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Many urban building typologies are effectively illegal in nearly all of the country (but not Manhattan below 110th Street) due to parking minima, even in suppos

Many urban building typologies are effectively illegal in nearly all of the country (but not Manhattan below 110th Street) due to parking minima, even in supposedly-unzoned Houston. One of my great hopes for autonomous vehicles is that they will finally break the political logjam where existing neighborhood residents demand new housing/businesses in mostly parking-free neighborhoods require offstreet parking to preserve their own access to street parking. (And that bike lanes/pedestrian space/etc that require taking back some of the land that car owners usurped at midcentury become possible.)

mjevans 10y ago
For dense city cores I'd prefer parking at the edges (part of the city) and forms of people movers (think caves of steel / tomorrow land belts). For other places I agree that eliminating street parking is ideal, but believe that more underground/in-building parking is necessary, with enough space for useful vehicles to park safely.
- anamoulous 10y ago
  Honestly, in Manhattan they should eliminate automobile access to a great deal of the streets and avenues.
  - AJ007 10y ago
    They are in the process of doing it, at least slowly. There still needs to be some sort of delivery truck access, irregardless. Parts of downtown Chicago provide an interesting example with multi-leveled streets, the big deliveries and trash collection can be all be done out of sight. I suspect very soon we will see a city, or multiple cities, start blocking off certain streets and then neighborhoods to non-autonomous vehicles. Maybe it will be Manhattan, maybe it will be another city. This lowers the bar for how advanced the self driving tech needs to be by a lot. You can have 100% traffic enforcement. Pedestrian deaths should almost be completely eliminated short of some very unusual edge cases.
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      Sounds like they should resurrect the pneumatic delivery system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube_mail_in_New_York_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube_mail_in_New_Yor...
    - anamoulous 10y ago
      It had never occurred to me to limit streets in cities to autonomous only cars, but that makes total sense.

mjevans 10y ago

For dense city cores I'd prefer parking at the edges (part of the city) and forms of people movers (think caves of steel / tomorrow land belts). For other places I agree that eliminating street parking is ideal, but believe that more underground/in-building parking is necessary, with enough space for useful vehicles to park safely.

anamoulous 10y ago
Honestly, in Manhattan they should eliminate automobile access to a great deal of the streets and avenues.
- AJ007 10y ago
  They are in the process of doing it, at least slowly. There still needs to be some sort of delivery truck access, irregardless. Parts of downtown Chicago provide an interesting example with multi-leveled streets, the big deliveries and trash collection can be all be done out of sight. I suspect very soon we will see a city, or multiple cities, start blocking off certain streets and then neighborhoods to non-autonomous vehicles. Maybe it will be Manhattan, maybe it will be another city. This lowers the bar for how advanced the self driving tech needs to be by a lot. You can have 100% traffic enforcement. Pedestrian deaths should almost be completely eliminated short of some very unusual edge cases.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    Sounds like they should resurrect the pneumatic delivery system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube_mail_in_New_York_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube_mail_in_New_Yor...
  - anamoulous 10y ago
    It had never occurred to me to limit streets in cities to autonomous only cars, but that makes total sense.