TCO). High rents mean nothing
| when considering how much you save on not needing to own a car.
| EricDeb wrote:
| I dislike car culture, but owning a car is not that expensive
| unless you own a newish one.
| 93po wrote:
| And buy a new one every few years like some Americans do
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| Yeah I paid $10k for a car 10 years ago, and I spend all-in
| (insurance, maintenance, gas) about $2k/year on it. Long-
| run, it probably depreciates by a few hundred dollars a
| year as well.
| gruez wrote:
| >Google tells me that the average TCO of car ownership in the
| US was $10,728 in 2022. Between my partner and I, we're
| saving $20,000 per year not owning a car (and that's assuming
| a generous expenditure on bicycle TCO). High rents mean
| nothing when considering how much you save on not needing to
| own a car.
|
| $10k seems suspiciously high. Maybe that's because everyone
| is buying overpriced pickups/SUVs? If all you want is a
| vehicle, you can get this[1] which the site calculates the
| TCO at $33,858 over 5 years, or $6.8k. I suspect that if you
| buy used or keep the car for longer (eg. 10-15 years, the
| average car age is 12.5 years in the US), you can get that
| number even lower.
|
| [1] https://www.kbb.com/toyota/corolla-
| hybrid/2023/le/?vehicleid...
| yurishimo wrote:
| My thoughts too. If you buy a car with cash, the only costs
| are $1k for insurance (or less), $1k for routine
| maintenance, and fuel. If you have an EV, the fuel costs
| drop dramatically.
|
| But most Americans have a car payment; the average amount
| totaling over $400/mo. So in that respect, I guess 10k
| isn't too far off.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| Don't you feel confined to your little area? In the weekend
| my wife and I drove out to a rural hike, 40mins out of town.
| I couldn't imagine giving up that kind of convenience and
| missing those kinds of opportunities.
|
| What if you don't live near a pool? Your kids just don't
| learn to swim? My local pool is a 15 minute drive, but a
| harrowing cycle route.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Note OP, but I'll try. In the weekend my
| wife and I drove out to a rural hike, 40mins out of town.
|
| How do local tourists get to that hike? Probably buses or
| trains, which in decent systems are usually competitive
| with vehicles. It's how I did hikes in the rural Himalayas
| and Latin America. What if you don't live
| near a pool?
|
| You build the pools where people live. They live closer
| together in cities designed before cars. Even rural towns
| used to be fairly dense and walkable. I picked a random
| suburb of Boston called Beverly. There are 3 public pools
| and a number of ponds that may or may not be swimmable. No
| one is more than approx 1mi from a public pool.
|
| Also, commuter cycling should not be harrowing. It becomes
| harrowing when planners don't properly invest in the
| infrastructure and mix modes in dangerous ways. Imagine if
| we did the same thing with planes and used local highways
| as runways. Narrow the streets to reasonable, 3m lanes and
| even a 2-lane road can fit a dedicated cycle lane. The
| streets in my california neighborhood use a horrifying 12m
| for only 2 travel lanes, yet still can't find room for a
| cycle path.
| whymauri wrote:
| I live in Cambridge. All places I've lived in Cambridge
| were within a 5 minute walk of a publicly accessible pool.
| Before I had a car for outdoor climbing, I took the
| commuter rail to see local towns or got a ZipCar and split
| the cost with friends.
|
| These days, most of my trips are on my bike. Anything I can
| round trip within 50 miles round trip is fair game. My
| roommate made it to Cape Cod a few weekends ago, but he's
| very athletic.
| danielhep wrote:
| I live car free in Seattle, and with the combo of Amtrak,
| car rentals, and my ebike, I never feel confined. Even
| renting a car occasionally costs much less than if I were
| to own one in parking alone.
| ghaff wrote:
| Although I think everyone I know who lives in
| Boston/Cambridge owns a car because they either commute/visit
| to friends out to the suburbs or do regular weekend
| activities like hiking or canoeing out in the
| suburbs/mountains--which can also involve specialized
| transportation for car-camping etc. You can work around a lot
| of this but a lot of people don't want to if they can afford
| it.
|
| I don't live in the city but I'd definitely own a car if I
| did.
| niam wrote:
| You probably interact with the types of people who are more
| likely to spend time in the suburbs, by dint of living in a
| suburb.
|
| "Affording" a car in Boston is stressful as hell even
| beyond the cost, and I wouldn't recommend it. My friends
| who both live and work in the city don't own cars. I
| ditched my car when I moved into city limits, and ride an
| EUC, bike, or train to work.
|
| The suburbs would have nothing for me if I didn't have
| family there. But even there, a weekend pass for the
| commuter rail costs $10 and can take me as far as Rhode
| Island if I want.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm actually even further out than the conventional
| suburbs. But, yes, I mostly know people in the city who
| routinely do hiking and paddling activities that
| practically require owning vehicles and who routinely get
| together with friends well outside of city limits. I
| think most of the people I know who own a car in the city
| have a dedicated parking space.
|
| So, yeah, city people I know have made a deliberate (and
| expensive) decision to live in the city but maintain the
| flexibility to drive elsewhere without a lot of friction.
|
| People naturally gravitate to lower friction. If
| activities like getting outside of the city/transit
| coverage is expensive/a pain you mostly just don't do it.
| kdmccormick wrote:
| This is overly black and white IMO. For the million or so
| of us who live in the "first ring suburbs", e.g.
| Somerville, it's common to own a car for out-of-the-city
| trips, but use walking/biking/transit for day to day life
| and going out on the weekends.
| niam wrote:
| Not trying to be black or white about it. I'm not
| extrapolating my experience, only offering what it _is_.
| If I didn 't, the prevailing and only observation in this
| thread would be that it's _uncommon_ to not own a car.
| And that doesn 't match my experience at all, as someone
| who lives and works here.
|
| Though my anecdote is pretty heavily skewed the other
| direction towards skaters and the types of people who own
| PEVs.
| residentraspber wrote:
| I LOVE the new bike lanes on the Mass Ave bridge. Total game
| changer on how often I actually want to bike into Cambridge
| now.
|
| I wish the other sides of the bridge were better for bikes,
| too, but I'm sure they're coming with the next re-
| paving/maintenance of those roads.
| BluePen7 wrote:
| This is the same reason I moved out of the city.
|
| Rents are very high because they assume you can live there
| without a car, but as someone who frequently drove far out of
| the city I was paying for the worst of both worlds.
|
| I agree with your TCO assessment, thanks to pandemic/WFH
| myself and my partner were able to switch to sharing a car
| and we saw about 10k in annual savings.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> Rents are very high because they assume you can live
| there without a car_
|
| Rents are very high in cities because there's not enough
| housing for everyone who wants to live there [1] not
| because of an assumption about car ownership.
|
| [1] Ironically, in part because of an assumption that
| people will have cars, which is one limitation on how dense
| housing construction is allowed to be.
| whymauri wrote:
| I did the math for my aunt recently: she pays more in rent
| and car expenses living in suburban South Florida (Kendall)
| for the same square footage I get in Cambridge, MA. Living
| paycheck to paycheck sandwiched between a super Walmart and
| the Florida Turnpike, it's not exactly glamorous.
|
| She's considering ditching the car and moving north. Gas,
| maintenance, and car payments are silent killers. Most people
| equate them to rent and cannot imagine a life where they
| don't pay for their car.
| staringback wrote:
| > Google tells me that the average TCO of car ownership in
| the US was $10,728 in 2022
|
| Every time I hear this insane number I have a good laugh. I
| own 3 cars myself and my total cost of ownership is nowhere
| near that high combined.
| ska wrote:
| I always have the same gut reaction - then I realize I know
| people who lose at least 10k every 2-3 years on a new
| vehicle; one that they are financing and driving 2+ hours a
| day. So factor in gas and insurance etc., you can see it.
| mock-possum wrote:
| _ten thousand dollars???_
|
| Look I get that I probably don't do cars the way other people
| do cars, but like - ten thousand _a year?_ I spend maybe $800
| on gas in a year. What are these people doing? Buying a new
| set of tires every Christmas? Yearly visits to a detailing
| shop or something??
|
| I mean like no offense but if you guys were spending twenty
| thousand dollars annually on cars... that's on you. You don't
| need to live that way. I bought my Subaru used ten years ago
| for $3k, and I've managed just fine without spend a small
| fortune on... whataver it is you were spending yours on.
| xyzelement wrote:
| Your number seems very you-specific. Back-of-the-envelope
| math, seems like you drive <7K miles per year, which is
| less than half of what an average driver does. You are also
| accounting for $0 in tolls, parking, insurance, repairs or
| maintenance, registration, inspection, an occasional
| ticket, etc.
|
| I totally believe that it is possible that these are indeed
| your costs but I'll give you a counter-example.
|
| My Highlander was about $50K all in. Let's say I keep it
| for 10 years, that's $5 per year right there. Insurance is
| about $1.5K so we're at $6.5K and that's a good deal for
| around here. If we drive into Manhattan on a weekday, it's
| about $50 to leave the car in a lot somewhere in Midtown.
| If I do that just once a month, that's another $600, so
| we're at $7.1K already. We actually don't put a ton of
| mileage on and it's a hybrid so our gas costs are about the
| same as yours. That's $8k. I am leaving out a bunch of
| other stuff (registration, inspection, tolls - can easily
| be around $10 to cross into or out of Manhattan, an
| occasional ticket, parking meters, etc.)
|
| I think my car usage scenario is pretty light (wife and I
| both WFH) compares to most people but I can easily get to
| $10K for one car based on where we live. Some of this can
| be avoided (eg sit longer in traffic to avoid a toll road,
| go slow to avoid tickets, only go into NYC on Sunday when
| you can get a free spot more easily, could have bought a
| used car, etc.) - just making it obvious that you can
| EASILY get to $10K.
| 7speter wrote:
| > but for $33 a week I can get to most major neighborhoods in
| 30 minutes
|
| Ahh yes, only the most important, noteworthy neighborhoods that
| most likely aren't transit deserts, right?
| AndyKluger wrote:
| https://subwaysheds.com/
| ghaff wrote:
| One of the differences with NYC (and maybe specifically
| Manhattan--though it doesn't map perfectly) is that there's a
| cultural expectation that residents, even those with money, may
| not own cars. It can still be a hassle for weekend trips but
| it's still something of a difference in mindset even for people
| in other large cities where carless living, at least within the
| confines of the city, is fairly doable.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > One of the differences with NYC (and maybe specifically
| Manhattan--though it doesn't map perfectly) is that there's a
| cultural expectation that residents, even those with money,
| may not own cars
|
| NYC is the only city in the country where the majority of
| residents don't own cars. Manhattan has the lowest car
| ownership rates of all the boroughs, but car owners are still
| the minority city-wide. (Within NYC, car ownership also skews
| notably towards the wealthy).
| nradov wrote:
| I travel around the USA a fair amount. In the vast majority of
| cities, parking just isn't a problem. I drive my car where I
| want to go and park. Sometimes I have to pay. But the places
| where no parking is available are very rare.
|
| I am fully in favor of walkable neighborhoods and reducing the
| need to drive. But lack of parking is just not a stressor that
| most Americans worry about.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _I am fully in favor of walkable neighborhoods and reducing
| the need to drive. But lack of parking is just not a stressor
| that most Americans worry about._
|
| Tell that to my local Facebook & Nextdoor groups.
| nradov wrote:
| You aren't looking at a representative sample. Spend some
| time talking to people outside of dense cities. Parking
| doesn't even make their top 10 list of concerns.
|
| Even in regions like the SF Bay Area outside of San
| Francisco proper there is abundant parking near most homes,
| retail, and workplaces. Now I agree that devoting so much
| valuable real estate to parking is rather wasteful and we
| ought to eliminate some of those asphalt wastelands, but as
| a practical matter today it means most people don't get
| stressed about parking. If you tell them to get rid of
| their cars so that they don't have to worry about parking
| they're going to think you're crazy.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| > Spend some time talking to people outside of dense
| cities.
|
| Are you sure this gives you a representative sample of
| Americans?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I do not currently live in a dense city; I'm in the
| burbs.
|
| I'm aware that this is a squeaky wheel situation, but I
| asked a question on a local group about a laundromat
| that's getting torn down - of the (last check) 38
| comments on my post, approximately 5 have to do with my
| question, and the rest are people worrying about parking
| spaces if/when a small apartment building replaces it.
| nradov wrote:
| Some people always complain about adding more housing in
| their neighborhoods. My point is that on a daily basis
| most people don't worry about parking. They just drive
| where they want to go and then park their cars. Outside
| of a few limited urban areas, no one sees parking as
| stressful or as a reason to avoid using their own cars.
| antonyt wrote:
| I'd need to see some numbers to believe that this is true for
| "most Americans." Certainly it's not a problem for most of
| America if we're talking about geographic area. But
| population is obviously not distributed uniformly.
| manzanarama wrote:
| I agree there is this strange obsession with fixing super
| dense city areas, increasing density and public transit,
| getting rid of cars and parking, etc.. Im not sure why it is
| such a big cause right now. Its a bit confusing to see it so
| high on so many people's priority list.
|
| I even bike to work every day since I choose to live very
| close to my office building, but I don't understand this
| desire.
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| This is a real USA problem.
| supportengineer wrote:
| We have an abundance of parking and a shortage of housing, it's
| too bad we don't have a way to quickly setup housing (even
| temporary) in parking areas. Most parking is already located near
| other utilities so they would already be close by. To start with,
| we could require every parking lot over a certain size provide
| basic amenities like public restrooms with showers and water
| fountains.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > it's too bad we don't have a way to quickly setup housing
| (even temporary) in parking areas.
|
| RVs.
|
| Don't quote me, but I suspect some temporary shelters during
| disasters are RVs (and go to the exact parking lots you
| describe.)
|
| > We have an abundance of parking and a shortage of housing
|
| But I'm not sure that putting RVs in underutilized parking lots
| will solve the homeless crisis. (Assuming that's what you're
| referring to.) I generally see a lot of homeless people in very
| dense cities where parking is at a premium.
|
| Maybe "RVs in parking lots as temporary housing" would work for
| low-wage employees, who sometimes are at risk of becoming
| homeless due to their low wages?
| axus wrote:
| I thought RVs had to worry about electricity and sewer
| hookups for anything over a few days.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| From the parent:
|
| > Most parking is already located near other utilities so
| they would already be close by
| simplyluke wrote:
| > I suspect some temporary shelters during disasters are RVs
|
| Yes, they're known as FEMA trailers, and gained some national
| attention in the late 2000s due to toxic levels of
| formaldehyde in the ones that were used in the Katrina
| response.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEMA_trailer
| squidgyhead wrote:
| ClimateTown has a video about this today!
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUNXFHpUhu8
| cmcconomy wrote:
| came here to post this :)
| willio58 wrote:
| ClimateTown, along with Not Just Bikes, City Beautiful, City
| Nerd, and the like give me hope that the message is getting
| out.
|
| That being said, the more I watch these videos/listen to their
| podcasts the more I understand that city planners, specifically
| those in charge of managing traffic and parking, have been
| taught _incorrectly_ for decades. These content creators
| regularly say that if we want change we are going to need to go
| to city council meetings and speak up, but in reality what
| credentials do I have to talk about this stuff? It's my word as
| a software dev who consumes content about this against someone
| who's studied this stuff for years of their life. I don't
| personally blame the city planners, but I do think that car-
| centric planning has been engrained into their education
| fundamentally to the point where plans are made based on
| factors solely considering number of cars moving through
| traffic lights for example, vs. number of people crossing an
| intersection irrespective of mode of transportation.
| UtopiaPunk wrote:
| There's an interesting interview with a designer of SimCity,
| where he discusses parking:
|
| Geoff Manaugh: While you were making those measurements of
| different real-world cities, did you discover any surprising
| patterns or spatial relationships
|
| Librande: Yes, definitely. I think the biggest one was the
| parking lots. When I started measuring out our local grocery
| store, which I don't think of as being that big, I was blown away
| by how much more space was parking lot rather than actual store.
| That was kind of a problem, because we were originally just going
| to model real cities, but we quickly realized there were way too
| many parking lots in the real world and that our game was going
| to be really boring if it was proportional in terms of parking
| lots.
|
| Manaugh: You would be making SimParkingLot, rather than SimCity.
|
| Librande: [laughs] Exactly. So what we do in the game is that we
| just imagine they are underground. We do have parking lots in the
| game, and we do try to scale them--so, if you have a little
| grocery store, we'll put six or seven parking spots on the side,
| and, if you have a big convention center or a big pro stadium,
| they'll have what seem like really big lots--but they're nowhere
| near what a real grocery store or pro stadium would have. We had
| to do the best we could do and still make the game look
| attractive.
|
| Source: https://bldgblog.com/2013/05/sim-city-an-interview-with-
| ston...
| Tommah wrote:
| I played a lot of SimCity 3000, and as I recall, a lot of
| commercially zoned cells will end up being small parking lots.
| The game assigns whimsical names to properties, and the parking
| lots were named "They Paved Paradise."
| adolph wrote:
| > When I started measuring out our local grocery store, which I
| don't think of as being that big, I was blown away by how much
| more space was parking lot rather than actual store. . . . So
| what we do in the game is that we just imagine they are
| underground.
|
| All the new HEBs (Texas grocery store) that I've seen are built
| above their parking garages with a smaller amount of parking at
| store level.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-E-B
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| The excess of cars in cities is bad enough, but I do wonder
| whether underground parking would at least help. It can be more
| expensive, especially for taller buildings, but it would
| eliminate the eyesore and recoup the valuable urban real estate
| and potentially free up the streets.
|
| Realistically, we have to accept that we've spent almost a
| century creating a situation that has enabled car dominance and
| that many people are dependent on them. You can't ignore that.
| There is nothing wrong with cars, even in cities, but the car-
| centrism that has wrecked the urban environment cannot be
| undone simply by enacting hostile legislation. We have to ease
| toward a situation where their negative impact is reduced.
| Underground parking in new construction seems like an option,
| especially in cities like NYC where there is no need fear of
| scaring off developers. And in the case of NYC, there is
| precedent that goes back to at least the 1940s, 1950s, and
| 1960s, where apartment buildings do, in fact, have underground
| parking for the building's residents. And I suspect the costs
| were not huge. In many cases, the "underground parking" is
| merely basement level or even the ground level.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| > but the car-centrism that has wrecked the urban environment
| cannot be undone simply by enacting hostile legislation.
|
| This is exactly what happened in the Netherlands, but the US
| is a wildly corrupt country with very little in the way of
| actual representative democracy, which is the primary reason
| why this (locally) correct. In many other places, it is in
| fact possible to achieve these outcomes through state power.
| yurishimo wrote:
| It also took 40+ years. After WW2, NL was on a course to
| model American cities. There are some places that still
| harken back to that time. Dutch people also really like to
| drive, which nobody seems to talk about!
|
| But now the trains have been privatized, the ticket prices
| jacked up, and gas taxes are absolutely bonkers right now.
| If we're lucky, maybe the trains can be brought back into
| more direct government control in the next decade but I
| doubt it.
|
| Good public transportation and city design is only
| enforceable through laws on the books. Dutch city planning
| in some ways is non-negotiable, but very fungible in
| others. We must stay vigilant if we want to see our small
| corner of the world continue to flourish and be a beacon of
| hope to North American and other western societies.
| tivert wrote:
| > ...but I do wonder whether underground parking would at
| least help. It can be more expensive, especially for taller
| buildings, but it would eliminate the eyesore and recoup the
| valuable urban real estate and potentially free up the
| streets.
|
| Not just more expensive, but _enormously_ more expensive.
|
| The aesthetic priorities of a video game probably don't map
| well to real life.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| A quick web search puts local underground parking garages
| including necessary street alterations at about 1.7x the
| cost of surface parking, per parking square.
|
| Not sure if that falls within the purview of _enormously_
| more expensive.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Can't speak to this everywhere but in Seattle and Portland
| there is already extensive underground and 1st 2nd floor
| parking for many of the "4 over 1" style of modern
| apartments.
|
| Part of the problem with this is that it's so expensive that
| it cuts into the developers budget leading to less housing
| being built in medium density areas and larger/taller
| buildings so to keep the margins up.
|
| Even if you imagine a magic shrinking situation where a car
| could be shrunk down and put in your pocket like a pokeball
| there's still the issue that roads in cities don't have the
| throughput to be able to move all those cars effectively.
| nharada wrote:
| I was curious how much bigger the real stadium parking was.
|
| SimCity:
| https://oyster.ignimgs.com/mediawiki/apis.ign.com/simcity/e/...
|
| Real Stadium: https://i.imgur.com/KwT1T53.png
| tshaddox wrote:
| That looks like a pretty far distance to walk from the
| furthest parking spots to the stadium. Do these stadiums have
| some sort of "mass transit" system to move the people from
| their cars to the stadium?
| progbits wrote:
| I just measured that stadium on a map, corner to corner it
| is 1.3km. That is 20 minutes even at conservative elderly
| person walking speed, and the stadium is in the middle so
| for everyone it will be less than 10 minutes walk.
|
| If you are about to sit for few hours and shove hotdogs +
| sugary drinks down your throat the 10 minute walk will do
| you good.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| In my experience, some of them _do_ have transport shuttles
| (golf carts, small vans, sometimes busses) that just do
| loops of the parking lot. Even some of the stadiums that
| don 't provide that as an intentional house service find
| groups forming small shuttle companies to opportunistically
| make a few dollars on that service (and jam up parking
| traffic that little bit more because there aren't designed
| service routes, just these ad hoc third party providers
| trying to make a quick buck on a game day).
| jimbob21 wrote:
| I am surprised that this was surprising to people. Cars are
| much bigger than people, of course you'd need bigger parking
| lots than seating space
| Sharlin wrote:
| > of course you'd need bigger parking lots than seating
| space
|
| There is a tacit assumption in your statement. Of course
| you don't _need_ vast parking lots around stadiums, and
| there are plenty of real-world sports arenas that don 't
| have those (some examples [1][2][3]). The parking that
| there is is structural, and most people simply use public
| transit to reach these places, which are often located in
| moderately densely built areas. So, allow me to restate
| your claim, with a different assumption:
|
| Of course you need great mass transit connections to a
| stadium, how else would people reach it?
|
| _Edit:_ But yes, people _also_ don 't have a good
| intuition on how much _space_ cars actually waste in bulk.
| For example, many people don 't seem to realize how much
| space it saves on roadways if 50 people sit in a bus or or
| tram or train rather than in 30 or 40 cars. Indeed, any
| _rational_ motorist should be enthusiastically in favor of
| any project that makes public transit more attractive or
| accessible, purely for selfish reasons!
|
| ---
|
| [1] Nokia Arena in Tampere
| https://goo.gl/maps/3WmAxfA2pCXDre8p7
|
| [2] Helsinki Olympic Stadium
| https://goo.gl/maps/BQhopp5kRtTrEDR79 [under renovation in
| the aerial imagery]
|
| [3] Tele2 Arena in Stockholm
| https://goo.gl/maps/za3y6HfRvocjfZR37
| microtherion wrote:
| Or Letzigrund in Zurich, with a capacity of up to 50,000
| people for concerts, and absolutely zero street parking
| available: https://goo.gl/maps/kPye3VdVB9ZLpPsx8
| Fricken wrote:
| Edmonton's original light rail line was good for
| connecting the home of the Oilers with the home of the
| Eskimos, the former home of the Oilers, as well as the
| home of the Ooks, the Golden bears, as well as the
| Saville Sports centre and the Claireview rec center.
|
| The light rail line is not so good for connecting people
| from their home to their place of work. It was built a
| long an old industrial rail corridor 40 years ago and the
| area around all the rail stations is still zoned as
| industrial.
|
| They've since built massive expansions, which is good,
| although they are now nearly 4 years behind schedule on
| the first major leg expected to open. I'm looking forward
| to an lrt system that's good for more than getting
| quickly from one sports complex to another.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Oh, very nice example!
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Even in US cities, stadia often lack massive surface
| parking lots. Giants stadium and Fenway are examples that
| do have some (very expensive) parking but are also on top
| of transit.
| jeddy3 wrote:
| Assuming no other transportation alternative, and single
| person per car as well I guess?
|
| Not assuming that, it's not that obvious how big parking
| needs to be.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| It's not saying much that stadiums are weird in a way that
| games don't model (edited). A stadium's audience loves to
| drive to places, that's the purpose of the destination, to
| watch a thing then eat garlic fries and drink and drive home,
| so whatever.
|
| I like the author's politics and agree with her sentiments.
| But if the author of this thing thinks she can run a business
| on Main Street without parking, by all means, she should go
| and do that. It gives me "I'm going to release my app for low
| end Android devices" energy. People who spend money,
| especially on the alcohol and jewelry on which Main St
| thrives, really fucking love to drive.
|
| The most authentic system to me in Sim City was starting in
| debt, which I understand few players do. Then, it makes most
| sense to pause time and spend 100% of your money on day one,
| because services can be paid in deficit but improvements
| cannot. So why waste positive balance on services you can
| keep on with deficit spending? This strategy brings you the
| greatest ROI and the greatest tax base growth.
|
| The micro of like, how many square feet of X does it take to
| simulate system Y... I don't know, who cares. The minmaxing
| people on YouTube make fascinating content re: urban design
| ideas, but it's not like it's grounded in reality.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| > It's not saying much that stadiums have very favorable
| land prices, which aren't modeled in the games.
|
| But that's not even true, much like your assertion that
| businesses are kept afloat by customers who drive to them.
| Sharlin wrote:
| That's a very North American biased view.
|
| In fact, many studies have shown that in reasonably
| structured cities, pedestrians and public transit users are
| a more important source of income to downtown commercial
| services than motorists. Their individual transactions tend
| to be smaller, but there are more of them. But it's also
| vital that the city center and its neighboring areas are
| actually places where people live, not just visit for work
| and shopping. There's a quote that goes something like
| "Americans really like to be tourists in the city they live
| in".
|
| But yes, many business owners (and the sorts of politicians
| they tend to vote) are irrationally attached to the idea
| that motorists are the ones who bring in the money, and
| that proposals to make cities more livable and less car-
| dependent would be really bad for business. I'd wager that
| to an extent they're just trying to come up with rational
| sounding post-hoc reasons for their emotional attachment to
| cars and driving.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > But yes, many business owners (and the sorts of
| politicians they tend to vote) are irrationally attached
| to the idea that motorists are the ones who bring in the
| money
|
| If they're so irrational, go and start a business with no
| parking! I'm not saying they don't exist, I'm saying that
| you're not appreciating the forces that make people put
| up with commutes and parking in the first place.
|
| > pedestrians and public transit users are a more
| important source of income to downtown commercial
| services than motorists
|
| My family and I bike everywhere. Obviously my dog in this
| race is more accessible cities.
|
| I'm just being intellectually honest.
|
| Like dude, the company that makes my e-bikes is going
| into receivership.
|
| I live next to Valencia Street in San Francisco, and
| there was so much opposition to building new bike lanes,
| thoroughly vetted by experts, from cyclists themselves. I
| would almost call it "irrational."
|
| They didn't even build the center lanes very far, because
| the center lanes from 23rd to Cesar Chavez would have
| reduced the way the megachurches use the center lane as
| free parking on Sundays.
|
| The businesses on Valencia Street need those underage CSU
| revelers trucked in by Ubers. They cannot walk from a
| side street to Blondie's, the thing they pay for is to be
| dropped off in front of the door.
|
| Someone has to deliver all that alcohol that sells!
| Someone has to truck the produce in gas-guzzling trucks
| to Rainbow. Someone's gotta gas-powered-bus the pickers
| to pick the produce at Rainbow.
|
| This is my one neighborhood. You are welcome to try to
| start a _new_ local business on the idea that "[poor
| people's] individual transactions tend to be smaller, but
| there are more of them." I can guarantee you will fail.
|
| I appreciate that there are experts studying this. They
| are welcome to apply for civil jobs in San Francisco!
| They can go and win elections! I am aligned with those
| politics and want those outcomes, and I am not saying
| they are inaccurate at all. I am saying your "studies" an
| incomplete view on cities.
| Sharlin wrote:
| I understand and empathize with your frustration, but I
| did _specifically_ say that there are some prerequisites
| for car-light city centers to work well. But I felt that
| you in turn unfairly generalized the unfortunate NA
| situation1 when in fact in, say, Europe there are dozens
| of cities with pedestrian /transit-first historical
| centers and hundreds more where it would be perfectly
| achievable - and is slowly being achieved - if not for
| ideological opposition.
|
| ---
|
| 1 Even SF is much less dense than almost any European
| city of comparable size!
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Is it wrong that I think I would enjoy playing Sim Parking Lot?
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Try Mini Motorways. It's a different style of game but
| certainly captures the futility of car-centric traffic
| management.
| catgary wrote:
| I think anti-car activists would do great to mod SimCity to
| have realistic parking lots.
| davidw wrote:
| I don't think many people are truly anti-car activists. Just
| that we need to redimension their absolute centrality to so
| many policies and budgets.
|
| I'm involved in pro-housing politics and it's just amazing
| how many people are like "well, ok, sure, people need a place
| to live and all, but let's think FIRST about where to store
| the automobiles. If that works out, then I guess we can build
| some housing".
|
| They don't say it quite like that, but it's the general idea.
|
| Cities should be about people first and foremost. Places for
| them to live and do business. Cars are pretty convenient for
| some things, and many people want one...fine. But base the
| decisions around people first and then work out spaces for
| the cars.
| wizofaus wrote:
| > and many people want one
|
| Perhaps that's the main problem. If we were more content to
| share them they'd be far less of a need for so much parking
| space (and possibly even road space). I haven't owned a car
| in 15 years, at least partly because I've been happy to
| accept there's generally one available within the household
| to use when I need it.
| iso1631 wrote:
| In the UK we build houses without enough parking and the
| whole area becomes horrendous. The idea I get from reading
| about US "pro housing" people is that if you don't provide
| parking, people will still have a car and still park.
|
| In reality in the UK every patch of open space, including
| pavements (sidewalks) become car storage facilities.
| housing estates with 4 bed houses with just 1 car parking
| space (plus a garage which nobody users to store a car) end
| up with 1 or 2 cars parked on the pavement in addition to
| the drive, houses in towns converted to HMOs (house of
| multiple occupancy, because professionals can't really
| afford a 1 bed flat in the UK) with 4 adults in mean 4 cars
| parked on the roads.
| davidw wrote:
| What is 'horrendous' is people not having a place to
| live. Cars parked here and there is not great, but it's
| not nearly as bad as not having enough housing.
|
| I've heard that UK zoning and land use is perhaps even
| worse than the US.
| dabeeeenster wrote:
| Total nonsense. New builds in the UK have ample parking.
| wizofaus wrote:
| In all honesty, why is a 4-bedroom house with only a
| single dedicated car parking space a problem? Is it
| because families that have decided they must have
| multiple cars parked close to their home all the time are
| leaving them parked in public locations that other people
| value and want to use? If so, it sounds like those
| parking locations need to be charged for. Said families
| may then rethink whether they really need those cars
| parked so close to their homes all the time (or indeed,
| whether they need so many cars at all).
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| In the US they become places to live in a tent until the
| police destroy your tent and you live in a similar spot
| on the pavement two blocks away without a tent.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| It's mostly because of zoning. If you separate retail from
| offices from housing, you force people to have cars to get
| around. Which then requires large parking lots and wide
| roads to deal with all the cars, in a big feedback loop.
| Those who can't drive (about a third of the population are
| too young, too old, or disabled) are just forced to make
| do. Not to mention how difficult it is for the poor. Owning
| a car is really expensive for those living on very little
| money.
|
| I feel like fixing zoning would at least make possible
| fixing the rest.
| causality0 wrote:
| Don't forget the socialization of costs that comes in the
| forms of cities crippling their traffic flow for the sake
| of dedicating half their road surface to people parking
| on it instead of driving on it. I love cars but a street
| covered in unmoving automobiles is an intensely perverse
| sight.
| majormajor wrote:
| You're not gonna get rid of the need to commute. Once
| people start forming families, "live next to work" is
| likely to be very unrealistic for one of the people
| involved, assuming they both work. One person gets a new
| job across town and the other doesn't? Setting aside
| whether or not most people would _want_ to move anytime
| that happened, there 's no longer a single answer. Start
| throwing kids in the mix and it gets even trickier. Gotta
| balance the schools in there, and the effect that moving
| would have on them, etc.
|
| Reduce the need for shopping and entertainment commuting
| and build more transit so that more routs have practical
| non-car options and you reduce the need for traffic and
| parking, but that's realistically an incredibly expensive
| proposition for many cities. You need a really really
| really built out transit network to enable something
| close to point to point commuting in under an hour across
| a large city. (And traffic and parking becoming crippling
| things for a city are issues small cities often mostly
| duck by their nature of being small...)
|
| It's a sort of "we all need to commit to changing our
| environment systematically for decades" problem.
| AlanSE wrote:
| In fact, I have increasingly seen the pattern of adults
| who work from home but have a commute to drive their
| children in the morning / afternoon. That's 2-ways both
| times, for the record. It's often multi-destination.
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "Reduce the need for shopping and entertainment
| commuting and build more transit so that more routs have
| practical non-car options and you reduce the need for
| traffic and parking, but that 's realistically an
| incredibly expensive proposition for many cities."_
|
| These American cities are like the 600-lbs person who
| contemplates a lifestyle change but laments that it would
| be incredibly expensive to eat vegetables instead of fast
| food. "I need so many calories at my weight, it's just a
| fact, they're not cheaply available from that fresh
| stuff."
| mjmahone17 wrote:
| Allowing infill development of existing parking lots to
| create mixed use neighborhoods is in reality very cheap
| for cities to do. All it costs is rezoning: if they then
| increase taxes on the now very-desirable-to-build land,
| it'll be a huge net win, with cheaper utilities and
| transport infra to maintain relative to the tax base.
| Sewers cost roughly the same per mile regardless of if
| you're serving 1,000 or 10,000 people.
|
| This becomes really obvious when you look at where cities
| like Kansas City receive the most taxes vs where they
| spend the most: suburbs cost Kansas City huge amounts of
| money that the inner walkable city neighborhoods
| subsidize, despite the per-capita tax returns being lower
| in the more dense neighborhoods.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> infill development of existing parking lots to create
| mixed use neighborhoods is in reality very cheap for
| cities to do
|
| No. That is a radical change in needs and services. Cars
| don't need sewage treatment and fresh water delivery.
| Parking lots don't need school systems and health care.
| Just saying that a parking lot can be converted to houses
| ignores the radically different local and external needs
| of human residents as opposed to parked cars. It is akin
| to those who say that office buildings should "just be
| converted to apartments" with zero insight re the
| difficulties of doing so in practice.
| davidw wrote:
| Compared to the same amount of services further spread
| out, infill is far cheaper, and tends to generate a lot
| more tax revenue compared to the infrastructure needs.
| Here's a sort of simplified, but real-world example that
| uses snow clearing:
|
| https://bendyimby.com/2021/03/24/snow-and-financial-
| producti...
|
| Something like sewers are more complicated, but the basic
| equation is that you're adding things in an area that's
| already served by infrastructure and often pretty good
| infrastructure at that, rather than adding in kilometers
| of brand new infrastructure for relatively low-revenue
| uses.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> adding things in an area that's already served by
| infrastructure
|
| Unlike in video games, "adding" load to infrastructure
| can cost more than running new lines. Everything from
| pipes to power lines have finite capacities. If a city
| sewer system is at capacity, as many are, dropping some
| more people into the middle (replacing a parking lot with
| houses) will require possibly ripping up the old
| sewer/water/power lines to expand them. And expanding
| their up/downstream connections. That can impact far far
| more than the local connection, often costing much more
| than green-field development. Imaging how much cost to
| open up and expand a sewer under any Manhattan street.
| Compare that to digging a trench through a green field
| out on the outskirts of town.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| Everything from pipes to power lines also have a finite
| lifespan, and many cities are succumbing to crumbling
| infrastructure as the low density suburban tax base isn't
| covering their costs, and is unsustainable in the long
| term.
|
| Yes it costs a lot in absolute terms to rip up and expand
| a sewer lines in Manhattan, but that doesn't mean it
| costs more _per person_ being served by that
| infrastructure.
| treis wrote:
| Snow removal is cheap. The expensive things like schools,
| criminal justice, and health care are all more expensive
| per person in denser cities.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| They're more expensive per person in cities with a higher
| cost of living, which often correlates with density. But
| zoning restrictions increase the cost of living by
| contributing to housing scarcity.
|
| Density isn't the cause of high cost, it's the response
| to it. It's the market increasing supply in the presence
| of high demand. When prices are high you want more of it,
| not less.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| I know multiple people who bought houses 45 minutes from
| work that made way, way more money than needed for those
| houses.
|
| They WANTED to be in the middle of nowhere. They could
| have had a house 11 minutes away with good schools and
| access to nature, but they choose 45 to be isolated. They
| live in their cars.
| criddell wrote:
| I wish I was further out of the city.
|
| I think if actual self-driving cars arrive, they will
| fuel sprawl like nothing else before. I wouldn't mind a
| long commute if I could sleep or work or chill out as my
| car drove me to work.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| That's what congestion charges at city limits are for.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > You're not gonna get rid of the need to commute.
|
| Higher density enables mass transit.
|
| Moreover, work from home is a thing now. One person lives
| near their job, the other works from home, no commute.
|
| > build more transit
|
| This is putting the cart before the horse. The suburbs
| aren't dense enough to justify a transit route and if you
| install one there it will just go unused.
|
| First you have to rezone all the low density areas to
| allow higher density. Then you look where people are
| starting to build once they're allowed to and install
| transit routes to the places that now justify them.
| davidw wrote:
| > incredibly expensive proposition for many cities
|
| I lived in Italy for a number of years. It is a poorer
| country than the United States in a lot of ways, and yet
| they manage this quite well.
|
| It still comes back to zoning and parking: by allowing
| denser development, you can plan transit routes that
| serve a lot more people, some of whom don't even own an
| automobile.
| majormajor wrote:
| The largest cities in Italy are quite a bit smaller than
| the largest cities in the US, so it's a very different
| situation.
|
| Rome's metro area is about 4.3 million people. San
| Antonio's is about 2.6 million. San Antonio also has far
| more relaxed car-based commutes than the Bay Area or LA
| as a result.
|
| If you dropped Rome's three subway lines in San Antonio
| you wouldn't get rid of that many car trips, especially
| since the city being smaller and less dense than the
| really big cities in the US makes the car trips that much
| easier in the first place.
| davidw wrote:
| Rome is notable for having kind of not great subway
| infrastructure for a major European city because, among
| other problems, they tend to encounter a lot of
| archeological stuff whenever they dig there.
|
| And I'm not even talking about major cities. Where I
| lived in Padova, it has approximately 200K people in the
| same area that about 100K people occupy here in Bend,
| Oregon. Padova has way better transit than Bend does even
| if Bend is much more well to do in many ways.
| majormajor wrote:
| Is Bend gripped by housing issues and traffic as much as
| the Bay Area or NYC or wherever?
|
| The folks I know in smaller US towns simply don't have
| the same concerns about parking spaces as those in high-
| demand, high-population, central large cities. And
| comparing those cities to typically-small-to-medium-size
| Italian cities doesn't result in very actionable
| practical plans.
| davidw wrote:
| Bend has very serious housing woes. The housing crisis,
| at this point, has spread out from the epicenter type
| places like the Bay Area.
|
| One of my best friends here got priced out and now drives
| in 40 minutes from a nearby town. That's bad for 1) him
| and his family 2) the environment 3) traffic.
|
| If you ask people on Nextdoor, they'll probably tell you
| there's also a traffic crisis, but it's not true.
| AlanSE wrote:
| I hope/believe that we are near a tipping point. There is
| a very large and very substantial neighborhood premium
| based on what's around it, but the zoning is the same
| everywhere so the competition was legally restricted to
| greenways, sidewalks, parks, and HOA facilities. Even in
| the suburban US, it is a VERY desirable feature to be
| within walking distance of a park where young children
| can play. This has created a strange effect, where people
| (let's be honest, affluent people) accumulate a
| collection of aspirational wheeled items - strollers,
| bikes, weird electric skateboard-like things, and other
| wheeled things for the kids. These are coupled local
| government parks and spaces where people can ride a bike
| JUST FOR FUN. I mean it very seriously that greenways
| outright avoid any turns that might be useful for
| economic life. Riding bikes on the roads is mostly for
| the true anti-car zealots.
|
| I've been ready to buy a house for few years, but I've
| realized I'm no longer happy with the whole package. I
| want to realistically be able to walk or bike to get a
| dinner, coffee, or groceries. Yet, city centers (in the
| south for sure) tend to offer the most dangerous roads
| for doing this, and unhealthy environment, and poor
| social atmosphere.
|
| I'm sensing that there are more people on the sidelines
| (who have remove jobs, after all) who are ready to buy
| into better neighborhoods. These people may not be
| willing to give up their cars, but there is negotiating
| space, and it is relevant that these are people who have
| economic clout to force the issue.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Riding bikes on the road, even in the US, is mostly for
| the poorest workers. It is _most visibly_ for the
| committed exercise or competitive cyclists, and it is
| vanishingly infrequently but looms large in the public
| imagination for the "true anti-car zealots".
|
| https://www.vox.com/2014/7/9/5883823/its-not-just-
| hipsters-o...
| coding123 wrote:
| I think it's not just about storing the vehicles, it's also
| about making your life miserable in a 2 hour commute going
| to a 3 hour commute.
|
| There IS more space in the united states, believe it or
| not.
| davidw wrote:
| Since there is more space, you'd expect that the market
| would allocate more of it for parking where needs be and
| that you don't need the government dictating parking
| minimums.
|
| Also, not all space is equal: even in the US, well-
| connected space with lots of amenities like the downtowns
| of cities is not infinite.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| The market allocates only as much as users can bear,
| which is about epsilon above the line of "for average
| user, the parking situation is so bad and unbearable that
| they chose to go without the service". Anything above it
| is money left on the table.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| That's assuming there is a monopoly on providing parking
| spaces. Zoning notwithstanding, anyone can build a
| parking structure and rent or sell parking spaces.
| Tenants can choose whether to pay more for an apartment
| that includes parking or less for one that doesn't.
|
| The total cost of a housing unit with parking wouldn't be
| be more than it is now because the cost of constructing a
| housing unit with parking wouldn't be more than it is
| now. It would just cause units without parking to become
| available.
|
| Which would tend to increase housing availability, which
| would tend to lower prices including for units with
| parking. Because the people who want the parking spaces
| wouldn't have to bid against people who just want housing
| and don't need parking.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Why not go all the way to the source of the problem to make
| it realistic?
|
| E.g., NIMBYism
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/democrats-blue-
| st...
| spencerchubb wrote:
| And the root cause of NIMBYism is the public goods dilemma.
| Everyone would benefit if more housing were built, but
| nobody wants more built near their land.
|
| The solution is not as simple as "Just stop electing
| NIMBYs!" because NIMBYism is a Nash equilibrium.
| andrewjl wrote:
| > Everyone would benefit if more housing were built, but
| nobody wants more built near their land.
|
| Letting land owners build on land they already own with
| fewer restrictions solves this problem. If it's a matter
| of aesthetics or "neighborhood character" and not a
| matter of habitability as defined by the housing code,
| who cares what the neighbors think.
| PpEY4fu85hkQpn wrote:
| > nobody wants more built near their land
|
| Absolute nonsense.
| babyshake wrote:
| Perhaps the only solution then is to build in everybody's
| backyard. "Why don't we build over there instead of here"
| is more difficult to argue when the same construction is
| happening everywhere.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| It's a pity that they didn't bake in the option to turn on
| realistic parking lots and road sizes for the required
| capacity. It does have traffic jams and more roads can help,
| especially since the player can control induced demand far more
| than in reality, but allowing the player to switch between both
| what's a fun game and what's a realistic simulation could have
| gone a long way to inform a good chunk of the population on the
| tradeoffs and impacts of parking and other infrastructure
| dedicated to automobiles.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| I haven't looked at 'cities: skylines' or if there is a
| sequel... recently. I'm wondering if they finally did start
| modeling parking.
|
| I think 'realistic parking' should probably be an option,
| like you said some people want the 'classic' sim-city
| experience and modeling. I'd hate to drive those people away
| from the 'cities' series, as it just seems to be sim-city
| without the EA enshittification.
|
| I think it could be really interesting to allow users to try
| to build less car focused cities within the game. To simulate
| concepts like Barcelona's 'superblocks', to plan bikelanes or
| golfcart-focused communities like 'the villages'.
|
| Generally the devs of 'cities' seem like they are interested
| in many concepts (there are sooooo many dlc for skylines) ..
| hopefully this one bubbles up.
| cs2great wrote:
| [dead]
| sumtechguy wrote:
| There is a mod for the current version of cities that does
| model it. You have to make sure you have enough parking or
| your buildings will go empty.
|
| There is a also a DLC addon where you can have walkable
| cities. It is pretty tricky to get just right.
| stouset wrote:
| Realistic parking and mixed-use commercial/residential as
| common in European cities are my two biggest wishes for
| Cities 2.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| mixed use zoning (and new types of medium zoning like row
| houses and commie blocks) were in last week's dev diary:
| https://youtu.be/PBwwZ4XnW34?t=84
| massysett wrote:
| There is a sequel coming out in the next few months and the
| developers say that parking is modeled more realistically
| than in the first Cities: Skylines. In the first game,
| citizens did not park cars at all - cars appeared out of
| thin air, were driven to their destination, and then
| vanished again. Folks often called these "pocket cars"
| because citizens could put them into and take them out of
| their pants pockets.
|
| Apparently in the sequel buildings actually have parking,
| and the cars sit in the parking lot. Some citizens such as
| older ones prefer to drive.
| xyzelement wrote:
| Parking is impactful but is ultimately shaped by human
| preferences that are revealed by the choices people make.
|
| For example, you can live in NYC car-free, but many (most?)
| people move out to the burbs once they have a family, partially
| because lower density + car enables better family life.
|
| What works well for a single-and-dating young professional,
| doesn't work as well for a dad. If ample parking makes family
| life easier, that is probably a pretty good tradeoff.
| digging wrote:
| > Parking is impactful but is ultimately shaped by human
| preferences that are revealed by the choices people make.
|
| This is completely untrue. It is shaped by the profit-seeking
| behaviors of car manufacturers.
|
| In general, when you think a phenomenon is due to "the choices
| people make" (especially in the US), it probably is not.
| xyzelement wrote:
| Sorry but your posts sounds like a well rehearsed cliche you
| pulled out rather than a response to my comment.
|
| I intentionally cited an example of someone having access to
| great density and transit (NYC) but making a different
| choice. The Toyota motor corporation doesn't seem to be in
| the mix on my decision here. Do you have something to
| elaborate here?
|
| As for "especially in the US..." part, really? On simple
| Googling, seems like France has over 80% household rate of
| car ownership, and Japan has something close to 80% (two
| random countries I pulled) so while US is obviously higher,
| it doesn't seem like an obviously US phenomenon.
|
| I may be off on what you are trying to say here but in my
| defense you haven't actually articulated an argument.
| jjav wrote:
| > > Parking is impactful but is ultimately shaped by human
| preferences that are revealed by the choices people make.
|
| > This is completely untrue. It is shaped by the profit-
| seeking behaviors of car manufacturers.
|
| That's a wild claim, how would you substantiate it?
|
| It's partially true, of course, manufacturers (or anything)
| lobby for their self-interest.
|
| But your claim is that it is _completely untrue_ that people
| have preferences that shape what they need. A lot of people
| much prefer living in a large space with land than squeezed
| into a high-rise.
| sime2009 wrote:
| How many other options are available to people in between the
| suburbs and NYC style high density cities?
| nonsensezzz wrote:
| I haven't had a car since 2015 and I don't plan on getting one.
| It's a waste of money, time and energy. If a country as big as
| china can have a solid train network. Why can't we? What does our
| biggest competitor do that we can't do?
| [deleted]
| Avlin67 wrote:
| same as dark matter
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| What else can be done? Universal lot sharing agreements, shared
| parking, and annulling reserved parking stipulations.
|
| Especially the later is a structural factor in the oversupply of
| parking. It's the parking equivalent of circuit-switching
| networks - which naturally results in the oversupply of circuits.
| Mutatis mutandis for all things parking.
|
| If one is to admit that these played a role in the oversupply of
| parking, then it's imperative to annul them to make progress
| towards right-sizing parking supply.
| revscat wrote:
| > What else can be done?
|
| Reduce the regulatory regimes that force cars on business
| owners and individuals: eliminate street level parking
| requirements for property owners, create car-free zones in city
| centers, declare war on Saudi Arabia, prioritize foot traffic
| in new commercial development, set minimums for bike/pedestrian
| friendly mileage, decrease the number of single family
| residences and increase multi-family domiciles.
|
| There's a lot.
| hooverd wrote:
| Properly prosecute bike theft, but people would call that
| racist.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| >What else can be done?
|
| Functioning public transit and denser cities?
| josephcsible wrote:
| What is this "oversupply of parking" you speak of? In every
| city I've ever been to, parking was _very_ scarce and
| expensive.
| tekla wrote:
| Well if you read the article, there are multiples more of
| parking than cars.
|
| And yes, parking is scare in cities, because cities use the
| space for more efficient purposes.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| The one refered to in the article. What were your thoughts on
| how they defined it?
| [deleted]
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I lived for a few years a 5 minute walk from downtown Palo Alto.
| I still used my car, but significantly less. I can't tell you how
| wonderful it was to walk, instead of drive, for a random trip to
| a restaurant. It was even better when going to the bar.
|
| I think if we also focused on walkability for residential
| development, we could cut down on car use. Even though I now live
| in suburbia, I made sure there were a few places I could walk to
| before I bought my house.
| lippihom wrote:
| Imagine how nice it was during Covid when all of University
| Avenue was closed off to cars! They've reversed all of that
| now... such a shame.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| I know this is US-by-default site but does parking really shape
| everything around us (most of the humanity)? What about South
| America or Africa?
|
| From my experience in living in Asia, USA and Europe, it might
| only be applicable to USA.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| American cities seem to hover around 20-30% land area dedicated
| to parking in the city cores, according to ParkingReform.
| Canadian urban planning is largely indistinguishable from
| American here too. Mexico City is probably similar, with around
| 40% according to one source [1]. Rio is around 42% of new
| construction. In all of the cities I checked, it was largest
| land use category once broken out.
|
| Melbourne seems to be better at ~12%, but it's still the third
| largest land use category despite long-standing efforts to
| deprioritize cars.
|
| If anything, "shapes everything around us" might be
| understating the reality.
|
| [1] https://www.itdp.org/2017/07/26/mexico-city-became-leader-
| pa...
|
| [2] https://www.itdp.org/2019/01/31/rio-joins-parking-reform-
| lea...
| mikrl wrote:
| I visited metro Detroit for the first time on Saturday and the
| parking situation was abysmal but this is perhaps understandable
| in a large city. I thought my small city in Canada was bad!
|
| We couldn't even park downtown since it appears you need to book
| it in advance and the trip was somewhat spontaneous. I just ended
| up pulling over (by a no stopping sign ha) on a quiet side street
| and setting the GPS back to Windsor.
| brewdad wrote:
| I don't know what you were doing wrong but Detroit has more
| available parking than just about any American city.
| mikrl wrote:
| I must have randomly selected the 5 least suitable parking
| garages downtown then.
|
| I was happy to burn gas for another few minutes to find one
| that... I could actually pay for... but the consensus of my
| passengers was to just go home.
|
| This was at 4pm on a Saturday though, maybe you need to get
| parked before noon or something.
| jakemoshenko wrote:
| Detroit, as the capital of the auto industry, has far more
| parking than just about any other city I've ever been to. There
| are huge, multi-story garages right on the main thoroughfare
| downtown.
|
| https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/parking-lots-eat-american-...
|
| > Detroit was, or is, Motor City. Its center can pull off
| another automotive-related nickname: Parking Central. Fully
| one-third of downtown Detroit is dedicated to letting cars do
| what they're not designed for: standing still.
| mikrl wrote:
| That's what I thought! But all of the five or so garages we
| tried cost $20-40 flat with no ticket machines or anything,
| and I wasn't willing to download/fight with an app to walk
| around for an hour.
|
| Next trip will be more planned for sure. I was impressed with
| the highways though. Definitely a motorists' dream to get
| around the various suburbs.
| 2023throwawayy wrote:
| Needing to download an app, and saying "you need to book in
| advance" are not the same thing.
|
| Just because you didn't want to deal with it and didn't do
| research ahead of time doesn't mean "We couldn't even park
| downtown". You didn't want to, and that's fine.
| mikrl wrote:
| You're splitting hairs, which I can also do:
|
| There's a giant parking lot with 10,000 spaces and 2 are
| free. There is 'no parking' unless you want to drive
| around for 2 hours.
|
| For enough money you could probably get a permit from the
| cops and a security detail and park wherever you wanted,
| like in a city park. There is still 'no parking' in
| parks.
|
| Within parameters that apply in the majority of cities
| I've tried to park in, there was no parking. In future
| I'll download the app, book a spot and bring my phone
| charger and then I'll be able to access the parking.
| brewdad wrote:
| Saying there's no parking and there's no _free_ (as in
| money) parking are two very different things. Parking in
| the downtown of one of the ten largest metro areas in the
| US is going to cost money. That 's just how it is.
| mikrl wrote:
| I don't mind paying. In Toronto I'll pay $20 no problem
| to park right in the middle of the core in a garage. But
| I have options to use cash or card at a meter or machine
| without getting my phone out. I can pay for an hour or 2
| or all day.
|
| In Detroit the options were street parking (all full) or
| flat rate in a garage behind an app. I looked for a
| ticket machine and there were none. My bad for not doing
| research but still, I had a good day elsewhere in the
| metro, was just surprised by the inflexibility in the DT
| core.
|
| It was the end of the day and I wanted to walk around and
| scout out stuff for next visit. If I spent all day there
| I'd happily pay the $20-40 but not for an hour walk,
| that's silly when I can look at stuff in Windsor where my
| accommodation and free parking were.
| ehaliewicz2 wrote:
| Plenty of cities get away with garages that don't require
| an app. Don't normalize shitty things like that.
| hughesjj wrote:
| An app is easier to maintain and enforce than meters, and
| I don't need to carry coins or go back to the meter to
| add time. I'm all for them but prefer a web interface
| with Google checkout, or text messenging with a card on
| file.
| 2023throwawayy wrote:
| I prefer being able to see my time remaining via the app
| and extend time if needed. Don't tell me what to
| "normalize".
| tfandango wrote:
| I recently took a roadtrip about 1500 miles to visit some
| family. On the way to/back we wanted to stop and check out some
| cities the kids wanted to visit and it's amazing the anxiety I
| had every time we drove into a large urban area, all about
| traffic and parking. Most of the time, like you said, there was
| no place to park so I drove around and around with hundreds of
| other people while the kids complained about not being able to
| get out. It's like you said, if you knew where you were going
| you may be able to map it out, which also gives me anxiety (ok
| kids, we need to leave now to get to the next parking spot). I
| don't know, each time I was glad to leave.
| xnx wrote:
| Seems like parking is a side effect for people's preference for
| larger houses and yards. Convince people to live in smaller
| houses and share walls with their neighbors, and the parking
| situation would change dramatically.
| closeparen wrote:
| It's possible to have complete, walkable communities where most
| people live in single family homes - streetcar suburbs. It's
| also possible to have totally unwalkable multifamily housing -
| very common in some postwar sprawls to build a subdivision off
| an arterial and fill it with townhouses or condos. These can
| even look like good urbanism in carefully framed photos. It's
| only when you zoom out that you realize it's just the
| townhouses surrounded by "open space" and fast roads.
|
| The issue with suburbia is the framework, much more than the
| housing types. The battle over housing types is more about
| within existing city grid systems, doing some piecemeal
| replacements of single-family houses to duplexes, triplexes,
| and apartment buildings. Suburbia produces multifamily housing
| easily enough - not that much objection to new condo/townhouse
| subdivisions. We just don't celebrate that much, because they
| are still ultimately subdivisions.
| the_snooze wrote:
| You're describing urban environments. A lot of people live in
| those places already. But a lot of people prefer to live
| elsewhere. Differences in preference is fine.
|
| What doesn't make sense though is driving in urban
| environments, especially single-occupant vehicles that make up
| the vast majority of motor traffic in major cities. Keep the
| suburbs. But I think it'd be good to make cities painful to
| drive in for all but the folks who _need_ it (e.g., people with
| mobility issues, or families with small children). If you 're
| able-bodied in an urban environment, you should be the last
| person to be driving around regularly.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > it'd be good to make cities painful to drive in
|
| This is the wrong approach. Don't intentionally make driving
| worse for anyone, anywhere, ever. If you want people to use
| transit instead, then improve it until it's a better option
| than driving is today.
| CalRobert wrote:
| The best way to improve transit is to take space away from
| cars and give it to busses, bikes, and walking.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Improving transit is often achieved _by_ making driving
| less attractive. For instance, by creating bus-only lanes
| that cars may not use, or by taxing /tolling car use to
| fund transit improvements.
| dublinben wrote:
| Road space in cities is a zero-sum game. Currently cars
| command the vast majority of it, with obvious consequences.
|
| Highly efficient uses of space, like dedicated bus lanes,
| directly transfer road space from cars to improve transit.
| This necessarily makes driving "worse" in the short term,
| until enough marginal drivers shift to the now-improved
| busses, leaving the car lanes quicker and less congested.
|
| In most cities, cars are physically obstructing better
| transit, which makes traffic worse for everyone involved.
| ehaliewicz2 wrote:
| Making roads narrower e.g. in residential areas, causes
| drivers to slow down, making it more safe for everyone.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Don 't intentionally make driving worse for anyone,
| anywhere, ever._
|
| Why not?
| everdrive wrote:
| Driving in urban environments is already terrible. This is
| the de-facto effect of density, regardless of what intended
| policy is. It seems to me that there's just no way to have
| a large number of cars be comfortable in a dense urban
| environment. Might as well just try to minimize them.
| tekla wrote:
| Nope. This is why pedestrians die. Force cars to go slower
| in cities.
|
| They recently added a pedestrian island in the road near
| where I live. It is not unnoticeable. With paint lines,
| high reflective markings, and literally a concrete wall.
|
| Literally on day 1, a car made an illegal left turn and hit
| the clearly marked island at 20mph faster than the speed
| limit. It jumped the 3 foot high barrier, but the
| pedestrian on that island was saved.
|
| Make car life in cities miserable.
| ars wrote:
| > Make car life in cities miserable.
|
| Make life in cities miserable, is more accurate. The
| reason is that transit is worse than cars _always_. If
| you make travel in cars worse, then all you did is make
| life worse for everyone.
|
| And in reality it simply means that fewer people go
| there, because going there is miserable. The city starts
| converting to low income because anyone with income goes
| elsewhere.
| josephcsible wrote:
| If you want to make pedestrians safer, you can do that
| without having to make driving miserable, by building
| elevated pedestrian walkways.
| CalRobert wrote:
| And how do I walk in to a shop from this walkway?
| josephcsible wrote:
| By walking back down the ramp from it to the regular
| sidewalk. I just meant I want to add elevated walkways to
| cross streets with, not for them to replace sidewalks
| entirely.
| retzkek wrote:
| I assume you mean for crossing busy roads and highways,
| not city streets? Certainly there are places for that,
| like Chicago's Lake Shore Drive. They're expensive and
| take a lot of space themselves, though, especially to
| meet accessibility requirements, and they can add
| considerable distance to the pedestrian's route.
|
| Otherwise, what you're describing sounds like someone
| looked at this well-circulated cartoon and said "hey
| that's a great idea! Just raise the planks by 15 feet!"
| https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/18/7236471/cars-
| pedestria...
| daveliepmann wrote:
| Elevated pedestrian walkways are miserable for people
| walking. You seem pretty deeply carbrained.
| josephcsible wrote:
| How so? I've used them before and didn't see a problem
| with them.
| daveliepmann wrote:
| How are they for a grandparents pushing a stroller?
|
| Would you say they encourage a vibrant street culture of
| cafes and shops?
|
| The ones I've seen, especially in Berlin and Izmir, are
| loud and a hassle to cross. That's because walkways and
| bikeways over multi-lane roads are _car infrastructure_.
| They are there to prioritize high-speed automobile
| traffic with few interruptions. I 'm happy for the one
| going up at my gym, but I know it's there to ensure
| bike/ped political forces can't endanger the trunk road
| underneath. True pedestrian infrastructure there would
| involve a major speed and size downgrade to the road,
| which is unacceptable, thus the political defensive move
| to pay out the nose for something car advocates would
| never normally fund.
| MandieD wrote:
| Elevated/buried pedestrian walkways make walking harder
| for a lot of people. A wheelchair-accessible ramp that
| goes up 12 feet is going to add at least 100 feet more
| distance up and down - and still be painful for a lot of
| people with otherwise manageable foot/joint issues.
|
| Pushing a stroller for the last few years, plus spraining
| my ankle a few weeks ago has given me a little taste of
| what trying to use sidewalks is like for people with even
| tighter mobility constraints, and this in an area that is
| relatively accessible without a car.
| tekla wrote:
| Or reclaim street space from cars at infinitely cheaper
| initial cost, time, and effort.
| 2023throwawayy wrote:
| > Don't intentionally make driving worse for anyone,
| anywhere, ever.
|
| Why not?
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| No, it is the correct approach. It is somewhat a zero-sum
| game at least in urban centers. Driving is cheap because
| free and cheap parking is widely available, and car speed
| is prioritized over other factors including pedestrian
| safety. Some of the huge volume of parking has to be given
| over to other transit modes, which will increase demand and
| eventually price for what remains. Urban speed limits need
| to be lower, pedestrians need to have more and safer ways
| to cross, which will also lower average speeds.
|
| All of this will make driving less pleasant and convenient,
| the cost of making walking safer and easier. As it is
| driving is "artificially" easy, the consequence of decades
| of it being prioritized very highly. It needs to come down
| somewhat.
| the_snooze wrote:
| And even when cities invest in non-car transit, cars will
| still steal those resources. It's not uncommon in my city
| to see cars idling on bus lanes, or gig delivery workers
| parking in protected bike lines _inside the bollards_.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yeah where I am there is little and half-assed bike
| infrastructure. Cyclists facetiously and bitterly call
| the bike lanes "uber lanes." They are simply painted and
| unbuffered, unenforced. Extra parking in residential
| areas and loading, ride share, and delivery space
| everywhere else. Cyclists ride in the lane or not at all,
| and then are blamed for being there when we're injured or
| killed in traffic.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I used to knock on these people's windshields to ask them
| to move on busy roads. I had to stop doing that after one
| person tried to run me over a few blocks later (they
| missed and hit the sidewalk). Others were content to
| simply scream, or back up onto me.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > It is somewhat a zero-sum game at least in urban
| centers. Driving is cheap because free and cheap parking
| is widely available, and car speed is prioritized over
| other factors including pedestrian safety.
|
| I've never seen an urban center where "free and cheap
| parking is widely available", or one with a speed limit
| above 25.
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| I've been to NYC where free and cheap parking is on
| nearly every major and minor street. I would consider it
| widely available. Yes, trying to find a parking spot is a
| nightmare but that doesn't mean it isn't widely available
| generally.
| everdrive wrote:
| >Yes, trying to find a parking spot is a nightmare but
| that doesn't mean it isn't widely available generally.
|
| But that's exactly what it means. It's not available to
| people. Someone else already parked there.
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| Well yes, because there are a lot of people. That doesn't
| mean NYC doesn't have ample parking; parking is literally
| everywhere all the time. Many streets park on both sides,
| so over 50% of the street real estate is parking!
| Consider maybe that parking demand is high, not that
| supply is low.
| jjav wrote:
| > I would consider it widely available.
|
| Have you tried to park on the street in NYC?
|
| Parking is most certainly not widely available. If spots
| exist but all of them are always taken, that means zero
| availability.
|
| If you go to a restaurant with 100 tables, all of them
| full and a 2 hour waiting list, would you tell a friend
| on the phone "Yes they have lots of tables available"?
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Chicago for example has both. Phoenix, las vegas. As do a
| number of medium-large cities in the southeast like
| raleigh, tampa, charleston SC. Maybe not cities that come
| to mind first when talking about urban centers but they
| are million+ population agglomerations with plentiful
| parking and serious pedestrian death problems. Tens of
| millions of americans live in these "small" cities of
| around a million, so trends across them end up affecting
| a huge population.
|
| Another factor is that urban speed limits vary widely in
| how much they are actually limits. Research is clear on
| the fact that road design has at least as strong an
| influence on driver behavior as posted limits do. Without
| rigorous enforcement & given the wide streets common in
| these places, driver behavior tends towards interpreting
| the limit as the minimum speed they are entitled to,
| rather than the maximum to be attained only when safe.
|
| And finally neither I nor anyone else here know what
| you've seen so that's a very silly limit to place on the
| conversation.
| f1yght wrote:
| You have to change zoning laws in large swaths of the United
| States to even allow building homes that share walls.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > share walls with their neighbors
|
| I honestly don't know why anyone would ever _want_ to do that.
| To me, it 's only done out of necessity, and is a driving force
| in motivating people to get the hell out of that situation
| asap.
|
| But the cool thing is, some people _can_ choose that, if that
| 's what they desire, even though I can't understand why.
| josephcsible wrote:
| There are unfortunately some people who say that we should
| abolish suburbs and force everyone to live in a city like
| that.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Who is saying this?
|
| At most, what I've seen is people saying we should not be
| forced to build _only_ this type of dwelling in a given
| place.
| inconceivable wrote:
| HN is filled with people who are deeply troubled by the
| way other people live their lives.
| hughesjj wrote:
| I'd go one further and say it's wrong to assume the most
| inefficient, expensive, and socially isolating form of
| infrastructure shouldn't be expected to be the default. I
| get land capex is cheaper and distributed population is
| great for defensive posture against nuclear attacks and
| pandemics, but that doesn't mean that denser suburbs,
| small towns with strong centers, or indeed cities are
| less desirable than suburbia or rural areas by any means.
|
| Life naturally fills the ecosystem it finds itself in to
| carrying capacity. The sustainable limitations here are
| financial, ecological, and regulatory. I think we're
| hitting up against those constraints right now. Unless
| they want to pay us more money, we're going to have to
| sacrifice the environment or car centric regulations to
| continue growing. If we decide to just stop growing, then
| we either need changes in regulations to further
| disincentivize growth or allow a ton of suffering to
| happen.
| [deleted]
| com2kid wrote:
| I chose to buy my first house in a townhome complex with 100
| units.
|
| Why?
|
| Maintenance was outsourced, and at a lower price than I could
| pay for myself (100 households at once get a good group buy
| price!)
|
| Everything on the exterior of my house was taken care of.
|
| The complex has 2 shared green spaces, one for dogs, one for
| people. The large green space for people is _bigger_ than the
| yard in my current single family home. All year round
| weatherproof commercial yard furniture was already on the
| property.
|
| Every year my windows got cleaned, the deck power washed.
| Landscaping was professionally handled, trees trimmed, pests
| removed, all w/o me having to worry about any of it.
|
| I'd buy another unit in complex with that design again w/o
| issue or hesitation.
|
| With proper construction techniques (which sadly that complex
| didn't have), sound is _not_ an issue. Sound dampening is a
| solved problem, and I 've lived in other complexes that had
| the same sound leakage from connected neighbors and I have
| from my neighbors right now in the house on the lots around
| me.
| mattlondon wrote:
| This is all fine while the management is fine. As soon as
| the company or people change, it goes to shit.
|
| The next thing you know you've been trying to get the
| broken communal door/gate/sewer/extractor
| fan/lights/electric/gas/whatever fixed for months if not
| years and no one at the management company is even
| returning calls, and you sure as hell can't fix it yourself
| since you are not legally allowed to do it (and you can
| guarantee that if you were to do something yourself the
| dormant management company would suddenly spring to life
| and sue you to hell and back). Then next summer they hike
| the management and maintenance prices 500% and there is
| fuck all you can do apart from suck it up because now you
| can't sell because no one wants to pay the high fee, and
| you can't _not_ pay it as you 'll be taken to court for
| non-payment of contract within days (and P.S. their
| contract says they can hike the prices as they please
| because wow look at that cool yard for dogs! I totally
| forgot to read the entire contract.whatevs.)
|
| TL;Dr it is great while it is all working fine. IME after a
| few years once the initial glean and glow has worn off and
| things start to naturally wear out and break, it will go to
| shit. It will start small with broken lawn furniture that
| doesn't get replaced, then before you know it the roof is
| leaking and there is nothing you can do apart from hope the
| people you pay to look after the place but are not
| responding to emails or calls actually do something.
|
| But hey good luck with your place anyway.
| com2kid wrote:
| > This is all fine while the management is fine. As soon
| as the company or people change, it goes to shit.
|
| HOAs are member voted, it is a thankless job and
| improving things is as simple as running for the board,
| every time someone has wanted to take over they have been
| welcomed on. The HOA there has been going strong for
| almost 25 years, doing a great job managing the place.
|
| The HOA did indeed fire their previous management company
| for incompetence, since the complex is in a large metro
| area, there is no shortage of competition in that field.
|
| Edit: Oh and it isn't like people I hire myself are super
| reliable! I've had vendors working on my house ghost me,
| sometimes in the middle of a job. And there is also the
| cost of my time in learning about different fields (e.g.
| yard irrigation), collecting multiple quotes, and trying
| to do background checks to ensure the people giving the
| quotes do good work.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Convince people to live in smaller houses and share walls
| with their neighbors, and the parking situation would change
| dramatically._
|
| Completely unnecessary. Want a front yard, back yard, and
| garage (attached to a laneway)? Plenty of that was build pre-
| WW2:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0&t=1m8s
|
| The _Oh the Urbanity_ channel has a video on the (mistaken)
| idea that _" urban living" = Manhattan / Hong Kong apartment
| blocks_:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCmz-fgp24E
|
| Examples (Streetview):
|
| *
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/125+Hampton+Ave,+Toronto,+...
|
| *
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+O...
|
| *
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/150+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+...
|
| * https://www.google.com/maps/place/70+Jackman+Ave+Toronto,+ON
|
| See also:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO6txCZpbsQ&t=9m28s
|
| Fifteen minutes pedalling in one direction is downtown, fifteen
| minutes in the other is farm land.
| vel0city wrote:
| The GP said "convince people to live in smaller houses and
| share walls", you retort back "completely unnecessary". Your
| first two examples are...smaller houses and shared walls.
| throw0101a wrote:
| Define "smaller houses". Smaller than _what_? I can find
| tiny(er) houses compared to what I posted in recent
| developments /sub-divisions in the suburbs of Toronto
| (Mississauga, Oakville, Brampton, Pickering, Oshawa, _etc_
| ).
|
| All the streets in question have big(er) and small(er)
| houses, with both semi- and fully-detached houses. Some
| areas have more of some kind than another.
|
| Next time I'll re-arrange the order of the links so that
| the big(er) stuff is first:
|
| * https://www.google.com/maps/place/150+Geoffrey+St,+Toront
| o,+...
|
| There are _two_ subways stations (Keele, Dundas West) with-
| in 2km of that location. You can have sizeable fully-
| detached houses at densities that support walking distances
| of various amenities and mass transit.
|
| The idea that urban living necessitates "smaller houses and
| share walls" is a red herring as demonstrated by a whole
| bunch of housing stock built pre-WW2.
| vel0city wrote:
| I'm not sure what the average square footage of that
| Geoffrey location is, I'm not great at eyeballing that.
| But the average US SFH is what, almost 2,500sqft these
| days? I imagine these are less than that figure?
|
| EDIT: I just did some quick Google Maps measuring on that
| 159 Geoffrey St, I estimated about 60x20 floor plate,
| maybe less. Lose some space from the stairs, two mostly
| full floors and maybe a finished attic, probably close to
| that 2,500ish sqft.
| throw0101a wrote:
| Recently sold, 2700 sq. ft:
|
| * https://juliekinnear.com/toronto-houses/51-geoffrey-
| street/
|
| Currently for sale in the same area:
|
| * https://www.properly.ca/buy/home/view/JHfk2xo4TU6BZrfBk
| 2c3gw...
|
| Notice the 'high' prices: this is because this
| neighbourhood is in high demand because urban living
| seems to be cool again 'with the kids'. But back in the
| 1960s, '70s, and '80s the prices were much, much lower
| because all the 'cool kids' (WASPs) were flocking to the
| then-new suburbs and leaving the dirty city for the
| immigrants (Poles in the case of Roncesvalles; Little
| Portugal is the next area over, and Little Italy next to
| that). Since the late-1990s urban living started becoming
| cool again. Of course such urban/walkable neighbourhoods
| aren't built any more, so a finite resource gets its
| price bidded up.
| vel0city wrote:
| So I guess your point is you can buy just as much square
| footage in the city, provided an unlimited budget.
|
| Nice to live in a world where a $2M house is a normal
| home price. I definitely don't live anywhere near that.
| So for me to live in that kind of an area, I'd probably
| need...a much smaller house and probably a shared wall.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| I'm becoming increasingly convinced a significant portion
| of HN comments are made by folks who spend the barest
| minimum of time to post a reply.
|
| This might be one of those cases where random links were
| copy pasted without consideration for the actual claims.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _This might be one of those cases where random links
| were copy pasted without consideration for the actual
| claims._
|
| Or it could be because the same silly tropes about urban
| living are trotted out regularly (which is why _Oh the
| Urbanity_ made their video) and some of us counter them
| with the same silly replies we 've posted numerous times
| before.
|
| There are a number of examples in the posted links that
| are not "smaller houses and share walls", and I could
| find more if I didn't value my time. I could also find a
| whole bunch of "smaller houses and share walls" in
| suburbans developments in my area to show that "smaller
| houses and share walls" is _not exclusive to (so-called)
| urban living_ ; see for example "Why American Yards Are
| Shrinking":
|
| * https://cheddar.com/media/why-american-yards-are-
| shrinking
|
| Small and big things are found in both cities and
| suburbs.
| everdrive wrote:
| This is nice when everyone you live near is quiet, respectful,
| safe, and clean. What happens when the neighborhood turns and
| your wife can't safely walk her dog outside the house, and you
| can't get sleep anymore due to the loud pumping bass and drunk
| people fighting outside your window?
|
| I kind of like the idea of a city community with nice little
| shops close by, but every city I've been in has had too much
| crime, congestion, and noise to make it livable for someone who
| likes quiet and solitude.
| 8note wrote:
| I imagine parking space.as replacing yard space though? People
| want parking, or at least, regulation has decided that people
| want parking more than they do yards
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Density and diversity are opposing forces. Since diversity is
| now the absolute highest value in western culture, density can
| never be anything other than dysfunctional or a lament.
| UtopiaPunk wrote:
| Do you have a source for this claim? I don't understand how
| diversity and density would be opposed to one another.
| hooverd wrote:
| The problem with living in a car-free urban area,
| especially one that hasn't been extremely gentrified, is
| that someone is likely to liberate your bike.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| How would you propose convincing people to live four inches
| from their neighbor? This seems like somewhat of a challenging
| sale. I cannot speak for everyone, but I have lived this way
| and it is not good.
| xnx wrote:
| I'm not advocating that. For those that want to change
| parking, it seems like that's what they'll have to do.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Put the well paying jobs in the city? Money tends to be
| pretty persuasive
| veave wrote:
| That's how you get astronomically high housing prices
| singleshot_ wrote:
| I might be missing something, but it sure seems like having
| all the good jobs in one place where it is absolutely
| helping to reside is the cause of all the traffic and
| parking congestion.
|
| If all the jobs were distributed widely across a place that
| was pleasant to live, I'm not sure we would be talking too
| much about all this.
|
| I do agree, though, that money will make a person do crazy
| things.
| abraxas wrote:
| Don't build with shitty materials. There are ways to sound
| proof apartments to the degree that it's a non issue. Adding
| a facility in the vicinity for parties solves the issue of
| neighbours wanting to blast loud music (unless they are
| really obnoxious neighbours but in that case building
| management can take care of that).
| singleshot_ wrote:
| I don't build a lot of apartment buildings but I absolutely
| support this. On the other hand, imagine if I used these
| techniques in my single family home a quarter mile from my
| nearest neighbor. Paradise. Dead silence.
| everdrive wrote:
| Loud bass carries through pretty much any material. You're
| going to need a cultural change where people in dense
| environments don't play loud music, and watch their
| behavior after 8pm.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Loud bass carries through pretty much any material.
| You're going to need a cultural change where people in
| dense environments don't play loud music, and watch their
| behavior after 8pm.
|
| Not at all. New construction in NYC has excellent
| soundproofing. Even that is actually more a side-effect
| of changes to fire codes than a specific demand for
| soundproofing - buildings constructed with soundproofing
| as a specific goal can be even more insulated.
|
| If you're in one of those buildings, it's actually quite
| difficult to hear your neighbors during any normal
| activity.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| It's physically impossible for practically any kind of 4
| inches of soundproof to prevent a 50hz frequency from
| vibrating through the walls.
|
| Maybe if it was 4 inches of solid lead and even then
| particularly sensitive people might still feel a normal
| sized subwoofer placed against the wall on the opposite
| side.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > live in smaller houses and share walls with their neighbors
|
| Doing either of those things makes your standard of living
| worse.
| f1yght wrote:
| That's your opinion, sharing a wall but being able to walk or
| bike easily to everything I need it a huge boost to my
| quality of life.
| 2023throwawayy wrote:
| If you get lucky and get quiet and/or friendly neighbors,
| sure.
| closeparen wrote:
| Sound isolation is part of the price/quality tradeoff.
| Urban housing is just so scarce relative to demand that
| almost no one can afford quality.
| pivo wrote:
| So does having to drive to work, sit in traffic, pay for and
| maintain the car (or more likely in the US, cars.)
|
| I live in a city, share walls, and am less than a 10 minute
| walk from my office. My coworkers come in early and leave
| work late to avoid traffic. I'm home before they can get
| their car out of the parking garage and I can easily go home
| for lunch. I think my standard of living is therefore higher
| than someone who must drive to work.
| xnx wrote:
| That's often true. I've also read about a lot of situations
| in rural areas where the nearest neighbor might be 1/2 mile
| away, but they are absolutely crazy about property lines.
| unsignedint wrote:
| Ah, parking... It's a topic that resonates with me deeply. I must
| admit, I've declined some get-togethers simply because I knew
| parking would be a challenge. There's nothing more disheartening
| than realizing the only option is to find street parking in an
| unfamiliar neighborhood, and the added stress of searching for a
| spot, especially parallel parking, just adds to the frustration.
| This stress often reaches a point where the first thing I do when
| heading to a new place is to conduct a thorough Google Maps
| search, examining the aerial view and Street View to identify
| available parking options. Of course, if public transportation is
| a viable alternative, I try to opt for that, but unfortunately,
| it's not always efficient and can significantly increase travel
| time.
| anideazzz wrote:
| You could mandate underground parking lots for every new
| structure. Then liberate access to that parking via an app so
| that not only the above the parking lot folks take advantage of
| it.
| itronitron wrote:
| us should probably be capitalized in the title, (i.e. US)
| tekla wrote:
| Well, its not capitalized in the article title, nor does
| capitalizing it make sense in context, and the original title
| makes sense just fine. So no?
| jwestbury wrote:
| Also Canada, the UK, many parts of Europe...
|
| Car-centricity may be worse in the US, but it's not unique to
| the US.
| pc86 wrote:
| It's the word "us," not an abbreviation.
| hfkwer wrote:
| I imagine that itronitron's point is that the issue of
| parking as presented in the article is a typically American
| feature. Many other countries deal with it differently.
| glonq wrote:
| I spent the first decade of my career in that industry, working
| on the hardware and software inside parking meters. It gave me
| invaluable exposure to embedded devices, RTOS, electronics,
| mechanical design, UX, and wired/wireless networking. Everybody
| else I graduated with in college took tame gov't and enterprise
| jobs, which would have bored me to tears.
| glonq wrote:
| A few of my memories from working in the parking biz:
|
| 1. We were bidding smart parking meters to a city in California
| who insisted that, per the ADA, they should be accessible to the
| blind. We suggested to them that blind folks tend to not park or
| drive cars very often.
|
| 2. Seeing damage photos from a customer's parking meter where
| somebody had inserted dynamite up the coin/ticket return tray.
| The explosion buckled the body of the machine, but incredibly the
| reinforcement and the lock held. The [paper] money inside got
| destroyed, though.
|
| 3. The angry customer reaction when a co-worker's "Get bent,
| loser" dummy/debug message accidentally found its way into
| production.
|
| 4. Having to certify the accuracy of a parking meter's onboard
| clock because it printed a boat launch ticket that was used as
| evidence in the case of a guy who killed his pregnant wife and
| dumped her in the SF Bay.
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