[HN Gopher] U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking mi...
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U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums
Author : dylan604
Score : 146 points
Date : 2024-01-03 15:49 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| elektor wrote:
| There is a thorough book on this topic, Paved Paradise: How
| Parking Explains the World. Highly recommend it if you're
| interested in the causes of so much of our dysfunction in housing
| costs.
|
| https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/634461/paved-paradi...
| r00fus wrote:
| Interesting. I also listen to podcasts like The War on Cars
| [1].
|
| [1] https://thewaroncars.org
| _dain_ wrote:
| Also "The High Cost of Free Parking" by Donald Shoup.
| pramsey wrote:
| Yep, good read and wonderful on the vicious cycle that led to
| the downtowns of most US cities looking like WWII bombed out
| zones by 1975.
| adventured wrote:
| That's not the cause at all. Extreme minority poverty and the
| potent bifurcation of incomes, education and wealth in the US
| is the cause.
|
| Parking won't fix any of that realistically. You can push
| minority poverty to the suburbs, which for example is what
| France does, however it doesn't solve anything about the
| bombed out look, it merely redistributes the problem to
| somewhere else. You can gentrify the cities and push poor
| minorities to the suburbs and inverse how it's arranged in
| the US now, it will make the suburbs look bombed out - until
| you fix the minority poverty problem.
| ponector wrote:
| Root cause it's poverty, it is zoning laws and taxes for
| real estate.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Lowering housing costs is a pretty good way to reduce
| poverty, isn't it?
| toofy wrote:
| as usual, it's probably a mixture of many things, and
| poverty is one, property prices is another, and there are
| certainly many many others.
|
| we (engineering types) have this terrible habit of
| declaring that it is _One Thing_ when in reality, complex
| problems are... complicated. shocking, i know. it isn't a
| simple math problem with a one answer. human problems are
| significantly more chaotic and fractal.
|
| i don't want to imply that we shouldn't look at these and
| add our ideas, only that id love to see us lessen our
| crutches of "You're wrong, it's _X_!" and recognize that
| others are probably correct _as well_.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Honestly that would be fixed with expanded immigration. Look
| at places where the limited immigrants we have had in recent
| years primarily ended up and have changed the demography,
| like LA county or Miami-Dade county, and they don't look like
| those midwestern or great plains cities. In fact there are
| almost no vacant parcels anywhere today, with majority latino
| populations now reflecting the recent waves of immigration.
| ljsprague wrote:
| You're confusing correlation with causation. Immigrants are
| more likely to go where there are jobs.
| bluGill wrote:
| Immigrants have a lot of motivations. Jobs are one, but
| unless the immigrant was recruited for a specific job
| (which is common) it isn't primary. There are jobs
| everywhere, even in blighted cities.
|
| Immigrants with no particular job in mind look for places
| where the cost of living is low: they tend to have much
| worse job prospects than normal, so a minimum wage job in
| a low cost of living area is better life than double
| minimum wage in a high cost of living area.
|
| Immigrants often have poor English skills (or whatever
| the local language is). They often are used to food not
| common in the country. So if they can find a community of
| other immigrants that means people they can comfortably
| talk to, and also makes it more likely that someone can
| figure out the process of getting food they like into
| local stores.
| carom wrote:
| LA has extremely dysfunctional housing policy. A wave of
| immigration does nothing but increase demand for housing
| and drive up prices on rather limited stock. It has not
| lead to an increase in housing stock or better commercial
| districts. Adding more people who don't really speak the
| language laws are written in doesn't change the laws that
| prevent you from building vibrant cities.
|
| There is very little mixed use. Majority of the city is
| zoned single family. The only reason there are no parking
| minimums is because the California changed that law. It has
| nothing to do with expanded immigration. LA, despite the
| immigration, is in massive need of a zoning overhaul to
| build a vibrant city. Very little is walkable, it is very
| car-centric, and the zoning is the strong opposition to all
| of this.
| hardcopy wrote:
| There's a lot of people commenting in this thread that would
| benefit from reading this book...
| Amorymeltzer wrote:
| Easily one of the best books I read last year, and probably the
| one that had the biggest lasting effect on the way I look at
| things.
| voisin wrote:
| It's one thing to ditch parking minimums, but it has to be
| matched with investment in public transit. Simply eliminating
| parking spots doesn't eliminate demand when there are no other
| options for getting around. And I suspect the public transit
| investment will be way more controversial and difficult to
| implement.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Ditch off street parking and buildings will become much more
| dense, which in turn will make them more valuable (manhattan
| land is more valuable than suburbia), smaller (because people
| can't afford much space when land is expensive), which
| increases density further.
|
| End result: Nobody has space for a car, lots of demand for
| public transit, makes it worth building public transit.
|
| Unfortunately, there probably will be transitional years of
| people fighting for parking spaces at ridiculous prices before
| the transit gets built.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| The "let's make life shittier for people so they'll do the
| things I think are right" is bad politics and bad policy.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Worked for Europe. Everyone there lives in houses perhaps
| only half the size of a typical US home, and they're happy
| with it. Most people have the _option_ to go live in the
| countryside, have a big house and drive a car, all for the
| same money, yet they _choose_ to have a small city
| apartment and use public transport.
| busterarm wrote:
| Europe was already built before cars existed whereas most
| cities west of the Mississippi were designed for
| automobiles save for a tiny downtown core.
|
| This is especially true about Austin.
| brewdad wrote:
| Paris screwed up their city in the 1970s. They fixed it.
| The city didn't die.
|
| https://www.unjourdeplusaparis.com/en/paris-
| insolite/photos-...
|
| There needs to be a will to change.
| truncate wrote:
| Umm, the public transit is much better and I guess cities
| are more dense than say Austin at-least?
| scythe wrote:
| This is false. Europe always had public transit, up-
| front. If you look at e.g. Paris you see that the peak in
| car ownership and beginning of the decline coincides with
| the economic crash of 2008:
|
| https://www.ceicdata.com/en/france/motor-vehicle-
| ownership-p...
|
| Overall, the change has been small, and most people still
| have a car. And the metro network was very advanced by
| 1939 (unlike some US cities, these lines stayed):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_M%C3%A9tro#/media/Fil
| e:M...
|
| That's in one of the densest and most famously walkable
| cities in the world. Most cities in the United States
| aren't going to be Paris anytime soon, and that's before
| we consider the dismal state of _regional_ transport
| (particularly around the West Coast) which was also
| already extensive in France prior to 2000.
|
| There is just no real basis for claiming that Europe
| restricted cars _prior to_ building good transit. You
| might find it in one or two cities, but certainly not
| most -- in Europe, socialist and communist parties held
| significant sway until the late '70s in many countries
| (in a few they've hung on), and pushed for transit the
| whole time.
| brewdad wrote:
| Europe BUILT transit. It's not like the tribes that
| migrated in from elsewhere found a working subway and
| decided to build Paris around it.
|
| America needs to CHOOSE to build transit. The carrot
| approach hasn't worked, so it's time for the stick.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| > The "let's make life shittier for people so they'll do
| the things I think are right" is bad politics and bad
| policy.
|
| So do you propose we lift all bans on drunk driving as to
| make life slightly more enjoyable for a subset of society?
|
| At some level all laws trade off "making life shittier" for
| some to "make life better" for society. You can argue
| against particular laws but categorically being against it
| reduces your argument as asking for anarchism.
| mint2 wrote:
| That's framing "getting out of a local optima" in the most
| negative terminology. Guess everyone should stay stuck in
| the local optima and not even attempt to find a better one
| or global one.
| lukas099 wrote:
| It's not making life shittier, it's making life better.
| busterarm wrote:
| The problem is that a functional public transit system
| requires functional roadway design to begin with. Austin is a
| sprawling mess with a highway system of concentric rings cut
| through with crossing highways. It's designed for lots of
| cars funneling people to and from sleepy bedroom communities
| & downtown. It's not designed for moving masses of people
| point to point where they need to go.
|
| With the roads Austin has, public transit is expensive to
| maintain and slow. Expanding the system won't change that,
| but only exacerbate the current problems.
| lukas099 wrote:
| > End result: Nobody has space for a car, lots of demand for
| public transit, makes it worth building public transit.
|
| Also, far more tax revenue (from making land more productive)
| makes public transit more affordable for the city.
| nostrebored wrote:
| This isn't true.
|
| If there is a demand for parking spots in an area, dedicated
| paid parking can be created -- based on market forces rather
| than minimums. This parking is also often more dense and built
| upwards. It's a more efficient use of city space.
|
| As is, parking is subsidized by all residents of a city rather
| than the people who actually consume parking. Much of this
| space goes unused throughout the day, and the aggregate effect
| necessarily means sprawl.
| coldpie wrote:
| Before: If you build a building of this size, you MUST also
| build at least X parking spaces.
|
| Now: If you build a building of this size, you MAY build as
| many parking spaces as you think you need.
|
| Seems like a strict improvement to me.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| It's not. I've lived in neighborhoods that did this and it
| was a nightmare. All street parking filling up by 4pm. Half
| hour walks to your car. Neighbors keying each others cars for
| taking up a space for too long. Guests basically just being
| SOL - you'd literally be unable to have guests over because
| if you left to pick them up there'd be no spot when you got
| back, and if they drove themselves they'd never find a spot.
|
| Without readily available and reliable public transportation
| this is just lining developers pockets (because fewer parking
| spaces needed means more units they can build).
| _dain_ wrote:
| It sounds like the parking was underpriced.
|
| EDIT I am rate-limited so can't reply, but this part:
|
| "If you have 200 cars"
|
| This is only the case if the demand for parking / driving
| is perfectly inelastic, which would be quite extraordinary.
| Empirically, when you charge for parking or institute toll
| roads, traffic tends to fall, in some cases sharply
| (because many journeys are low value). I repeat: if the
| parking spaces are still congested, the price should be
| raised until they're not.
|
| Assuming the number of cars would stay the same is like the
| lump-of-labour fallacy. Lump of metal fallacy?
|
| Then there's the supply side: guess what, that's not
| inelastic either! If it's profitable to provide parking,
| someone will build dedicated facilities for it and charge
| for their use. This may be an alien concept for some of
| you, but only because parking minimums cause such
| oversupply that they can't be run profitably. In cities
| where parking is priced sanely, it's unremarkable to see
| this.
|
| "Cars will just overflow into adjacent neighbourhoods"
| okay, so charge for parking there too, until they don't.
| Duh.
|
| I don't see why cars should get to sit somewhere rent-free
| but a human being can't. Urban land is valuable; if you
| want to occupy it, pay what it costs, ya fuckin welfare
| queens.
|
| my language is harsh but it's hard not to be when I see so
| many americans (it's _always_ americans) confidently
| claiming that life is impossible without free parking. but
| I live in a city without free parking and things work just
| fine. I can literally just look out of my window and it
| disproves all the doomsaying. every commute and trip to the
| supermarket is uneventful and not ruined in the slightest
| by a lack of free parking. you pay for parking and it 's
| fine. it's literally just fine. I went to virginia one
| time, I saw literal acres and acres and acres of empty
| parking space, oceans of asphalt; nobody seemed to think
| anything of it but I thought it was mad, like some kind of
| braindead economic allocation fuckup from a communist
| country that we'd all laugh about. I wanted to shout: you
| are being terraformed by asphalt-based lifeforms! why do I
| have to explain to americans how a free market price
| mechanism works? on a forum for people to shill their
| california startups? I shouldn't need to tell you this!
| close04 wrote:
| Raising the price would just extract more value for the
| owners from a very limited resource. But the resource
| stays just as limited.
|
| If you have 200 cars and 50 parking spaces there's no
| price point at which the 200 cars can park
| simultaneously. The overflow ends up clogging the
| surrounding neighborhoods, on top of the outcome
| described by OP.
|
| Edit. @pc86, both points you make are valid but neither
| addresses or fixes the problem being discussed. They are
| an interesting, albeit completely parallel discussion.
| pc86 wrote:
| > _Raising the price would just extract more value for
| the owners from a very limited resource._
|
| Yes. If you own a limited resource it's your right to
| make money from that. I know we like to pretend people
| making money from things they own is somehow evil but
| it's how all of civilization has been built and is an
| objectively good thing.
|
| > _If you have 200 cars and 50 parking spaces there 's no
| price point at which the 200 cars can park
| simultaneously._
|
| No, but is a point where 50 can park simultaneously and
| nobody who wants to park there and can afford to is
| denied that ability.
| close04 wrote:
| Both points you made are valid but neither fixes or even
| touches on the problem being discussed: there are more
| cars than parking spots and this causes problems. The
| economic theory is an interesting, albeit completely
| parallel discussion. Price is just about _who_ gets to
| have one.
|
| Effectively you'll still have 150 cars that cannot be
| parked next to the owners' residence, that get dumped on
| the street elsewhere probably in the next lower cost
| neighborhood, and with the additional issues OP
| mentioned.
|
| Put it another way, if you want to solve the housing
| crisis and I tell you "owners can set whatever price they
| want for the house to extract maximum value and nobody
| who can afford that will be denied the house" am I wrong?
| But did I solve the problem?
| autoexec wrote:
| > No, but is a point where 50 can park simultaneously and
| nobody who wants to park there and can afford to is
| denied that ability.
|
| That sucks for the people who are denied the ability to
| park there because they can't afford it though. Telling
| people that they need to walk miles to get to a doctor or
| a grocery store and that only the wealthy deserve to have
| access to 90% of the city doesn't seem like a good idea
| to me.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _only the wealthy deserve to have access to 90% of the
| city_
|
| There parking minimums drive up housing costs. They're
| why that person has to drive longer to get to that place.
| Perhaps why they need to make a car payment at all.
| autoexec wrote:
| Not true, at least not for most people anyway. People
| need cars to get to where they need to go. When the
| developer of an apartment complex has to provide parking
| for its residents everyone has a place to put the cars
| they need. When those developers don't have to provide
| parking space anymore, people will still need cars, but
| will now have no place to put them at night. This will
| drive up the price of apartment complexes that provide
| parking, pricing many people out, while doing nothing to
| eliminate the need for their cars.
|
| You can't solve the problem of "I need a car" just by
| taking away the places people put them at night.
|
| The problem we have is built into the design of our
| cities from the ground up and it impacts every aspect of
| how they are structured and used. Eliminating parking
| spaces while the absolute need for cars continues to
| exist doesn't solve the problem at all.
|
| This is the kind of move that should be done selectively,
| and only after alternative options are created, if it's
| done at all.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _This will drive up the price of apartment complexes
| that provide parking, pricing many people out, while
| doing nothing to eliminate the need for their cars_
|
| There is zero evidence for this. There is evidence for
| parking minimums raising housing prices.
|
| I'm curious about the overlap between off-street parking
| minimum requirement advocates and anti-development NIMBYs
| who don't believe in supply and demand.
| autoexec wrote:
| > There is zero evidence for this.
|
| When most people need something, and there is suddenly a
| much smaller supply of that thing, prices for the now
| scarce but still needed thing tend to increase. That's
| basically self-evident.
|
| If you have evidence that shows otherwise please feel
| free to provide it. I suspect that if examples showing
| otherwise exist at all they won't be remotely
| representative of the situation these cities will face.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _When most people need something, and there is suddenly
| a much smaller supply of that thing_
|
| Yes. We have rising, elastic house and stable, inelastic
| paid parking prices [1[2]]. Due to these regulations, we
| cannot substitute limited space away from off-street
| parking towards _e.g._ housing.
|
| [1] http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/PricingParkingByDemand.pdf
|
| [2] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Funnel-plot-for-
| the-pric...
| autoexec wrote:
| The research you link to discusses pricing for parking
| spaces, but nowhere does it state that eliminating
| parking spaces doesn't increase the price of what little
| parking is left.
|
| The idea that developers being responsible for providing
| adequate parking would mean that we can't have adequate
| space housing is a new argument, but not a compelling
| one. Clearly jacking up the prices for on-street parking
| means we'd have more money and more space for other
| things, but that doesn't solve the problem of there being
| too many cars on the road or eliminate the need for
| people to keep and drive cars.
|
| While the one paper you linked to suggests that higher
| prices could help reduce the demand for cars and driving,
| it also explicitly states that price of vehicle ownership
| is only one of _many_ variables that has an affect those
| demands. The availability of viable alternatives to car
| ownership /use is the one being ignored here.
|
| If I will die unless I go to the hospital every week for
| 6 months for chemo treatment and the only way to get
| there is by driving, the amount they'll charge me for
| parking isn't really a factor until it becomes so high
| that I can't afford to get the treatment I need. The fact
| that I also can't get to work, the grocery store, the
| doctor's office, the pharmacy, my kid's school, or the
| homes of my friends family without a car means that I'm
| still going to need to own (and still need a place to
| park) my car even if I could afford to uber my cancer-
| ridden body to and from the hospital every single week.
| (this is purely an example, I'm not, to my knowledge,
| cancer-ridden)
|
| You simply can't solve the problem of people needing to
| own and park cars by only reducing the number of
| available parking spaces. Reducing the number of parking
| spaces is something that should be done only once viable
| alternatives are established.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > When most people need something, and there is suddenly
| a much smaller supply of that thing, prices for the now
| scarce but still needed thing tend to increase.
|
| No one is arguing against the idea that eliminating
| parking requirements increases (in short-run, first-order
| analysis) the market clearing price of parking spaces.
|
| The contentious part is that the presence of the freedom
| to build housing without parking requirements (enabling,
| e.g., housing plus commercial spaces to be built in a
| space that would otherwise have the same housing plus
| parking) does nothing to reduce the demand for autos.
| autoexec wrote:
| > The contentious part is that the presence of the
| freedom to build housing without parking requirements
| does nothing to reduce the demand for autos.
|
| Why would it? Without alternatives to cars as a means to
| get people to where they need to go, people will still
| require cars. As long as people are required to own and
| drive cars not having enough available parking does
| nothing to help reduce the amount of cars being
| owned/driven. In fact, we know that it increase the
| number of cars on the road. That's how we end up with
| statistics like "30% of all traffic in urban areas come
| from people circling around looking for places to park".
|
| You can't solve the problem of people needing cars by not
| addressing the reasons people need cars, and only
| reducing the number of parking spots for the cars people
| already need.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Why would it?
|
| Because it would both enable and incentivize development
| patterns where people need cars less.
|
| > Without alternatives to cars as a means to get people
| to where they need to go, people will still require cars.
|
| Dense mixed-use development puts more of the places
| people need to go in places that don't require cars to
| get to them. (It also mass transit to other places more
| viable.)
|
| Your focussed on alternatives ti cars to get to a fixed
| set of locations, but a big point of dense mixed-use
| development is to provide alternative _locations_.
|
| > You can't solve the problem of people needing cars by
| not addressing the reasons people need cars
|
| The reason people need cars is that the places they need
| to be a far away because of development patterns; one of
| the key features of development patterns that causes this
| is...the space use created by parking requirements.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Because it would both enable and incentivize
| development patterns where people need cars less.
|
| As for enabling, nothing stops developers from doing that
| now. As for incentivizing them, if they can make more
| money not meeting most people's needs then that's what
| they'll do. This is also why so many cities have a huge
| amount of luxury housing available, but a massive lack of
| affordable housing. What makes developers the most money
| isn't always what's best for a city.
|
| > Dense mixed-use development puts more of the places
| people need to go in places that don't require cars to
| get to them. (It also mass transit to other places more
| viable.) Your focused on alternatives ti cars to get to a
| fixed set of locations, but a big point of dense mixed-
| use development is to provide alternative locations.
|
| I agree with this, but none of these cities are creating
| mixed-use development or building out their mass transit
| systems to link them. They're getting rid of parking
| spaces without _any_ of those things in place.
|
| > The reason people need cars is that the places they
| need to be a far away because of development patterns;
| one of the key features of development patterns that
| causes this is...the space use created by parking
| requirements.
|
| _A_ reason people need cars is because things are far
| away. Another reason is that there are no other means to
| get anywhere else. As long as those things are true,
| people still need cars. As long as people still need
| cars, they need places to put them.
|
| The space use created by parking requirements would be a
| nice problem to solve, but it can't (and shouldn't) be
| addressed until the requirement of owning cars has been
| dealt with. When people no longer require cars, we can
| reduce the amount of space we've set aside for housing
| them.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > As for enabling, nothing stops developers from doing
| that now
|
| Zoning regulations and parking requirements, which in
| many places exist for for both housing and commercial
| development, and vastly expabd the footprint of both,
| often do.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > When those developers don't have to providing parking
| space anymore, people will still need cars but now have
| no place to put them at night.
|
| If they have no place to put them, they won't have them,
| and if they don't have them, then either (1) they won't
| live there at all, or (2) they don't actually need them.
|
| > This is the kind of move that should be done
| selectively
|
| No, having parking requirements should be done
| selectively, if at all. If there is sufficient market
| demand, the requirements will be unnecessary to get
| developers to include them, if not, then the requirements
| are most often a harmful constraint that limits housing
| supply.
| autoexec wrote:
| > If they have no place to put them, they won't have them
|
| This is demonstrably false. People still need cars to get
| to where they need to go, like work, or their doctor's
| office, or the grocery store. There are no alternatives.
| Public transportation doesn't get them there. Ubering
| everywhere is more expensive than owning a car. Until
| alternatives exist, not having a car isn't an option.
|
| If you've been to cities where there isn't enough street
| parking to meet demand you'd know that even when people
| have no place to park their cars they still keep cars.
| They just go to extremes to find/keep/make parking
| wherever and whenever they can and often have to spend
| long periods of time driving on streets/circling blocks
| to find a spot. They block traffic to wait for someone
| they think _might_ be leaving soon, they walk great
| distances to get from where to park to where they need to
| be, they park in illegal or dangerous places.
|
| There are many negative consequences to this behavior
| which impact everyone around them, but people can't help
| but do it because they're left with no alternatives.
| Examples of this abound. I've seen statistics like 30% of
| all traffic in urban areas are just people looking for
| places to park. (some studies have found that number to
| be as high as 75%!) or that the average amount of time
| drivers spend per year looking for place to park is 17
| hours!
|
| > No, having parking requirements should be done
| selectively, if at all.
|
| That means the same thing.
|
| > If there is sufficient market demand, the requirements
| will be unnecessary to get developers to include them
|
| That's not how markets work. If it will make developers
| more money to not give people the amount of parking they
| _need_ , then developers will not give people enough
| parking. All other negative externalities be damned. None
| of it means there will be fewer cars on the road.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If you 've been to cities where there isn't enough
| street parking to meet demand you'd know that even when
| people have no place to park their cars they still keep
| cars_
|
| No? They park them outside the city centre. Or they rent
| them. You're speaking as if Austin is the first city in
| the world--or even America--to do this.
| autoexec wrote:
| > No? They park them outside the city centre.
|
| If you live in an apartment complex inside the city
| centre, parking outside of it won't help you. If you live
| in an apartment complex outside of it and there's not
| enough parking spots to leave your car while you sleep
| you still have the same problem.
|
| > Or they rent them.
|
| Most people can't afford to uber everywhere. Should the
| poors not be allowed to go to work or the doctors office?
|
| Austin is only one example, but _any_ city without enough
| parking to meet demand has these same well-documented
| problems. Please tell me which cities in America have
| ditched off-street parking while doing nothing else to
| reduce people 's dependence on cars and had no problems
| as a result.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _live in an apartment complex inside the city centre,
| parking outside of it won 't help you_
|
| Of course it does. You use city transportation systems
| when in the centre. And you take an Uber or train to your
| parking lot when you need to drive a bunch.
|
| > _Should the poors not be allowed to go to work or the
| doctors office?_
|
| Versus not being able to afford housing?
|
| That's the tradeoff. There is no free lunch. Increasing
| space dedicated to parking raises the cost of housing. It
| also reduces density, thereby reducing wealth and
| increasing transit times.
| tuna74 wrote:
| Yeah it sucks that you might have to pay for parking to
| do free activities like shopping or visiting medical
| services.
| autoexec wrote:
| Leaving aside that neither groceries or medical services
| are free, the problem isn't that parking will now cost
| something. There won't be enough parking to go around and
| many people will be entirely priced out. People will be
| unable to park near the services they need and many will
| have no place to park/charge the cars they still require
| at the end of the day when they're at home.
|
| That's not a good situation for anyone except for a very
| small number of people who will make more money than they
| have been, and small number of already wealthy people who
| will find lots of available parking they can easily
| afford now that they don't have to compete with the
| poors. Everyone else gets screwed and the problem of
| people needing cars doesn't change at all.
| medvezhenok wrote:
| This is the approach Singapore (and in some ways, Hong
| Kong) takes; you can own a car, but you must purchase a
| 10-year use permit, which costs in some cases much more
| than a car itself (something like $80,000 over 10 years).
| So if you're buying a Toyota Corolla ($20K car), you'd
| still need a $80K operating permit to use it.
|
| That's why 90%+ of the people in Singapore use public
| transportation or carpool. Granted, you would need the
| public infrastructure for that to be possible. But if you
| make cars unaffordable for the average person, suddenly
| there would be A LOT more pressure on local government to
| get public infrastructure done.
| breezeTrowel wrote:
| Sure but public infrastructure doesn't magically appear
| overnight. It takes years, decades even, and costs a ton
| of money. I think the solutions may come laterally from
| developments in autonomous construction robots. They're
| being developed in Japan due to negative population
| growth reducing the available construction workforce.
| foxyv wrote:
| Parking, Roads, Gasoline, Pollution, etc... We so heavily
| subsidize people's cars for no reason. For the cost of
| all of it we could have free healthcare and amazing
| public transportation then lower taxes with the left over
| money.
| njarboe wrote:
| Um... Just US healthcare spending is 17.3% of GDP. $4.5
| Trillion per year. No way this works.
| brewdad wrote:
| Cut out the middle man (insurance companies and their
| profits) and you can get this number dramatically lower.
| BillTheDuck wrote:
| Simple solutions do NOT exist.
|
| There is a litany of "middlemen"; Drs, Corporations,
| Hospitals, Insurance, Pharmacies, Drug Companies,
| marketing, Lawyers ... ALL have a stake in something.
| foxyv wrote:
| A large part of that is inflated health care costs. US
| citizens have to pay more than twice as much on average.
| Some services such as ER visits can cost 10x as much. US
| spends twice as much per capita than UK but get much less
| from it. Also keep in mind that the amount spent on roads
| is only a fraction of the total cost of cars in the USA.
| autoexec wrote:
| jacking up the prices for parking spaces due to
| artificially induced scarcity will mean that cars are
| still every bit as essential to get around, but now only
| the wealthy will be able to afford to park them, screwing
| over the population least able to arrange/afford
| alternatives. I guess it's somehow better if the
| increasing number of poors in the US have to park miles
| away from their jobs (if they're lucky enough) and have
| to walk/run the rest of the way.
|
| Like it or not, our cities are already built to make cars
| a necessity and pricing people out of access to the
| majority of places within a city isn't a solution to the
| design of public transportation or roads.
| kilotaras wrote:
| > artificially induced scarcity
|
| How is *not requiring* parking to be provided inducing
| scarcity artificially?
| autoexec wrote:
| Because before developers _were_ required to ensure that
| when they built something adding parking spaces to handle
| the demand they were introducing to an area was their
| responsibility. Now developers can (and will) push that
| externality onto the public at zero cost to them. The
| city has a very limited amount of parking spaces it can
| provide at any cost which means that removing that
| requirement will suddenly make parking much more
| expensive and harder to obtain.
| kilotaras wrote:
| But that's not what artificially inducing means.
|
| London for example have buildings which are prohibited of
| having parking (or getting street permit). Providing an
| option not pay for parking space when buying an apartment
| is not that.
| zdragnar wrote:
| The externality is already accounted for there.
| hughesjj wrote:
| IDK, pure speculation, but maybe 'autoexec' isn't arguing
| in good faith here and may have a conflict of interest
| autoexec wrote:
| I really don't. I'm not even sure what kind of person
| _would_ have a conflict of interest while supporting that
| we keep the requirement until actual alternatives are
| available to everyone.
|
| While I have a car, and enjoy having one, and have a nice
| parking space in a heated underground garage, I also work
| remotely and don't drive all that much. I'm in a
| privileged position and could afford to uber (within the
| city anyway).
|
| This is just a bad/non-solution to a very real problem
| that will do more harm than good.
| brewdad wrote:
| Do you pay for that spot? Would you keep the car if it
| was costing you $150/mo to park it there? If not, then
| removing parking minimums accomplishes exactly what it is
| intended to do.
| autoexec wrote:
| The cost of the spot is factored into the cost of the
| building so it still costs something, but even if it were
| a separate bill I'd still be stuck paying for it because
| I need a car and it has to go _somewhere_ (plus I live in
| an area where it snows and don 't want to get up at 5AM
| to move it every time that happens or scrape the ice off
| my windows/mirrors before I can leave).
| jmye wrote:
| Assuming bad faith is somewhat ironic and kind of a
| crummy way to interact online. Do you not think it's
| conceivable that someone could possibly think this is a
| bad idea honestly?
| ripply wrote:
| This is step 1 of reversing car centricity in these
| areas. Believe it or not some people in Europe in their
| 30s don't even know how to drive because it's just not
| needed. When you require parking spots for housing you
| increase the distance between everything. Going places
| requires transport because you have all these god
| forsaken parking lots you have to traverse to get to your
| destination.
| autoexec wrote:
| Step one should be creating adequate public
| transportation so that the people with the fewest options
| are still able to get to work, doctors, and grocery
| stores even after existing parking spaces go away and no
| new ones are built.
|
| Parking lots aren't what's keeping people in subdivisions
| from being miles away from those places. Parking spots
| aren't what's keeping people in cities from being able to
| walk to where they're going either. Parking lots are
| extremely walkable spaces even while being hot and
| unattractive.
|
| You could get rid of every parking lot in your city and
| you'd still have highways you can't cross or safely
| walk/bike along side of, you'd still have housing set
| miles away from city centers, and you'd still have no
| access to most places by public transportation. Our
| cities are built from the ground up with the expectation
| that people will use cars to get around. That was a
| mistake, but getting rid of parking spots isn't the cure.
|
| I've been in places like Tokyo where public
| transportation met all of my needs. We can do it, but you
| need the infrastructure in place first or you're just
| hurting people by leaving them with zero alternatives to
| what you're taking from them.
| hughesjj wrote:
| Why not replace some on street parking with a dedicated
| bus lane and stops for such?
|
| Two birds, one stone
| autoexec wrote:
| It'd be a good start!
|
| It'll take a massive increase in public transportation
| infrastructure, and a long and slow redesign of our
| cities and how we live to fix the mess the auto-industry
| has put us in. It's a transition that's long overdue, but
| the reality of the situation now is that people still
| need their cars.
|
| Making sure that people have something to fall back on
| before we take their cars away from them or remove the
| places they put them at night/charge them should be a
| priority. What these cities are doing is the opposite of
| that.
| brewdad wrote:
| Many households have more than one car per driver. With
| WFH many of these cars sit largely unused. We went down
| to being a one car family over a year ago and it has
| rarely been an issue. It requires a little bit of
| planning. "Hey I need the car on Thursday. Does that work
| for you?" Otherwise, a second car would mostly only get
| used because "Well, it hasn't been driven in a while".
| autoexec wrote:
| I agree that WFH is a game changer here. Households in
| that situation are incentivized to get rid of excess
| vehicles since they cost money to maintain, license, and
| insure. With downtown office spaces and the nearby
| businesses that depend on them being abandoned, a lot of
| parking space can be reclaimed there too.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| I'm not sure why you are being downvoted.
|
| The reason people keep buying cars after prices rise 57%
| in a decade: the extra $10,000 amortized over 10 years is
| less than living even 1 year near the things you drive
| to. Things you drive to includes your parking space!
|
| It doesn't make any sense to own a car and live in a
| dense urban development. What more needs to be said? Live
| in the suburbs if you have a car.
|
| Fortunately bridge and toll community members are
| insensitive to these changes. They see no problems with 2
| hours of schlepping, $16 of tolls and $25 parking to
| drink $0.50 of vodka priced at $17 at a downtown bar. If
| they were sensitive to these issues, that behavior would
| have ceased much sooner than a pandemic-induced shock to
| their routines.
|
| That said, I don't see anything wrong with the suburban
| lifestyle, I am a product of it. Instead of focusing on
| issues like parking costs, which cities can never beat
| suburbs at because suburbs have essentially infinite
| land, cities should fix their education systems, because
| they can realistically beat suburbs on the concentration
| of human capital. My community would be far more
| appreciative of that than bullshit about parking spots.
| tomatocracy wrote:
| > It doesn't make any sense to own a car and live in a
| dense urban development.
|
| Public transport can be good but it's never _that_ good.
| I live in zone 1 (ie very centrally) in London and there
| are still many journeys where it is quicker and cheaper
| for me to drive than to take any kind of public
| transport. This is true for longer journeys (going
| outside London) especially but surprisingly it 's also
| true for quite a few short journeys (even going a couple
| of miles) - it depends a lot on the layout of the public
| transport network and the roads, and this is before
| considering journeys where I might want to bring bulky or
| heavy things with me which are basically impossible to do
| by public transport. I end up driving enough that the
| cost of car ownership vs short term rentals makes sense
| in pure economic terms but the convenience difference of
| ownership vs short-term rental is also pretty big.
| coldpie wrote:
| > Without readily available and reliable public
| transportation
|
| Cool. Let's do that, too!
| ericmay wrote:
| > Neighbors keying each others cars for taking up a space
| for too long.
|
| People need to stop being shitty to each other.
|
| > Without readily available and reliable public
| transportation this is just lining developers pockets
| (because fewer parking spaces needed means more units they
| can build).
|
| I don't think this is fair. Fewer parking spaces might mean
| higher profits for developers on a per-unit basis, but I'd
| rather them make money and provide more additional housing
| units that are sorely needed, especially in cities, than
| build apartment complexes with garages or parking which
| then necessitate higher taxes and more _public_ spending to
| support roads, car crashes, and other related
| externalities.
|
| "But public transit costs money too" yes, just redirect
| state highway department budgets to transit 1-1 and then
| you're not spending any more and getting higher ROI.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Further, we should move to a model where the highways are
| paid entirely by usage fees (gas tax, tolls, etc) instead
| of subsidized. They're for the benefit of private
| operators, so the private operators should pay for them.
| The investments should be in public transit instead.
| wharvle wrote:
| A great deal of highway spending is subsidizing truck
| shipping. Most of the damage done to highways comes from
| big trucks, and taxes on them don't come anywhere near
| paying for it.
|
| [EDIT] Incidentally, maybe we shouldn't subsidize truck
| shipping! But using usage taxes to pay for highways while
| _not_ shifting the burden such that truck shipping is
| paying the lion 's share of the cost and is no longer (so
| very much, at least) subsidized, would be making non-
| commercial drivers subsidize truck shipping (even more
| than they already are) which subsidy (to some degree)
| benefits _everyone_ , including non-drivers, which seems
| like a weird and/or bad move to me.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Truck shipping has never made sense to me. It's
| significantly less fuel efficient than rail shipping, and
| paying people to just sit there and drive for their
| entire lives feels kinda torturous to me...
| wharvle wrote:
| Lots of communities aren't served by rail, ship, or barge
| (or nowhere near enough capacity of those, or efficiently
| connected to the wrong places--how much raw iron ore or
| coal does a small town need?) so truck shipping's all
| they've got. Rail may _pass through_ nearby, but without
| unloading capability or sufficient capacity at a proper
| train yard. Trucks drive to them from the nearest hub or
| notable train yard, which may be way more than your usual
| "last mile" concern that a city or whatever has. Tens of
| miles, to the warehouses that serve them, then tens of
| miles more to the nearest major store, that kind of
| thing.
|
| Rural living would be _way_ more expensive and
| inconvenient without truck shipping subsidies. Which,
| maybe making rural living artificially cheap is a good
| idea and maybe it 's not, but that's one big shift that
| would happen if we made truck shipping pay its way
| entirely.
|
| [EDIT] For true long-haul, I'm with you, the majority of
| that's surely only viable because of those subsidies, and
| we'd be better off pushing that to rail, ship, and barge.
| comte7092 wrote:
| > Neighbors keying each others cars for taking up a space
| for too long.
|
| I don't know how this is the fault of too little parking.
| Nothing excuses this type of behavior.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| What neighborhoods, exactly? Parking minimums have been the
| de facto law for cities, it's only in the past decade that
| trend has been starting to be reversed in the US.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if they drove themselves they'd never find a spot_
|
| Rideshare. Also, this screams market opportunity for paid
| parking. (Unless, of course, the problem isn't as
| consistently dramatic.)
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| My parents live in a residential, SFH neighborhood that's
| basically designated overflow parking for revelers.
| Especially during Pride Week, motorists will fill every
| street parking spot, only to stroll into the drunken
| debauchery, and then stagger back and attempt to locate
| their vehicles.
|
| They've also seen ZipCar type services where short-term
| rental vehicles are just abandoned. Once, I woke up to find
| a luxury Alfa Romeo sedan that had taken a joy-ride across
| the border and was abandoned in front of our place.
|
| The main street there dead-ends, and so the highest traffic
| is from lost motorists vainly attempting to hook up to the
| freeway.
|
| My parents jealously guard their prime parking spots, I
| mean insanely: they love to walk but if they need to tote
| cargo more than 1 yard out of the way, we never hear the
| end of their moaning, and I live hundreds of miles away.
| They participate in Neighborhood Watch and won't hesitate
| to get cars tagged, inspected and towed if someone tries to
| mess with their "public street parking" spots. (Recently
| renovated "garage" is full of junk.)
|
| As a holder of a driver's license who hasn't owned a car
| since 1997, I also never hear the end of their moaning
| about rude cyclists, oblivious pedestrians, City-sponsored
| transit lanes, or repainted roads to encourage sharing with
| pedestrians and multi-modal transport.
|
| Around here, most of the moaning and screaming is directed
| at light rail, without considering for a moment how it
| takes drunks and inept drivers off the road and completely
| out of their way.
| 0xfaded wrote:
| Unfortunately people will fight tooth and nail to maintain
| their existing expectations and will see public transit as
| a threat to their cars.
|
| You have to take away cars (parking) first so that they
| start demanding public transportation.
| FpUser wrote:
| So you want to arm twist people to suit your agenda? It
| does not work this way. Personally I aways support and
| would vote for more public transport but not by forcing
| me to abandon my car. If that is the approach the only
| vote you'll get from me is fuck you. And I am a nicer guy
| who mostly uses EUC, bike and feet.
| brewdad wrote:
| Carrot vs stick is one of the most basis forms of
| influence. When the carrot doesn't work...
| FpUser wrote:
| It works both ways
| LargeWu wrote:
| Nobody is forcing you to abandon your car, you are just
| going start absorbing the true cost of the externalities
| (whether in tolls, taxes, inconvenience, etc). You can
| decide for yourself then whether using or owning a car is
| worth that.
| FpUser wrote:
| Sure. Foot me a bill since I am affecting other person's
| lives. Just make sure it is correct. Also do not forget
| to compensate me as I am affected by other people.
| chung8123 wrote:
| The problem with public transport is it serves too many
| masters. Is it a system to allow the disabled to get
| around? Is it a system to enable everyone in town to get
| around? Is it a commuting system? Should it be subsidized
| or revenue neutral? Trying to solve all these problems
| makes the public transport systems not work for any of
| them well.
| tuna74 wrote:
| The easy solution to this is to make (street) parking more
| expensive.
| chung8123 wrote:
| Street parking should have a price attached to it in my
| opinion. It is a public resource that should be charged
| for use everywhere, including out in front of your
| suburban home. We push these prices on everyone when it
| should be the people using them that pay.
| busterarm wrote:
| When it comes to property development, anything that you
| leave to optionality in code enforcement ends up being a
| thing that never happens ever.
|
| For something to be available it has to be required by
| building codes.
| arcticbull wrote:
| That's great. Should increase demand for transit.
| busterarm wrote:
| Effective public transit isn't something you can bolt
| onto a city after the roads are all built. Cities like
| Austin that were designed for cars from the outset are
| hopeless lost causes.
|
| Old world cities can have great public transit because
| they were dense long before cars existed and have
| hundreds of years worth of civil projects designed to get
| people from A to B.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > ... have hundreds of years worth of civil projects
| designed to get people from A to B.
|
| We better get started right away then, huh.
| busterarm wrote:
| You don't start by building public transit. You start by
| bulldozing roads and housing and moving/rebuilding
| communities.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Do you have a citation for that? Large portions of Paris
| for instance aren't exactly old-world high density
| development. Luckily they're putting in the GPE, which is
| 120 miles of metro service. [1] Once you have the metro,
| you can put in higher-density development around the
| stations, and over time, the neighborhood changes. That's
| just fine.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Paris_Express
| busterarm wrote:
| Most of Paris as we know it was built in the 1950s and
| 1960s. Especially in the 1970s French politicians took on
| ambitious public works projects in Paris.
|
| Most of the housing and most of the population was
| obliterated in the late-1930s through the mid-1940s, as
| you might recall. Two-thirds of the city's population had
| fled before the German invasion started even.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _anything that you leave to optionality in code
| enforcement ends up being a thing that never happens ever_
|
| No code requires marble countertops. Yet they get installed
| because buyers want them.
|
| Cities like Austin have regulated themselves into a
| housing-cost crisis. It's almost a miracle that rational
| economic policy is being given space by voters.
| busterarm wrote:
| Marble countertops aren't competing for space that you
| could otherwise use to build more apartments to
| sell/rent.
|
| Parking is.
|
| Until parking spaces cost more than apartments do,
| developers are going to favor building apartments over
| parking one hundreds times out of one hundred.
| kgermino wrote:
| Eh, Milwaukee has fairly lax parking requirements
| (including no minimums for most downtown developments)
| but most developments have more than legal required.
| Developers are pretty open about the reason (it's not
| uncommon for neighbors to push back on parking due to
| traffic concerns): they lost money on the parking, but
| without the spots they can't rent the apartments at all.
| Walmart doesn't build parking because the city makes
| them, they do it because their target market has cars and
| won't visit without a parking lot.
|
| And even if this does drive up parking costs to match
| rents, is that such a bad thing? Why should we legally
| mandate that developers subsidize parking?
| ryanmcgarvey wrote:
| Isn't this (part of) the point?
|
| We have an abundance of parking required by law and not
| enough housing units - removing the requirement should
| encourage more money to be invested into _anything but
| parking_ no?
|
| Seems like letting businesses decide whether or not it's
| worth opening a business with the available parking would
| cause one of two things to happen:
|
| 1. We wind up with the actual correct amount of parking
| required for a given set of businesses - instead of some
| arbitrary amount dictated by legislatures decades ago. 2.
| Everyone is tired of the lack of parking and votes to
| increase public transit funding.
| dkarl wrote:
| > developers are going to favor building apartments over
| parking one hundreds times out of one hundred
|
| Once we have apartments with and without parking on the
| market, we'll see how much more people are willing to pay
| to get parking, and future developers can build
| accordingly.
| busterarm wrote:
| What part of "one hundred times out of a hundred" did you
| miss? You don't end up with the choice because nobody
| builds parking.
|
| Queens NY has this problem pretty severely. Zoning
| requires parking past 7 stories in building height, so
| every building is 7 floors at maximum density with no
| parking. Residents often find themselves circling their
| neighborhoods for hours looking for parking. Living
| without a car and being fully-dependent on public transit
| absolutely sucks in most of the borough.
| detourdog wrote:
| I understand both sides of the issue. My problem is the
| lack of context given to this solution for housing.
|
| I live in small (2,000ish households) New England town
| with some streets that predate automobiles. Nobody is
| really space constrained. The housing 3 miles a way is at
| least half the cost of my town.
|
| The public transportation is poor and it took about 25
| years to build less than 3 miles of bike path.
|
| Should my town ditch off-street parking minimums in an
| attempt to increase housing supplies?
| busterarm wrote:
| > Nobody is really space constrained.
|
| Clearly the answer is no then.
|
| That doesn't make space-constrained Austin's answer an
| automatic yes either though. The city is very car-
| dependent. The starting point isn't "take away peoples'
| ability to have a car". It should be "make it more
| attractive not to have a car".
|
| Changing parking minimums comes far down that road.
| detourdog wrote:
| It's not clear to me. I really wish you could take the
| effort to explain your thinking. If there is no place to
| park but your neighbor's yard how it would work in a
| civilized society and help housing costs.
| tuna74 wrote:
| Then parking spaces will be priced according to what the
| market wants to pay.
| boring-alterego wrote:
| A better example would be where a "development"
| community's rain water goes. The areas booming right now
| in the south east usa will build the next development up
| 4 feet above the previous community and get approved
| through the county council permit process. Then the first
| big rain storm or hurricane comes by and the formerly dry
| community is now flooded out for the new community that
| got built, which also floods because drainage wasn't
| factored in.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Then you'll end up with the building equivalent of the
| titanic which had a lot of luxurious amenities and decor,
| but skimped on the more boring stuff like structural
| integrity. You can see this in effect in parts of Asia.
| The closest example we have in the US is the Millennium
| Tower. There were regulations, (someone could correct me)
| but they decided to "bribe" their way out of it.
|
| Ironically, I still share your opinion about over
| regulation, but we can't ignore the other argument.
| vel0city wrote:
| Its expensive to build parking. Loads of shopping centers
| end up having to build seas of parking spaces due to these
| parking minimums given their square footage even though the
| actual car traffic wouldn't come close. I imagine a lot of
| those stores would have preferred paying for far less real
| estate and paving.
| busterarm wrote:
| Shopping Centers are an entire different zone than
| housing. You typically do not build them in the same
| places. They're built in less desirable places than
| housing which makes the parking spaces cheaper and an
| efficient use of the space.
|
| Not all square footage is created equal!
| dave78 wrote:
| Perhaps the problem isn't the fact that parking
| requirements exist but rather that they require way too
| many parking spots. Most shopping center lots in my area
| are never close to full, even on the busiest Christmas
| shopping days.
| detourdog wrote:
| I here this a lot but in the North East at least those
| extra spots can be used during the winter for snow
| management.
|
| Snow management can be done in other ways but that is a
| cost analysis exercise.
| vel0city wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the snow management aspects?
| dave78 wrote:
| Parking lots are a common place to store excess snow when
| it is plowed. Obviously from the parking lot itself, but
| also sometimes snow is hauled in dump trucks from other
| areas where there is no space to store the snow.
|
| In snowy areas the piles can grow quite large and take up
| a sizable amount of parking lot space. These large piles
| then take considerably longer to melt away than snow in
| surrounding areas, sometimes lasting well into Spring.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| Except this sort of code has a very real impact on volume
| of business, in the case of retail outlets, restaurants,
| venues or anything that's open to the public.
|
| Can you see the design conversations going, "let's provide
| for practically no parking spots, so we can get less foot
| traffic and nobody will want to come shop here!"
|
| In areas that support public transit and promote multi-
| modal, the businesses which thrive there are ones which
| cater to folks who eschew private vehicles. And that's a
| distinctly different crowd! So I think it'll work out
| great.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| My apartment charges me to maintain a parking spot in the
| garage, giving them more money for minimal extra
| maintenance. This way people that don't have cars don't
| have to subsidize my parking spot, but it's still super
| worth it for the landlord.
|
| If the cost to provide (guaranteed, protected) parking
| spots ends up being higher than people are willing to pay
| for them, maybe they're not actually worth what we're
| currently paying for them.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Here in Switzerland I've seen the opposite - the amount of
| parking requested by the developer (true, this was for local
| bank growth and not condos) was slashed significantly by
| municipality, as in 'don't bring your cars to your work',
| effectively removing 1 underground level of parking and some
| more, right under the bank.
|
| There are very few countries out there that would see such
| behavior flying, when facing a wealthy developer (it used to
| be the biggest company in this village/small town) who gives
| a lot of local work, for just parking spots that are anyway
| completely hidden under the building.
| Throw839 wrote:
| Extra parking would bring in "poor" people who live in
| France, Italy or Germany but commute to work in
| Switzerland. Just another form of elitism.
| pavon wrote:
| Without other rules or planning to compensate, it creates a
| tragedy of the commons where every builder wants to offload
| their parking needs onto the rest of the neighborhood in
| order to save money. I lived near a neighborhood that had
| older denser development, that originally served just that
| neighborhood, but later became a hip place for people to go,
| thus exceeding existing parking. It was very frustrating that
| residents could never find a place to park because all the
| parking was taken local businesses patrons, and patrons
| couldn't find parking because that one collage bar was having
| a busy night and taking all the parking for five blocks
| around.
|
| It didn't help that the urbanism activists in our area seem
| to consider parking garages to be a tool of the devil and
| protested any plans to build one in the area. To me they are
| an ideal compromise/stop-gap solution. They allow you to
| build dense walkable neighborhoods today even when most
| people will be driving. And once public transit has improved
| to the point where less parking is needed, you just have a
| few buildings to tear down instead of entire areas to
| redevelop.
|
| Edit: And to be clear I think the "best practices" that most
| of the country used for the past 50 years to set parking
| minimums were massively inflated, and created many problems.
| I'm absolutely in favor of revising them, but I firmly reject
| swinging around to the other extreme of "to solve the public
| transit chicken-egg problem, we must make car use
| intolerable".
| alumnumn wrote:
| > It was very frustrating that residents could never find a
| place to park
|
| This is the original tragedy of the commons though: a bunch
| of people assuming they can just park on the street. The
| frustration _is_ the solution. Either build yourself
| private parking, pay for private parking, or ditch the car.
| Or enjoy the frustration.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > It didn't help that the urbanism activists in our area
| seem to consider parking garages to be a tool of the devil
| and protested any plans to build one in the area.
|
| So Alice wants to build a high-density housing tower
| without having to build a ten-story parking structure
| beneath it, and we prohibit Alice from doing that, even
| though Bob wants to build a ten-story parking structure
| right next to it, because we prohibit Bob from doing that.
|
| I feel like these could both be solved in the same way.
| pavon wrote:
| It is certainly a place to start! Although in this case I
| never heard of a developer wanting to build a parking
| structure on their own (and don't know if existing code
| would have prevented them). It was always the city
| wanting to build an adjacent parking structure as part of
| revitalization efforts to extend the success of that
| neighborhood further down the street.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| So part of this is the cart-horse inversion.
|
| We have minimum parking requirements that produce an
| oversupply of parking, therefore parking is cheap,
| therefore building parking garages is unprofitable. If
| you don't mandate them, the cost of parking will increase
| until building parking garages is profitable, and then
| people will build parking garages (or have fewer cars, in
| places where that's practical).
|
| This doesn't even increase costs. Right now someone is
| paying $3000/month for a $2500 apartment and a $500
| parking space. Without the parking requirements you could
| get a $2500 apartment for $2500 and choose whether you
| want to pay the extra $500 for the parking space.
|
| Not only that, this would make it cheaper to build more
| apartments, so then the $2500 apartment drops to $2250
| from lower scarcity, which reduces the cost of
| apartment+parking space as well by not force-allocating a
| parking space to someone who can do without a car and
| leaving more for the people who can't.
| thex10 wrote:
| No one is prohibiting Alice from building the 10-story
| parking structure. The change is she's no longer required
| to build it.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Alice doesn't want to build it because if she doesn't she
| can afford to build twice as many housing units on the
| same lot, which is worth more money even without parking
| spaces, and the building doesn't need such an expensive
| foundation if it doesn't have to support a multi-story
| parking structure in addition to the housing units.
|
| Bob wants to build it on the next lot over once he sees
| these new buildings going up and is willing to bet that
| the new residents will generate demand for parking, and
| can choose how many stories to make it based on the local
| demand for parking, which is based on numerous hyper-
| local conditions that are best evaluated by the owner of
| that specific lot and not just based on how many housing
| units are in each building.
| lukas099 wrote:
| > Without other rules or planning to compensate, it creates
| a tragedy of the commons where every builder wants to
| offload their parking needs onto the rest of the
| neighborhood in order to save money.
|
| Good. Then more people will choose different forms of
| transportation or internalize their costs. If parking
| becomes scarce, providing parking will become more
| profitable and people will pay the actual (enormous) cost
| of temporary car storage downtown.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| Yeah, the local college planners in our city wanted to
| "discourage" vehicle use, and deliberately had only a few
| parking lots put in, mostly reserved for faculty of course.
| What has actually happened is every residential street
| within 4-5 blocks absolutely choked with vehicles parking
| on the curbside during the semesters. It's a shitshow.
| jandrese wrote:
| How about: If you build a building of this size you must
| contribute $X to the public transit system to expand service
| to your building, adding drivers and routes if necessary.
|
| We have so many subsidies for cars baked into the system, but
| hardly anything for other forms of transit, and then we
| complain endlessly about how expensive transit is to run and
| have to cut service to make ends meet, which of course
| discourages people from taking transit.
| brewdad wrote:
| Impact fees on new developments are already a thing to pay
| for other infrastructure improvements like sewer,
| utilities, roads, and parks. No reason it couldn't be
| extended to transit as well.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Property owners already pay property taxes to fund
| infrastructure. Larger developments pay more in taxes
| (and the residents who live there pay income taxes etc.)
|
| "Impact fees" are just a way to discourage new
| development.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| What if we had a way of making buildings of a given size,
| or, say, value, contribute cash to the local and state
| governments, that the governments could then distribute as
| needed to transit, emergency services, infrastructure,
| schools, etc? We could even make it an annual fee so that
| they have to contribute to ongoing costs, and maybe
| periodically we could reassess the value of the property.
| jandrese wrote:
| Sounds like it would be wildly unpopular and politicians
| would mess with your figures to get votes, even when that
| would ruin the budget. Sometimes specifically to ruin the
| budget because what they really want is to reduce/remove
| those services.
| notatoad wrote:
| this doesn't eliminate parking spots. they're eliminating
| parking _minimums_ , which in most cases are not backed by any
| sort of science or study - parking minimums get set mostly
| randomly, as a roadblock for development that people don't want
| in their neighbourhood. there's no good reason for most of
| these parking minimums, and they're not necessarily parking
| spots in places where there is any demand. steet parking,
| parking garages, and parking lots will continue to exist.
|
| then they get carried forward as precedent because people hear
| "eliminate parking minimums" as "eliminate parking spots" and
| fight against it, but they don't make any sense.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Your comment is completely wrong, at least as it applies to
| Austin as explained in the article.
|
| Parking minimums are simply a requirement that if you build
| an apartment building with N apartments, you need to include
| a number of parking spots that is a function of N. The idea
| being that if you're building a number of places for people
| to _live_ , the vast majority of them (especially in Austin)
| will need a place to _park_ , and it's not really fair for
| you to externalize that need onto public streets just so you
| can make more money by adding more apartments with no
| parking.
|
| That's the argument anyway, and it makes sense. The counter
| argument is that it also keeps us as a car-dependent city,
| and makes it harder to build affordable housing.
|
| I'm not really convinced of the counter argument, at least in
| Austin. Public transportation (or, basically any
| transportation) is notoriously bad in Austin, and for decades
| we've basically had the stance "if you don't build it, they
| won't come", but that hasn't quite worked out.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| > I'm not really convinced of the counter argument, at
| least it Austin. Public transportation (or, basically any
| transportation) is notoriously bad in Austin, and for
| decades we've basically had the stance "if you don't build
| it, they won't come", but that hasn't quite worked out.
|
| Well, since what you have been doing hasn't worked, maybe
| let's try the other tactic.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| The other tactic would be to actually build out viable
| public transportation.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| The other tactic is 'do something to reduce car
| dependency'.
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| The comment just said, that the function of N that gives
| the number of parking spots (really it's just going to be a
| proportionality factor) is "set nearly randomly". Nothing
| in your comment counters that assertion. Which I personally
| don't find implausible (although that is without any
| exposure to the decision process in Austin in particular)
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| It's not "set nearly randomly". It's a function of the
| estimated number of adult occupants, based on the number
| of bedrooms I believe.
|
| Besides, the argument isn't "let's look at the
| calculation for required number of spots and tweak it if
| necessary", it's "let's get rid of parking altogether and
| pretend like people won't just still drive and park on
| the street."
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| It's also not "abolish all parking" it's "don't force
| parking". Or rephrased in a libertarian way "if there is
| a need for parking the market will provide it" (I make no
| comment on whether to expect a positive or negative
| outcome of this experiment)
|
| I mean, you seem to be adamantly opposed. I assume for
| good reason (at least in your mind). Why not make an
| argument that actually relates to the proposal? At least
| I would give your opinion more weight that way
| jen20 wrote:
| Worse: it was voted for, but the costs have now spiralled
| while the proposed service has plummeted.
| CYR1X wrote:
| If there are truly no other options, then the developers are
| going to have to severely reduce the price of their real estate
| or choose not to build there. This is simply taking an implicit
| approach to things, which may or may not work.
|
| If anything doing this is a way for cities to implicitly get
| citizens on board for investing more in public transit. All of
| the new apartment buildings in the hip parts of town don't have
| any parking for your cars, so you're forced onto public
| transportation more, which you might think stinks, so you now
| care more about voting for infrastructure improvement.
| qwytw wrote:
| > If there are truly no other options, then the developers
| are going to have to severely reduce the price of their real
| estate or choose not to build there. This is simply taking an
| implicit approach to things, which may or may not work.
|
| True. But only to a limited extent as long as demand remains
| significantly higher relative to supply. e.g. if you're
| moving to a city due to work etc. and and have limited you're
| much more willing to compromise (use street parking, private
| lots some distance away etc,).
| TexanFeller wrote:
| I think people will just take the path of least resistance
| which is voting for building more parking again. They won't
| punish themselves in the short term so that the neighborhood
| they live in is more affordable and walkable in 20 years,
| when they won't even live there anymore by then.
| letitbeirie wrote:
| I wish they'd be a little less one-size-fits-all.
|
| Nixing parking minimums for businesses in already-walkable,
| transit-connected downtown cores is overdue, and areas close to
| that density can easily _become_ new downtown cores when infill
| is allowed to cover their parking lots.
|
| Nixing parking minimums for downtown apartments, to your point,
| is a terrible idea (outside the densest areas of NYC at least,
| where parking minimums are already effectively nil) because
| most transit systems in the US are designed to bring suburban
| commuters into the city, so even if said apartment is situated
| directly above a multi-modal mass transit hub, it might not
| necessarily connect its residents to much more than a handful
| of giant parking decks clustered around a freeway.
| jadengeller wrote:
| If downtown apartments are not sufficiently desirable without
| parking, developers will build parking.
| Ekaros wrote:
| What I will guess happens is that they are still desirable,
| they will not be cheaper. And there will be parking
| problems...
| brewdad wrote:
| My adult child lives in an area of Seattle where parking
| minimums have been eliminated. Their building, built 3
| years ago, has about 65 adult residents. There are 10
| parking spaces on site and the street the building sits
| on has zero street parking. Renting a parking space adds
| about 10% to the cost of renting. Currently there is
| still one spot available if a resident wants to pay for
| it.
|
| If they had built 60 parking spaces and let residents
| park for free, I feel confident there would be at least
| 50 spots in regular use based on how nearby buildings
| with larger parking lots are utilized. Since the parking
| is underground, the most expensive type of parking to
| build, I also feel confident that rents would be at least
| 10% and probably 20% higher with "free" parking.
| chung8123 wrote:
| In theory it will eliminate the demand because it will be so
| much of a hassle people won't demand it. When there are no
| other options for getting around people will have to move to be
| closer to where they need to be and that increase in price will
| be weighed against the increase in the price of owning a car.
| jmyeet wrote:
| The amount of money we collectively spend subsidizing driving is
| utterly insane.
|
| Yet every public transit measure is jet with the same tired dogma
| of "it'll raise our taxes" or "it will run at a loss". Street
| parking tons at a loss. Why is this never brought up?
|
| Significant money is spent by the likes of the remaining Koch
| brothers to fight public transit infrastructure in every city.
|
| Yet taking drivers off the road will make driving better and
| faster.
|
| The shortsightedness of this is bewildering.
|
| Parking minimums are a start, particularly for building more
| affordable housing but it's barely scratching the surface and
| even this small gesture will often be met with fierce opposition.
| swozey wrote:
| The middled/old-aged NIMBYs in the suburbs don't use Uber/Pub-
| trans so they don't care and don't want to ever vote for it
| being improved or "taking my tax dollars." They still equate
| public transportation with being poor and not how millions of
| people who live IN the city get around, nor how THEY can
| benefit from being able to come downtown or go to the mountains
| skiing more frequently.
|
| You know who wants tons of parking spots? Those people with
| their Suburbans and 6 kids who only come downtown for a sports
| game once every 3 months but complain about how scary and
| stressful being downtown is.
|
| If you want a concrete example of this- when Austin caused
| Uber/Lyft to exit the market in 2016 (iirc) based on them "not
| fingerprinting drivers" one of the big arguments for letting
| them leave from one of (or the most) important council members
| was some comment along the lines of, "Well I've never needed an
| Uber/Lyft before in my life. Why can't you use cabs?"
| Ironically this person lives in Clarksville (or Tarrytown)
| which is one of the most expensive suburbs right outside of
| downtown and they probably never NEED an Uber. I bartended back
| in 2016 when this was going on and it SUCKED when they left. We
| had already gotten them into Austin WAY later than most other
| cities and it finally felt like I could travel around without a
| headache and the bullshit that yellow cabs bring with it
| ("Sorry sir, my credit card is not working tonight! Cash only
| but we're here already, so you must find ATM!")
|
| People who actually go out and do things and didn't want to
| have to go back to cabs not showing up, potentially getting a
| dwi/dui, etc were angry beyond belief at the council.
|
| https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2016-05-14/dear-m...
| oceanplexian wrote:
| > They still equate public transportation with being poor and
| not how millions of people who live IN the city get around.
|
| I rode BART out of Oakland for years. I don't agree with
| NIMBYs but it's not like they are making it up.
|
| I assure you, it is indeed full of insane people, homeless,
| the trains are nasty and smell like urine, frequently break
| down or get stopped because people regularly suicide
| themselves on the tracks. I'm sure in Asian countries the
| trains are fantastic but here people aren't adults and ruin
| it for everyone.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > I'm sure in Asian countries the trains are fantastic but
| unfortunately public transit riders here aren't adults and
| ruin it for everyone.
|
| Not sure why you would turn an obviously systemic problem
| into one of personal responsibility. Do you think there are
| no mentally disabled or homeless people in other countries?
|
| This attitude seems startlingly common in the US. It's like
| the pessimistic side of American Exceptionalism - "This
| problem, which many other countries have tackled
| successfully, cannot be fixed here".
| TexanFeller wrote:
| < They still equate public transportation with being poor and
| not how millions of people who live IN the city get around.
|
| Because statistically that's very true almost everywhere in
| America. Even flagship cities like NYC have pathetic
| trains/subways compared to Europe/Asia and 90% of the
| population has never been that far abroad to see what's
| possible. I've tried the express busses and "train"(can you
| call it that with only two cars!) in Austin and gave up
| because they waste much more time and are less comfortable
| than driving. Never saw rich professionals on them, but
| plenty of mentally ill, drug addicted, and unbathed(not that
| we should avoid the homeless as much as we do now) persons.
| swozey wrote:
| I worked on 2nd and Congress for 4 years and almost every
| single person I worked with who lived in the suburbs took
| the train from around the Domain/Aboreteum/further-north-
| Canada area. They would usually bike, park-at, or get
| dropped off at a park-n-ride.
|
| Nobody said addicts, etc aren't on trains. I said people
| think that is who is _only_ on it. My software engineer
| dad-friends absolutely took the train every single day and
| so did a TON of people who worked downtown. They constantly
| complained that the trains were full and I remember them
| changing schedules based on how full they were.
|
| They all said they took the train because it was faster and
| they didn't have to sit in traffic.
|
| I've also taken tons of buses. I lived off the drag and
| worked on 2nd. I always took a bus by UT down Congress to
| get to downtown. A bus is a bus. Every city bus has bus
| issues like you mentioned. Yawn. It's even worse here in
| Denver.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| I live in Portland, Oregon, and my house has a city bus stop
| with service every 15 minutes literally around the corner. If
| you walk 3-5 blocks, you can access 2 more bus lines, and if
| you're willing to go 10 blocks you can get to half a dozen
| more. We have light rail (Trimet MAX) and the Portland
| Streetcar with just over a mile walk. It's one of the reasons
| we moved where we did. I work for Google, and Google Portland
| gives me a free unlimited transit pass, as our office is
| located on the downtown transit mall. I've literally never
| driven into the office; a 20 minute bus ride with less than a
| 2 block walk is incredibly nice.
|
| My family takes transit all the time; I have 3 teens old
| enough to get their licenses and none of them have put much
| effort into learning how to drive because they can get around
| well enough using transit.
|
| If you talk to our Baby Boomer neighbors, though, you'd think
| that the second you step foot on a bus or train you'll
| immediately be assaulted by violent junkies. We do have a big
| unhoused problem here (like everywhere) but my neighbors seem
| to think transit is only for the poor; it's sad, really, as
| many of them are getting to the age where they really
| shouldn't be driving.
| tellsomething wrote:
| Seems silly to think infrastructure means subsidising. Why
| don't you switch to dial up so that all the cables underneath
| the ocean can be slowly removed in order not to bother wild
| life over there?
|
| But really, your whole life is sustained by providers driving.
| Taxes in the city comes from humans being able to physically
| move their bodies to the right location.
|
| I mean, wouldn't it be ideal to get all the benefits of a
| complex industrial society without a complex industry? It sure
| would.
| _dain_ wrote:
| _> But really, your whole life is sustained by providers
| driving. Taxes in the city comes from humans being able to
| physically move their bodies to the right location._
|
| because the only way to get around in a city is by driving,
| right?
| tellsomething wrote:
| It will sure do great to inflation when your plumber has to
| take the bus and instead of having 5 customers per day only
| has 2.
| ta_1138 wrote:
| Of course infrastructure is subsidizing those who use it.
| Even more so when it comes to infrastructure that takes a lot
| of space, as every square foot of surface dedicated to one
| thing cannot be dedicated to another. And infrastructure
| induces demand by lowering some prices relative to others.
|
| In an extreme case, imagine that your typical, currently
| congested highway gained another 6 lanes in each direction,
| and we raise speed limits to 100 mph. First, the right of way
| is now way bigger, so we need to wreck a lot of buildings for
| this infrastructure. It makes being able to travel near that
| highway really nice for a while: Minimal congestion! A
| straight out windfall by people owning land near it. But that
| also means that the area redevelops, as farmland that was in
| the middle of nowhere is now a reasonable commute downtown!
| But as the development continues, the highway will fill up.
| And since downtown streets were not changed, it's the area
| downtown near the highway that is now a congested mess, as
| the limitation is getting from there to buildings.
|
| And again, a subsidy for you can be a harm for me: If every
| street is 8 lanes wide, it's very hard to cross. Every
| pedestrian crossing added is also infrastructure, but it
| slows down traffic. Every bit of lawn you use is another bit
| of distance I have to wade through to get to my destination,
| vs an area with the same number of houses, but without lawns.
|
| One can like one tradeoff more than the other, but the fact
| that infrastructure means subsidy, and that urbanism choices
| are picking some people's interests over others is just
| factual.
| tellsomething wrote:
| > One can like one tradeoff more than the other, but the
| fact that infrastructure means subsidy, and that urbanism
| choices are picking some people's interests over others is
| just factual.
|
| You do have a point.
|
| But, do you think cities prosper _in spite_ of this
| subsidy? It seems like an investment that pays off in
| second error effects. I mean, why aren 't cities without
| infrastructure growing like mad? Because it's not possible
| and cities with infrastructure outcompete them.
|
| Only way to make this work is if you outright ban
| infrastructure and then make competition impossible in that
| domain.
| tstrimple wrote:
| The investment only pays off in areas with the tax base
| to recoup the upfront cost. Largely this isn't the
| suburbs or rural areas and only _some_ parts of urban
| environments. Massive suburbs are built without the
| ability to maintain their infrastructure in the future
| based off of the taxes of its residents. There is an
| interesting image in this article
| (https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-
| reason...) which shows the areas of a city which earn a
| ROI and those which are just expenses. The poorer and
| denser parts of the cities are the only ones which pay
| for themselves (and thus everyone else).
|
| > There are some remarkable things to note right off the
| top. When we added up the replacement cost of all of the
| city's infrastructure--an expense we would anticipate
| them cumulatively experiencing roughly once a generation
| --it came to $32 billion. When we added up the entire tax
| base of the city, all of the private wealth sustained by
| that infrastructure, it came to just $16 billion. This is
| fatal.
|
| > It's obvious to me why this is fatal, but for those of
| you for whom it is less clear, let me elaborate.
|
| > The median house in Lafayette costs roughly $150,000. A
| family living in this house would currently pay about
| $1,500 per year in taxes to the local government of which
| 10%, approximately $150, goes to maintenance of
| infrastructure (more is paid to the schools and regional
| government). A fraction of that $150--it varies by year--
| is spent on actual pavement.
|
| > To maintain just the roads and drainage systems that
| have already been built, the family in that median house
| would need to have their taxes increase by $3,300 per
| year. That assumes no new roads are built and existing
| roadways are not widened or substantively improved. That
| is $3,300 in additional local taxes just to tread water.
|
| > That does not include underground utilities (sewer and
| water) or major facilities such as treatment plants,
| water towers and public buildings. Using ratios we've
| experienced from other communities, it is likely that the
| total infrastructure revenue gap for that median home is
| closer to $8,000 per year.
| TexanFeller wrote:
| A big problem with this is the incredibly long payoff time. You
| make parking go from miserable to insufferable, but it will take
| a decade minimum for good public transit and making popular areas
| bikeable/walkable. Sad experience with government projects tells
| I'm being generous on the timescale. If you make the
| infrastructure problems in Austin more painful for a decade there
| will be a migration away and we might have a death spiral from
| losing the tax base to pay for all that shiny public transit.
|
| Car free areas also raise objections about accessibility for the
| disabled. How do you get your wheelchair to the middle of that
| car free area half a mile from the public transit stop closes to
| where you want to go.
| _dain_ wrote:
| Sounds like a skill issue. Paris made itself bikeable pretty
| quickly.
|
| As for disabled: improvements to walkability and bikeability
| are also improvements to disabled accessibility in almost all
| cases. Not all disabilities are visible, and some even preclude
| driving at all. And when car parking is a hard requirement,
| there are dedicated disabled-parking zones.
|
| EDIT: "X was built for walkability but Y was built for the car"
| you always hear this but it's just a lazy BS excuse not to do
| anything or think critically about the built environment. many
| of the cities people tout as "obviously this was built to be
| walkable" used to be clogged with cars (including Paris). it
| has wide boulevards! and many cities people think "oh this is
| obviously built for cars so we shouldn't bother" used to be
| totally walkable and had world-beating public transport (Los
| Angeles). it's ahistorical, learned helplessness, never backed
| by any rigorous comparisons, just vibes.
| TexanFeller wrote:
| Paris was originally built to be traversed by walking and on
| horseback. It was originally built for density and
| walkability with roads tacked on later as an afterthought.
| Many streets in the core of Paris, Rome, etc. are tiny and
| barely fit for cars. Not as easy in a city that grew up with
| cars and are have as much roadway as buildings.
| screye wrote:
| Bike infrastructure means some brick separators and painted
| lanes. It takes less than a month to build city-wide
| rudimentary protected bike lines.
|
| BRT is similarly quick to implement, if a little more
| expensive. Remove 1 lane of parking from major downtown roads &
| replace with a painted BRT lane. Order about 50 buses to run in
| 1 way loops around the downtown area. Have high frequency BRT
| between the out-of-downtown parking area <-> downtown core.
|
| Either should be doable under 1 year.
|
| The blockers are all political.
| crote wrote:
| > Bike infrastructure means some brick separators and painted
| lanes.
|
| The biggest issue with bike infrastructure is that the people
| responsible for infrastructure _genuinely believe this_. The
| end result is usually a scattered bunch of stupidly dangerous
| "bike lanes" which aren't of use to basically anyone.
|
| You need a separate biking _network_ , which interfaces with
| car traffic as little as possible. This means you're
| essentially building "cycling highways" through car-free or
| car-minimal residential streets. Doing this properly means
| re-engineering those streets and intersections basically from
| the ground up, not just putting some paint on a highway
| gutter.
| TexanFeller wrote:
| Thank you for saying this, the half measures currently
| being implemented most places are indeed woefully
| inadequate. The "bike lanes" near me are just painted lanes
| that frequently intersect turning cars. I would LOVE to
| bike to work, but not if I have to fear serious injury
| every day.
| tomatocracy wrote:
| I cycle quite a lot in London which has put a lot of these
| in and honestly I think most of the separated lanes etc are
| a waste of money - they only really make a difference on
| the busiest roads with the narrowest lanes or at the most
| dangerous junctions. What does seem to be hugely
| underestimated is the need to provide lots of decent secure
| cycle parking at every destination.
| jandrese wrote:
| > It takes less than a month to build city-wide rudimentary
| protected bike lines.
|
| Citation needed. Maybe a month of actual painting time once
| you've done all of the planning, but planning the routes and
| going through all of the approvals and meetings is absolutely
| not possible in a single month. Not even a single year.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| If you do it on every street you don't have to spend any
| time planning the routes.
| jandrese wrote:
| Absolutely not true. Every intersection is its own
| special snowflake and if you don't consider the
| intersections your bike paths will not be usable.
| briffle wrote:
| Nothing about this makes it a 'car free area'. They are saying
| no more arbitrary minimums. Nobody is saying parking is not
| allowed. You better believe businesses will still want parking
| for their customers. And a new apartment complex/condo is still
| going to have them to attract tennants.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| This is a chicken-and-egg situation. We can't get rid of
| parking until we have good public transit! We can't have good
| public transit because all the parking mandates reduce density
| so much that you can't live without a car!
|
| If you bite the bullet and remove parking, better public
| transit will come. If you never remove parking, you will never
| have better transit.
|
| By another measure, removing parking mandates is a very
| immediate success because it lowers rents by several hundred
| dollars a month:
| https://www.planetizen.com/news/2023/11/126192-parking-refor...
| avianlyric wrote:
| > How do you get your wheelchair to the middle of that car free
| area half a mile from the public transit stop closes to where
| you want to go.
|
| One would assume you would _wheel_ your wheelchair there. You
| know, the same way people walk their feet there.
|
| > Car free areas also raise objections about accessibility for
| the disabled.
|
| What about all the people with disabilities that make driving
| dangerous or impossible, would love to know how we're making
| driving accessible for the blind. There are far more people
| with disabilities that makes car travel difficult, than there
| are people for whom direct point-to-point car travel is an
| absolute necessity (short of someone being rushed to a
| hospital, I'm not sure what people would need regular, direct,
| point-to-point car travel).
| 1-6 wrote:
| I thought a generation of remote work would change attitudes
| about cities. Why are we still trying to cram into small spaces?
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| Because some people are social and have fun with other people.
| codybontecou wrote:
| We've never had social interaction before the modern city /s
| avianlyric wrote:
| Erm, you realise that before the "modern city", every urban
| area was small and walkable, on account of the car not
| being invented.
|
| The "modern city" or at least the US's version of a "modern
| city" is the first time humans have ever lived so far apart
| at such scale. Enabled only because the car has conditioned
| so many people to think that driving 30mins to get anywhere
| interesting is "normal" or "natural".
| bluGill wrote:
| 200 years ago 98% of humans were farmers and lived either
| on the farm or in a small village in walking distance of
| the farm. Todays cities are nothing like how people lived
| before modern days. If you were a substance farmer (as
| was your best case) you had about 5 acres of land - about
| what you get in the exurbs (though a modern exurb house
| is a lot bigger/nicer). If you were a slave (not
| unlikely) you lived in a very crowed boarding house with
| the other slaves on more land. Sure ancient Rome had 1
| million people, but that was not the norm and even then
| most people were farmers in little villages not living in
| the city.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean. Even with remote work, living in a
| high-density area offers advantages - the primary one (in my
| mind) being that you don't have to own a car.
| pc86 wrote:
| "Let's pay 3x as much for rent [and other things that more
| expensive with density] to save $300/mo on a car payment" is
| certainly an interesting life choice.
|
| More seriously though I do think there are benefits to city
| living if that's a lifestyle you want, but saving money is
| almost never one of them unless you have a job where you can
| make a LOT more living in the city, which sort of by
| definition means you're not going to be working remotely.
| coldpie wrote:
| Who said anything about money? Owning a car sucks, dude.
| Without a car, you don't need a place to store it, you
| don't need to worry about the safety of your $25,000 item
| every time you want to go somewhere, you don't need to
| worry (as much) about being turned into hamburger by your
| own or some other idiot's mistake. When I go somewhere, I
| hop on the bus, read a book for a while, and then I'm at my
| destination. It's fantastic.
| pc86 wrote:
| It's pretty nice in my experience, dude. But I don't live
| in a city so it's more of a necessity and none of these
| downsides are really an issue - which is sort the entire
| point.
| coldpie wrote:
| Ditching cars feels like giving up regular alcohol use
| did, where the scales fell from my eyes and I see how
| much better my life is without it, but I can't quite
| communicate it to others without seeming like a huge
| judgmental prick :)
| dylan604 wrote:
| I've been without a car for 4 years now, and it is
| becoming a burden. For the first 2 years it wasn't so bad
| because of lock down. Now, even with my e-bike (which I
| love and would continue to use if I had a car) there are
| certain things I just cannot do. Inclimate weather is a
| big one, and in my location, June-September is inclimate
| weather of 100deg+ weather. Carrying things home from the
| hardware store is not conducive activity with my e-bike.
| Large item purchases, blah blah blah. If I were to rent a
| car suitable each time, I could just pay the monthly car
| payment
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > I've been without a car for 4 years now, and it is
| becoming a burden. For the first 2 years it wasn't so bad
| because of lock down. Now, even with my e-bike (which I
| love and would continue to use if I had a car) there are
| certain things I just cannot do. Inclimate weather is a
| big one, and in my location, June-September is inclimate
| weather of 100deg+ weather. Carrying things home from the
| hardware store is not conducive activity with my e-bike.
| Large item purchases, blah blah blah. If I were to rent a
| car suitable each time, I could just pay the monthly car
| payment
|
| You haven't specified where you live, but from the
| details you've written, we can narrow it down far enough
| to safely conclude that you're not living in a place
| that's designed to support a car-free lifestyle.
|
| I have lived for over fifteen years without a car. Not
| only do I not miss it, but I'd _pay_ to be able to live
| like this. I can rent a car whenever I need it (something
| like once or twice a year) and the total annual cost is a
| fraction of what a monthly car payment would be almost
| anywhere in the country: gas, financing, repairs, fees,
| other expenses, etc. all add up to way more than people
| realize[0].
|
| When you're living in a place that's designed with cars
| in mind, it's hard to imagine living comfortably without
| it, but when you're living in a place that's designed for
| other means of transportation, it's hard to imagine ever
| going back to cars.
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/10/07/busine
| ss/car-...
| dylan604 wrote:
| > When you're living in a place that's designed with cars
| in mind,
|
| Being born in a place is a lottery with random chance
| deciding the rules for you. Sure, as an adult, you can
| potentially choose to leave for the less green pasture
| and live in an urban environment of city designed for
| other means of transpo if you're one that doesn't mind
| moving away from their entire familial support structure.
| Not say it can't be done, but people just assume these
| decisions are something people are willing to make just
| because they did. It's nonsensical.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Being born in a place is a lottery with random chance
| deciding the rules for you. Sure, as an adult, you can
| potentially choose to leave for the less green pasture
| and live in an urban environment of city designed for
| other means of transpo if you're one that doesn't mind
| moving away from their entire familial support structure.
| Not say it can't be done, but people just assume these
| decisions are something people are willing to make just
| because they did. It's nonsensical.
|
| Nobody in this subthread is saying anything to that
| effect. This thread was prompted by someone asking why
| anyone would want to live in a [car-free] urban
| environment in the first place. The ability to do so is
| implied by the question, not something being prescribed
| by edict.
| kube-system wrote:
| > Carrying things home from the hardware store is not
| conducive activity with my e-bike. Large item purchases,
| blah blah blah. If I were to rent a car suitable each
| time, I could just pay the monthly car payment
|
| Do you have on-demand car sharing in your city? Like
| Zipcar or similar? You could go on a _heck_ of a lot of
| hardware store trips in one of these cars for the price
| of a car payment + parking + insurance + taxes +
| maintenance.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Do you have on-demand car sharing in your city? Like
| Zipcar or similar? You could go on a heck of a lot of
| hardware store trips in one of these cars for the price
| of a car payment + parking + insurance + taxes +
| maintenance.
|
| I think you're replying to the wrong person. I do use
| Zipcar on the rare occasion that I need a car. It's way
| cheaper than car ownership (not even including parking).
| dylan604 wrote:
| On the chance they were meaning to reply to me, no, I
| don't think a Zipcar is going to help me carry sheets of
| plywood or other similar large items. However, I'm not
| familiar with Zipcar, so I just took a look. Near me,
| there's a Kia Soul or a Toyota Prius. Nope, neither of
| those helpful for my needs. I'll continue with the "hey
| buddy...got another sixer-request", although, some
| requests become cases.
| kube-system wrote:
| Yeah, I replied to the wrong person. Anyway, I don't see
| many people buying full sheets of plywood in dense
| cities, but if I wanted to do that, I wouldn't be going
| to my neighborhood hardware store with a Zipcar, because
| it doesn't have a lumber yard. I'd go to the Home Depot a
| few miles away, and I'd use their rental truck.
| dylan604 wrote:
| that's yet another reason city dwelling in a multi-tenant
| building is just not conducive for many people. I
| couldn't imagine not being able to work on projects. Of
| course, having the desire/inclination of having that kind
| of hobby is probably something a city slicker just isn't
| going to do. I have wood working and machine working
| tools that I'm just going to lean towards not being
| allowed by whatever building rules.
|
| I love how those not wanting the city life is just looked
| down upon by those that are. But that's okay, I think
| those that live in the city are kind of just weird for
| similarly petty things
| kube-system wrote:
| I've lived both lifestyles; it goes both ways. I like
| metal working and wrenching on cars, which was easy to do
| in my suburban garage, but I also like riding a bike to
| run my errands, walking to the bar, and regularly going
| to highly specialized meetups, which is easier to do in a
| city. There's no one lifestyle that's perfect for
| everything.
| dublinben wrote:
| There's nothing inherently incompatible with living an a
| walkable community and participating in hobbies like
| woodworking. For example, after just a few minutes of
| searching, here's the first listing I found of a condo in
| a building that includes an expansive workshop among
| other amenities. (See photo 52.) This is in a location
| with a 92 walk and bike score, and a 78 transit score.[0]
| If that's not to your liking, here's another with a
| modest woodworking shop.[1] It seems like practically
| every luxury tower in the city has workshops among their
| fitness centers, pools, roof terraces, etc.[2][3]
| Minneapolis too cold? How about Seattle?[4]
|
| [0] https://www.redfin.com/MN/Minneapolis/1235-Yale-
| Pl-55403/uni...
|
| [1] https://www.redfin.com/MN/Minneapolis/1920-S-1st-
| St-55454/un...
|
| [2] https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-
| detail/222-2nd-St...
|
| [3] https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-
| detail/100-3rd-Av...
|
| [4] https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1420-E-Pine-St-
| UNIT-E310-...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >I can rent a car whenever I need it (something like once
| or twice a year)
|
| I think this is obviously the crux of the issue. It
| depends on what you do and what your love. I would be
| renting a car/truck 2-3x a week based on my interests and
| passions.
|
| I would like not having to drive to work, but would
| rather give up those 1.5 hours a day than everything else
| my vehicle lets me do.
|
| that said, i support letting people chose for themselves.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _" Let's pay 3x as much for rent [and other things that
| more expensive with density] to save $300/mo on a car
| payment" is certainly an interesting life choice._
|
| Try $1000/mo on average:
|
| * https://money.com/owning-new-car-cost-total-2023/
|
| If you're making >$100K that may not sound like _that_
| much, but the average /median US salary is lower.
|
| (That probably doesn't include externalities either:
| health, climate change, commute times when you do have to
| go into the office, _etc_.)
|
| Cars can be convenient, but it'd be better if they were
| _option_ for living your life rather than a _necessity_.
| pc86 wrote:
| $1k/mo is a new car with no down payment, most people
| aren't doing that. It's literally the most expensive way
| to get a vehicle! Maybe #2 depending on your views on
| leasing and how you calculate cost there.
|
| And even using the $1k/mo number, you're still paying
| thousand _s_ more in rent to save that.
| dylan604 wrote:
| $1k/month doesn't just necessarily mean the financing on
| the car. When I look at the monthly requirements for the
| car, I include insurance in that number. If the place I'm
| living requires a parking fee, I include that number. I
| don't include gas/maintenance as those are variable, so
| I'm only including the fixed costs fees.
|
| You can also get higher payments with money down if you
| have no to low credit ratings. Been there, done that. You
| play the game using the online calculators that dealers
| provide on how much your payment can change based on
| credit score and down payment, and the credit score will
| dramatically change compared to the down payment.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _$1k /mo is a new car with no down payment_
|
| The average monthly payment for a used car is $500/mo,
| and $700/mo for a new car:
|
| * https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-
| loans/average-...
|
| Then add maintenance, insurance, depreciation, fuel. And
| that's just the stuff that shows up on a spreadsheet (of
| which depreciation most folks don't really think about).
| jonfw wrote:
| You wouldn't consider depreciation a cost in addition to
| your car payment, depreciation is on your balance sheet
| and your car payment is on your cash flow.
|
| Your balance sheet would factor in only your interest
| payments and depreciation, the principal on your loan is
| irrelevant there because it's being realized as equity.
|
| The average monthly payment for a used car being $500
| does not mean that somebody on a low income has to pay
| $500 to own a car. I'd imagine that the average price
| paid for a cup of coffee is around $5, but that doesn't
| mean that that's what coffe costs. It just means that a
| lot of people pay way more than neccessary for coffee.
| Similarly- lots of people drive cars that are bigger,
| faster, newer, more luxurious, and more capable then
| necessary.
|
| The bare minimum cost to own a vehicle is not $500 a
| month by any means- my 5000 dollar car has lasted me 6
| years now as an example. Even if we consider it is now
| worth half of it's original value, that comes in at about
| $70 a month in depreciation. Hardly unaffordable
| avianlyric wrote:
| > "Let's pay 3x as much for rent [and other things that
| more expensive with density] to save $300/mo on a car
| payment"
|
| You must have one of those magical cars that runs on air,
| never needs to be filled up, never needs to be taxed, never
| needs to be insured and never breaks down. Wish I could
| have one of those cars.
|
| In the meantime I'll settle for using my feet and my bike.
| Never needed to fill them up with fuel, pay insurance, or
| tax. And my feet, at least, have never broken down.
| bluGill wrote:
| $400/month is probably a reasonable average to cover the
| cost of a car though. Sure a new car will be over
| $1000/month, but a used car will be much cheaper. In ever
| city I've looked downtown housing is a lot more than
| that. Of course most cities let you live much cheaper
| just outside of downtown, if you can do that you have
| reasonable rents and good access to transit and so a car
| would be a large extra cost.
| pastage wrote:
| Cheapest TCO for a bought used car is about 400 euro per
| month here in Sweden, most will spend more because they
| drive more or buy a more expensive car. The majority of
| people will spend more than 600 euros per month at 1200km
| YMMV, the externalties are subsidized to at least
| 100-1500 euros per month depending on how you count.
|
| All these numbers are from 2019.
|
| Without car we pay about 300 euros per month for all
| transport needs, an extra 100 euros per month are direct
| subsidies. I would guess we would pay at least 800 euros
| per month for a car, probably more.
| lukas099 wrote:
| Don't forget the price of all the extra healthcare you need
| if you don't walk or bike anywhere.
| shortsunblack wrote:
| According to American Automobile Association, annual cost
| of car ownership is 12182 US$[1]. That is 3x montly than
| that you claim.
|
| [1] https://newsroom.aaa.com/2023/08/annual-new-car-
| ownership-co...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It is hard to replace a vehicle when my primary use case is
| getting away from the high density area I live in go places
| with minimal public access.
| mint2 wrote:
| Because it's nice to have practically every amenity possible in
| easy walking distance I.e 5-10 minutes walk.
|
| Probably 20 restaurants, 20 small shops, coffee shops, ups,
| usps, fedex, hardware stores, museums, parks etc etc all within
| 10 minutes walk.
|
| It's nice not having to drive for everyday errands. driving and
| parking is soul draining and causes suburbs to be ugly, not to
| mention freeways. Those are ugly as sin.
| chung8123 wrote:
| You don't need all of that to have every amenity at a walking
| distance. I live in the suburbs and I still have almost every
| amenity walking distance. Do I need 20 restaurants and coffee
| shops?
|
| Having space for your hobbies is nice so if your priority is
| hobbies that need space living out of the city is nice. If
| your priority is going out for things it is probably better
| to live in the city.
| dionidium wrote:
| > _Do I need 20 restaurants and coffee shops?_
|
| That should be up to individuals, not central planners.
| chung8123 wrote:
| Agreed. I don't think anyone is disputing that.
| rcpt wrote:
| > live in the suburbs and I still have almost every amenity
| walking distance
|
| Are you sure you live in a suburb?
| chung8123 wrote:
| Of course I am sure. If you plan where you live you can
| live in the suburbs just fine and still be able to walk
| most places. I have done it in the last few places I have
| lived. They even have bus routes. Suburbs can be walk-
| able for those that make it a priority. Many don't care
| and will pick their homes with different criteria.
| enobrev wrote:
| One that comes to mind is Arlington Heights, IL, a suburb
| to Chicago. It's very walkable and the places you can
| walk to are work walking to. My wife and I had to spend a
| week there and had lots of great meals throughout the day
| at various places, with lots of amenities for day-to-day
| life.
|
| I was born, raised, lived in many, and will likely die in
| a city - but I just wanted to chime in to say that not
| all suburbs are awful.
| crote wrote:
| Because a lot of people _like_ living in cities.
|
| They want to visit friends, go to a museum, join a sports club,
| check out a book from the library, go shopping, visit a
| restaurant - there's _way more_ of those in a city than in the
| countryside.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _Why are we still trying to cram into small spaces?_
|
| Define "small". Here are some examples houses in an urban area
| with front yards, back yards, and garages (attached to lanes):
|
| *
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/150+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+...
|
| * https://www.google.com/maps/place/70+Jackman+Ave+Toronto,+ON
|
| A little less square footage:
|
| *
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/125+Hampton+Ave,+Toronto,+...
|
| *
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+O...
|
| The _Oh the Urbanity_ channel has a video on the (mistaken)
| idea that "urban living" = Manhattan / Hong Kong apartment
| blocks, which is certainly not the case:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCmz-fgp24E
|
| Plenty of that was build pre-WW2 in ways that didn't depend on
| cars:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0&t=1m8s
|
| Suburban design is the worst of both worlds: lacking the
| density of the urban so infrastructure is inefficient and so is
| transportation, and basically bulldozing what makes more rural
| living nice (closeness to nature).
| tstrimple wrote:
| Because sprawl is economically unsustainable and dense urban
| tax bases subsidize practically everything else.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I live in a neighborhood in an East Coast city where the
| housing is all row homes. I have about 1400 sq/ft or 130 m^2.
| It's really nice, I have a home office, we have a spare
| bedroom, I can walk 4 minutes to get groceries, there's a
| commercial street a few minutes walk away, and access to
| busses/a train. It's really quite nice.
| lukas099 wrote:
| For one, most jobs are not remote.
| danaris wrote:
| A generation?
|
| We've had about 3 years of (ubiquitous) remote work; that's
| nowhere near enough to call "a generation", nor to bring about
| a sea change in attitudes. Even then, this entire time there's
| been a steady chorus of voices admonishing us that if we think
| remote work is better, it's just because we're slacking off; we
| don't recognize the real, important benefits of ad-hoc in-
| person communication; this is just a fad that will end any day
| now. Aaaaany day now...
| oceanplexian wrote:
| > "I think our country has used its land wastefully, like a drunk
| lottery winner that's squandered their newfound wealth," said
| resident Tai Hovanky.
|
| This sounds like a comment from someone who lives in a city and
| doesn't get out. There is an incredible, vast, mind-boggling
| amount of empty space in the US. I have flown and driven across
| the country many times. City dwellers are occupying a fraction of
| 1% of the space available.
|
| The idea that we must live in hyper-dense cities is utter
| nonsense. If you like that lifestyle, great, but it's not
| reasonable to force it on everyone else.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| How is parking legislation like this forcing 'that lifestyle'
| on everyone else?
| Eisenstein wrote:
| What would you consider Austin or the suburbs of Austin? If you
| live in a city or close enough to one, sprawl is terrible as it
| gives you all the cons of car dependence with fewer benefits of
| a concentrated population center. The rest of the country can
| decide they want to live 45 mins drive from a grocery store,
| but fixing car dependency in cities should be a priority, and I
| think you'd agree with that.
| jen20 wrote:
| The density of downtown Austin has increased _substantially_
| since 2015, but it's still not straightforward to live there
| without a car. Most of the shops downtown sell tourist tat,
| not useful items, and most of the everyday commercial
| districts are inaccessible by public transit.
|
| Almost all new high rise construction just has a couple of
| floors of parking garage, and handles it well. I can't see
| buildings without that being commercially successful,
| especially since much of the work that attracts people who
| like downtown is out in the burbs (sometimes not even in the
| same county).
| Eisenstein wrote:
| > I can't see buildings without that being commercially
| successful
|
| There is no parking ban being enacted. It is a removal of
| an arbitrary parking minimum. If they can't sell the
| properties without it why would they remove parking?
| crote wrote:
| I actually agree with that - and I grew up in a rural area.
|
| The US has been building a lot of low-quality low-density
| suburban neighborhoods. They are actively hostile to the people
| living there, as there are both no amenities within a human
| distance from your home _and_ there is no space for recreation.
| Life is constantly being strangled by a forced dependency on
| car travel.
|
| In cities everything is a stone's throw away, and you can get
| there either walking or by bike. In rural areas there's plenty
| of space for outdoor hobbies and for children to play. The
| suburbs are a worst-of-both-worlds scenario.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| I lived in Davis, CA for a while and I feel like they had the
| right balance of suburban and urban development. I felt like
| it was extremely fair to cars despite being super walkable
| and one of the most bike friendly cities in the country.
|
| They embrace mixed zoning, where homes and apartments mix
| with low density commercial, even in the same building. You
| can own a single family house if you need that, walkable to
| grocery and restaurants. Portland does this at a greater
| scale and it's fantastic, unfortunately zoning and public
| transit won't fix the other problems the city has.
| deutschepost wrote:
| This is about arbitrary parking regulations. Not about dense
| cities.
|
| The idea that we must live between enormously huge parking lots
| is nonsense. If you like that lifestyle, great, but it's not
| reasonable to force it on everyone else.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| This is precisely it. Those of us who would like more density
| and walkability have very limited options in the US, because
| those who prefer to drive everywhere have their preferences
| enshrined in law.
| brigade wrote:
| Cities _should_ be dense so rural lots don't get subdivided
| into 7000 sqft suburban lots. As you say, literally no one is
| forcing you to live in cities. But preventing dense cities
| _will_ force you to live in the suburbs.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > "Austin has developed as a low density city without adequate
| mass transportation system," said resident Malcolm Yeatts.
| "Austin citizens cannot give up their cars. Eliminating adequate
| parking for residents will only increase the flight of the middle
| class and businesses to the suburbs."
|
| I think this is likely to happen. Also, as a potential customer,
| when I look at a business, if I see that the parking is going to
| be a hassle, I will pick another location even if it means it is
| further away. So this has potential to make the business
| situation worse as well.
| megaman821 wrote:
| They could make things better rapidly by have a downtown bus
| loop with dedicated lanes and a park-and-ride to the north and
| south of downtown. They don't have to solve the whole city at
| once just incremental improvements every year.
| siliconc0w wrote:
| I should be for every n sq ft contribute a parking space or $$$
| to mass transit. Otherwise people still need a car and live a
| miserable life of shuffling their cars around, taking public
| spots that should be reserved for commerce or occasional use,
| like guests, not permanent parking.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| In Los Angeles there are ~ 3 parking spaces per car, and < 1
| housing unit per person. We mandate a bunch of parking for every
| new building, but no housing. Its no wonder that people live in
| cars.
| smt88 wrote:
| LA is a disaster for transit and housing, but your numbers
| aren't a problem on their face.
|
| Any car being used will need >1 space at all times: one at home
| and one wherever it's being parked when its driver has gone
| somewhere.
|
| If you have <=1 space per car, the car is either being unused
| or it's parking illegally sometimes.
|
| We need far more parking spaces per car in LA once we consider
| the millions of people who are driving in the city and live
| outside of it.
|
| As far as housing, we'd have a 100% fully housed population
| with <1 house per person because a large percentage of people
| live with one or more people.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > LA is a disaster for transit and housing, but your numbers
| aren't a problem on their face. Any car being used will need
| >1 space at all times: one at home and one wherever it's
| being parked when its driver has gone somewhere.
|
| Actually, those numbers _are_ a problem on their face. They
| 're an illustration of why cars, and societies that are
| structured around enabling automobile transit as the primary
| (or even sole) means of transit, are inherently unsustainable
| and inefficient.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Why is 3 parking spaces per car inherently unsustainable?
| huntertwo wrote:
| If you think about it, three parking spaces take up way
| less space than 1 housing unit in LA.
| bluGill wrote:
| Most housing units will have more than one person, and
| most of those people have cars. In most cities space
| dedicated to cars (parking and roads) covers about 50% of
| all land use. Housing, factories, stores, parks,
| churches, and the like are the other half.
|
| Note that the above is about land area. Housing units are
| often stacked vertically, while car parking rarely
| stacked.
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| https://www.homeadvisor.com/cost/outdoor-living/pave-a-
| parki...
|
| And that doesn't cover opportunity cost or the knock-on
| effects of market distortion, or the exponentially higher
| costs of e.g. parking garages.
| kube-system wrote:
| The price to pave a lot is _by far_ the least
| unsustainable part of the situation. Asphalt is cheap.
| The opportunity cost of the land use is much higher in
| all but the most rural of places.
| stetrain wrote:
| If everyone needs to have a car to get around that's 3
| parking spaces per person. Or 6-12 parking spaces per
| household.
|
| This is nearing the square footage of an apartment to
| house the same number of people. So for any given unit of
| housing real estate we need an equivalent or greater
| amount of parking real estate.
|
| When everyone wants to live close together (ie in LA near
| where they work, socialize, etc. not in middle of
| Nebraska) that puts a real pressure on space, and drives
| up the cost for real estate.
|
| Even if you want to increase density by building higher
| buildings, the cost of those condo/apartment towers now
| must factor in a parking garage pedestal taking up 1/3 of
| its height, and so must offices, shopping centers, etc.
|
| I don't think the ratio of parking spaces per car needs
| to be reduced. Rather it needs to be recognized, and thus
| reveal the cost of policies that lead to one car per
| person. If you can reduce the cars per person ratio, you
| reduce the number of parking spaces required at a 3x
| rate.
| michael1999 wrote:
| 3 parking spaces is ~750sqft. A moving car is another
| 2000sqft. Once population density passes ~3 stories, the
| geometry stops working. Once drive time exceeds an hour
| or two, the math stops working. It's the urban rocket
| equation.
| bluGill wrote:
| It isn't unsustainable. However it is limiting. That is a
| lot of space that is 2/3rds empty yet not really usable
| for anything else. Worse, cars are heavy and so it isn't
| practical to go vertical with parking spaces (we can/do
| build parking ramps - but they are a lot more expensive
| and so few want to pay to park there, and even then there
| seems to be a limit to how tall you can make them)
|
| Cities are great because of all the different things you
| can get to. However cars spread the city out, and in this
| in turn means you can't do as many things. You can still
| do a lot, but eventually the distance (distances in
| cities are measured in time not meters!) is unreasonable
| and so you can't get someplace in your city. Dense cities
| enable more things. If you just want to go to walmart -
| so do everyone else so no problem. However if you have a
| niche interest you may discover not enough people live
| within range to support a place for your interest even
| though across the entire city there are enough people.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| No, _those numbers_ don 't show that by themselves. That's
| because there's nothing about cars per person, only spaces
| per car. Cars would not be a problem at all if there were
| even 50 spaces per car... but only a total of 10 cars!
|
| I think the implicit attitude that your comment seems to
| have of one car per person is the real issue.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > No, those numbers don't show that by themselves. That's
| because there's nothing about cars per person, only
| spaces per car. Cars would not be a problem at all if
| there were even 50 spaces per car... but only a total of
| 10 cars!
|
| Okay yes, but we're not talking about a hypothetical city
| in a hypothetical world in which there are 3 million
| people who share 10 cars. We're talking about Los
| Angeles, which everyone reading this thread knows (or can
| Google) has, in the real world, close to one registered
| car per person. We're talking about this in a thread
| about parking minimums in the US, which are almost always
| found in cities that have approximately one car per
| person, or at least one car per household.
|
| In that sense, no number ever shows anything "by itself"
| because meaning is always constructed contextually, but
| at some point we have to all understand context because
| it's both tedious and Sisyphean to spell everything out
| every time.
| c22 wrote:
| There are always some cars being driven at any given time, so
| you could technically get away with even fewer spaces than
| cars. But the fewer spaces you have the less likely the
| available ones are near your destination.
| kube-system wrote:
| You really can't average a wide area though, parking is a
| highly localized and cyclical problem set. During the
| night, most people will be at home, and during the day,
| most people will be at work. Your city will increase in
| population during the day as commuters from the suburbs
| commute to work. Events will happen in your city which will
| cause huge outliers in the demand for spaces.
| reaperman wrote:
| Also, townhome rows typically have little to no street
| parking available because the driveways are so dense.
| This makes it impossible for friends to come over and
| park anywhere.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| That's one thing that self-driving cars would help.
|
| And the more often the car is running, the fewer parking
| spots you need, so shared cars help here too.
|
| But neither would beat a well organized hierarchical and
| capillary mas-transit.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| In Brazil there are 3 cars per parking space, so people park in
| illegal places, traffic becomes caos, and no one can get to
| their homes with sanity.
|
| Don't fool yourselves. There are many ways to reduce housing
| costs and increase housing supply.
|
| Reducing parking spots is lame.
| earthling8118 wrote:
| Right, it is lame alone. They should consider reducing the
| number of cars as well.
| c22 wrote:
| Obviously more than one person can occupy a housing unit (where
| each parking space can accomodate only one car), but this
| report from 2020[0] seems to indicate that LA has more than
| enough housing to accomodate its residents, it's just
| distributed unoptimally.
|
| It seems somewhat obvious that you may need more parking spaces
| than cars since they move to different places throughout the
| day.
|
| [0]: https://www.acceinstitute.org/thevacancyreport
| bluejekyll wrote:
| > since they move to different places throughout the day.
|
| The question people are asking is how can cities make it
| easier both for people to live in them as well as move around
| them without needing a car to do so. By removing parking
| minimums, it implies that people will have a harder time
| driving, which will entice them to use other means to get
| around. But, the big issue is that cities also need to invest
| in those other means of getting around. That means making
| micro-mobility easier with protected infrastructure, more bus
| service, more light-rail, etc. LA had a light rail service
| until GM, Standard Oil, and Firestone Tire organized a shell
| company to buy out the system and eventually tear it out.
| They did the same thing to the Key System in the East Bay of
| the Bay Area.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_City_Lines
| stetrain wrote:
| The ratio that's the problem here is cars per person, not
| directly parking spaces per car.
|
| Now reducing parking spaces per car might put pressure to
| reduce cars per person, or implement alternatives to allow
| fewer cars per person, which would actually improve land usage.
| adrr wrote:
| Have you been to neighborhoods that don't have parking mandated
| parking spots? Anything built in the 60s to 80s. Drive around
| for 1/2 hour trying to find a parking spot every day, pay
| hundreds/thousands of dollars a year in fines because you
| forgot to move you car on street cleaning day. Repeat if you
| work at place in these old neighborhoods, like Venice or West
| LA where all the tech companies are located.
|
| The issue isn't parking spots, the issue is that construction
| has had 0 efficiency gains in the last 50 year. Its cheaper to
| produce a car, grow food, produce computer chips, etc. Its not
| cheaper to build a building or a parking structure. Make it
| cheaper to build and it will solve house prices. And its not
| raw materials that make it expensive. There is no automation.
| We still pour concrete and frame buildings that same way we did
| 50 years ago.
| TylerE wrote:
| It almost certainly DOES cost quite a bit less if you only
| include the costs that would have been, in, say, 1950 - and
| control for actually equivalent stuctures. Environmental
| cleanup? Tectonic studies? Worker safety? What are those?
| Does the 1950s deck even have an elevator? I bet it doesn't
| have a modern bank of ADA compliant ones, security cameras
| and lighting throughout, etc, etc, etc. How about lifespan?
|
| I'm sure we could thrown up a hunk of concrete and rebar in
| the middle of nowhere in area with no environmental regs real
| cheap, especially if only care if it stands until the check
| clears.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| > Have you been to neighborhoods that don't have parking
| mandated parking spots?
|
| I have, I've lived in such a place. I walked to work, about
| half an hour each way. It was quite pleasant.
| stetrain wrote:
| Driving and parking my car in a place that was designed in a
| world where not every household had 2+ cars to drive and park
| is annoying!
|
| To fix this we should bulldoze things and build more room for
| my car!
|
| I have to be able to park my car! What else could I possibly
| do instead?!
| up2isomorphism wrote:
| Before you abolish an old infra you need to build new ones,
| however, since US politicians can get away with not building
| anything, so they opt for abolishing old infra as their credit
| for the next move, and as a consequence people suffer with lower
| and lower quality of life.
|
| BTW, I lived in China and Europe for many years and exclusively
| ride bicycles for a long time, it was not the same experience. If
| you believe what current US politician is getting you one step
| closer to that, you are just deluding yourself.
| tmaly wrote:
| Cities obviously cannot or do not build housing.
|
| Given that, beyond say SimCity, has anyone developed simulations
| of how these new regulations / incentives would actually affect
| housing?
| everforward wrote:
| This seems like something where the outcome of the simulation
| is dramatically influenced by the starting assumptions to the
| degree that the results are useless.
|
| It allows plots of land to be smaller, but is the extra space
| taken up by housing or businesses? Is the housing single family
| or high density? How do wider economic trends interact with
| developers' interest in building/not building? I would think
| interest rates interact with developers' willingness to build
| and what they want to build.
|
| Those factors feel very subjective to me.
|
| Not to mention that if a model existed that could accurately
| predict this, I would eat my hat if the model wasn't
| immediately bought out by a fintech firm for some absurdly
| large sum. Being able to accurately predict the housing market
| is a blank check for printing money.
| c0nfused wrote:
| The city I live in added "transit oriented development" a few
| years back along with a bus rapid transit along the same area.
|
| The results appear to be a full bus, the whole sale replacement
| of one and 2 story buildings along the bus line and a general
| consensus in the city that it worked pretty well.
|
| We just approved ending parking minimums and by right auxiliary
| housing units, read anyone can put in an apartment over their
| garage, this summer so the jury is out on it as yet city wide.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Come visit San Antonio or Denver and see the apartments built
| in the past 10 years.
| kleiba wrote:
| Where I live, politicians are also all for reducing the
| availability (amount + affordability) of city parking.
|
| At the same time, they cry about city centers (with their
| traditional shopping miles) dying out.
|
| Go figure.
| floatrock wrote:
| A traditional shopping mall won't die out. A post-1950s
| suburban-experiment strip mall might be affected.
|
| You can't get rid of parking on its own. If there's plenty of
| mixed-use development around so people can walk/bike/transit to
| their destination, then things will be fine. If you're getting
| rid of parking AND the nearest residence is a mile away AND the
| only way to get around is by car AND you're not building
| anything new, then yes, it's silly.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Mostly because good transit implementation is so expensive only
| like a half dozen cities in the US are financially capable of
| building new rail transit or hiring a lot more bus operators.
| Also the fact bike lane projects in this country are seemingly
| done like a half mile at a time to the lowest standards, rather
| than a one shot whole network wide rollout of lanes that would
| make suburbanites feel safe to bike to errands. A robust bike
| network seems difficult only if you forget its just a matter of
| how you put paint on a road thats probably already regularly
| budgeted in routine road surfacing work, over having to spend
| real money and actually expand budgets. This all goes to show
| how timid politicians have become in recent years towards
| stepping off into the unknown and actually diverging from the
| status quo.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| Compared to adding more lanes for cars, buying/leasing buses
| and hiring drivers has gotta be way cheaper. Road
| construction is expensive, especially if you have to get
| additional space in the right-of-way.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Lot of comments on building public transit first, before removing
| parking minimums. Public transit takes forever to build and its
| impossible to build usable transit with suburban sprawl. Usable
| transit --> reach destination in a reasonable time.
|
| Instead of public transit, cities should encourage Uber/Lyft. Car
| payments + insurance + gas + repairs/maintenance + parking might
| be close to $800 - $1000/month for most people. Thats probably
| just the amount that works for ditching car and just use Uber.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Public transit can be built fast. Replacing ppls cars with uber
| is nonsense: most trips are when ppl go to work and to home, so
| at peak hours all ppl need cars, so you need abt the same nr of
| cars with uber just like with personal cars, you don't solve
| congestion. That's why public transport wins, you get one unit
| to transport a lot of ppl, that's why uber/lyft are total bs
| for replacing good transit. There's no way you'll get faster to
| the destination if all ppl used uber vs a good built tram
| system, each tram with 7 wagons, 5 mins max between stops,
| priority at semaphores+dedicated lanes, the capacity is
| basically unbeatable by cars, it's just math and physics
| hightrix wrote:
| I own my car outright. I do my own oil changes and other minor
| maintenance. My only consistent cost is gas.
|
| No way in hell could you get me to agree to give up my car and
| use rentals/Uber/Lyft for everything. As a home owner, Uber and
| Lyft would fit my need about 50% of the time, maybe less, as I
| can't run to Home Depot to pick up a load of rock/mulch/etc in
| an Uber. Sure, I could rent one of their trucks, but now I'm
| paying for an Uber both ways, and the rental truck, just to do
| a quick run to Home Depot.
|
| I understand this may work for people in densely populated
| areas. But for the vast majority of everyone in the US, this
| would not be possible.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I yearn for American cities to discover what London has.
|
| The city's mass-transit is _intensely_ effective, and if you have
| to grab a car from point A to point B, there 's never a taxi far
| away. It turns out if you don't have parking, a professional
| driver class can afford to make a living on being ever-moving
| luxury transit for people (and I bet most cities can rought-out a
| mass transit solution with a clever combination of buses and
| closing roads to cars / replacing them with delivery-only vehicle
| access, otherwise open-walkable).
| swalling wrote:
| This isn't really a new trend, Texas is just a laggard because it
| is an unusually car-dependent state. Most major cities have been
| trending toward eliminating parking minimums, at least in
| downtown cores.
|
| Here's a map from 2015:
| https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/11/18/a-map-of-citi...
|
| And one updated as of 2021:
| https://parkingreform.org/resources/mandates-map/
| aegypti wrote:
| > _Austin is the biggest city in the country to eliminate its
| parking mandates citywide_
|
| > _Austin removed parking requirements for its downtown area a
| decade ago_
|
| Here's an article from 2024 :)
| https://www.npr.org/2024/01/02/1221366173/u-s-cities-drop-pa...
| swalling wrote:
| That article is technically true but misleading. Most of
| Manhattan eliminated parking minimums back in 1982. Seattle
| eliminated or reduced minimums anywhere close to transit back
| in 2012. The entire state of Oregon eliminated parking
| minimums and single family zoning last year.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| Parking minimums are a nanny-state interference in free markets.
| It's no wonder Republicans hate them so much /s
| electrodeyt wrote:
| Took them long enough
| lukas099 wrote:
| I vote we ban all free public parking and let the free market
| determine how much parking there is and where.
| rcpt wrote:
| Best and least popular thing we could do for our cities.
| Spivak wrote:
| If you let the free market decide the answer will be "a lot"
| and "everywhere there's business that want customers from
| outside walking distance" and "everywhere there's apartments
| and houses that don't have garages."
|
| Parking minimums are one of those things that are a huge PITA
| when you hit edge cases but when you go to city council
| meetings residents and business owners ask for more and cheaper
| parking because it draws in business and keeps street parking
| available for residents.
|
| You can't remove parking in isolation, I genuinely wish you
| could. You have to fix the reason people want it in the first
| place. And high density public transportation is unfortunately
| a double-edged sword because it means you need a government
| blessing to make an area a new hot spot and drives business and
| residential rents way up in the spots people can get to easily.
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| The free market will reward massive retailers with lots of
| parking space that exist in the suburbs. There is no pre-
| existing infrastructure to bring customers to these parking-
| free locations in most cities.
|
| Furthermore, semi-urban neighborhoods and alleys will enter a
| battlefield between tow trucks and illegally parked cars.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| I'm surprised no one has mentioned the most important improvement
| from eliminating parking minimums:
|
| https://www.planetizen.com/news/2023/11/126192-parking-refor...
|
| Parking spaces are outrageously expensive. By allowing housing to
| be built without far more parking than is needed, the cost of
| rent is lower by _several hundred dollars_ (read: $200-$1000) a
| month because of how expensive land is, and how much land /space
| is required for cars.
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