9 ms·

Parking requirements repeal? Ask the residents of Portland how that works. What happens is a large apartment goes in without parking and suddenly home owners ne

Parking requirements repeal? Ask the residents of Portland how that works. What happens is a large apartment goes in without parking and suddenly home owners nearby cannot park their cars anywhere and everyone is angry.

davidw 10y ago
They can park their cars in their own driveways or land they own. Where's the problem?
- Tarrosion 10y ago
  Where I live (Cambridge), many people rent an apartment that doesn't come with a parking spot. Instead these people pay the city for a street parking permit. Hypothetically the city ensures that the number of permits matches available supply, though prevention of illegal parking is difficult and sporadic. Anyway, these people rely on their vehicles for transportation to work or school, and they pay for a parking spot. If a huge influx of drivers arrived without corresponding parking supply increases, I'm not sure these folks would be able to reliably park near their homes or get to work. We can imagine solutions involving increasing the street permit price, etc., but fundamentally more drivers without more supply (road* and parking) is bad for current drivers. *insert warning about Braess paradox and induced demand.
  - davidw 10y ago
    Maybe in that case they'd be willing to pay a bit more for a more guaranteed spot - like something they actually own or something they are sure of. In a free-market-ish system, perhaps people would build more parking at that point. Seems like an example of an "economic calculation problem": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem
    - ghaff 10y ago
      Cambridge has also historically been pretty hostile toward building parking garages. Parking permits were pretty cheap but garage parking was very limited and very expensive. So it's not really a free-market-ish system. Agree with the basic point which is essentially how things work in areas like Manhattan where people can't generally depend on inexpensive on-street parking.
  - jacalata 10y ago
    it's only a fundamental problem if you already decided that the obvious solution (policing the illegally parked cars) is impossible. New residents owning cars which they cannot park on the street without being towed would not affect current permit holders at all. Sure, policing might not be done now. But is that because it's not worth doing/nobody cares enough, or because there is some law of physics which makes it impossible? Even a street sweep every few days immediately after most people arrive home from work would massively change the risks of parking illegally.
  - CalRobert 10y ago
    The solution is the same as it always is when lots of people want a scarce resource. Increase the price, or increase supply. If parking is expensive someone can open a lot, or a garage, and turn a profit. Parking on my street is very limited, so the spots are expensive. This way there's often at least one available. If there isn't, I can park around the corner in a privately-owned garage. Nobody says you can't build new apartments because they expect parking welfare at their neighbours' expense. The problem is that most people feel it's perfectly reasonable to expect to claim a bit of land _for free_ for their car - if I just built a second house on a parking spot people wouldn't say "well the solution is to limit park-house-permits to local residents", they would demand I buy land on which to place my house.
- jcriddle4 10y ago
  Small lots means no garage or even driveway so street front park is all you get. Imagine forking over several hundred thousand for a house and then a few years later finding out that you cannot park in front of your own home like you have done for years.
  - chris_7 10y ago
    If this was important to you, why not purchase land with a private spot, instead of presuming continued free private use of a public resource?
    - jcriddle4 10y ago
      Well lots of people can barely afford a home let alone try and get a home with a garage or driveway. In addition how do home owners anticipate that some nearby development, 5 or 10 years later, is going to go in without parking? Especially since the city council on several occasions has promised to require a reasonable amount of parking for new buildings.
      - twblalock 10y ago
        > In addition how do home owners anticipate that some nearby development, 5 or 10 years later, is going to go in without parking? You can't anticipate it, which is why you should never view street parking as a guaranteed feature of your home. People who can't afford homes with garages or driveways just need to be realistic about the fact that the parking situation on their street might change in the future. Similarly, all homeowners, whether they have garages and driveways or not, need to be realistic about the fact that many things in their neighborhood might change, including density and traffic. That's just life. You can't fully control what happens on land you don't own.
        nitrogen 10y ago
        As someone who grew up in a low density area this just seems bizarre to me, the idea that an outsider might have more right than you to the curb that is maintained with your property taxes. Almost as bizarre is the idea of houses without driveways.
chris_7 10y ago
Not a Portland resident, but I'd assume it reduces the blight of parking lots and makes neighborhoods more walkable?
- WalterSear 10y ago
  If the neighbourhood isn't commuteable without a car, the worst-case scenario is to the remove parking and expect everyone to just manage.
  - chris_7 10y ago
    The inability to build densely due to parking requirements is one of the things that makes neighborhoods pedestrian/bike commute hostile in the first place. If parking is truly an issue, the market can of course solve it with private parking lots.
    - WalterSear 10y ago
      >If parking is truly an issue, the market can of course solve it with private parking lots. No, it can't - it doesn't.
      - davidw 10y ago
        > No, it can't. I think some supporting evidence would be good in your post. Is there some kind of market failure at work here? Absent regulations preventing it, I see no reason people couldn't build a parking garage or something. Here's a parking garage in the oldest, densest part of Padova, where I used to live: https://goo.gl/maps/sS3dds2h3yt https://goo.gl/maps/sS3dds2h3yt - it's not cheap (they use an elevator system!) but someone built it and operates it at a profit.
        WalterSear 10y ago
        Supporting evidence is needed to support the idea that 'the market' could be, but isn't, solving something that is endemically not being solved. "Someone built an expensive garage" doesn't demonstrate solving anything.
djsumdog 10y ago
America needs an end to car culture. Other countries have massive train systems that allow people to spread out and not dread commutes. Not everyone needs a car. People can share zip cars or flexi cars. There is an insane amount of rail opposition in the us that had less to us being a massive energy consumer and polluter. I sold my car 5 years ago.
- Noos 10y ago
  other people like to be able to go places on their own timetable. No one likes having to spend an hour to take a fifteen minute drive.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Good mass transit doesn't have that kind of overhead. (Few places in the US have good mass transit.)
  - cauterized 10y ago
    Whereas a subway that runs frequently under a traffic-jam prone area can turn a 50-minute sit-in-traffic to a 25 minute trip. Plus without the subway the traffic would be worse because the subway riders would also be in surface vehicles.
- douche 10y ago
  There's only about a dozen US cities that are even close to dense enough for mass transit to really be effective. The rest of us do need to have a car. A hundred years ago, there was a rail network that at least linked towns together, but that's long gone, at least as far as passenger service goes - a lot of it is still in service for freight. Amtrak tries, but in comparison to countries that actually have rail service, it's a sad joke.
  - djsumdog 10y ago
    This is a big myth. The US is more than dense enough for good rail. Look at Russia with its high speed lines. We just need to start building it. We use to have it. Hundreds of cities in America had trams before GM convinced cities to use buses instead ... and then killed those buses. Just a few key tram lines in major cities can alleviate a lot of traffic, not to mention the growth of business and commerce along rail lines.
CalRobert 10y ago
Boo hoo. I don't have a free place to keep my helicopter but that doesn't mean everyone should have required helicopter storage in their homes. (I don't have a helicopter, it's meant to illustrate the problem with your argument).
- mattmcknight 10y ago
  No, it means you live in an apartment without helicopter parking, so you and your guests use the helicopter parking that was allocated for my house.
  - CalRobert 10y ago
    "so you and your guests use the helicopter parking that was allocated for my house." Are you calling us trespassers? I don't recall putting my property on your land.

davidw 10y ago

They can park their cars in their own driveways or land they own. Where's the problem?

Tarrosion 10y ago
Where I live (Cambridge), many people rent an apartment that doesn't come with a parking spot. Instead these people pay the city for a street parking permit. Hypothetically the city ensures that the number of permits matches available supply, though prevention of illegal parking is difficult and sporadic. Anyway, these people rely on their vehicles for transportation to work or school, and they pay for a parking spot. If a huge influx of drivers arrived without corresponding parking supply increases, I'm not sure these folks would be able to reliably park near their homes or get to work. We can imagine solutions involving increasing the street permit price, etc., but fundamentally more drivers without more supply (road* and parking) is bad for current drivers. *insert warning about Braess paradox and induced demand.
- davidw 10y ago
  Maybe in that case they'd be willing to pay a bit more for a more guaranteed spot - like something they actually own or something they are sure of. In a free-market-ish system, perhaps people would build more parking at that point. Seems like an example of an "economic calculation problem": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem
  - ghaff 10y ago
    Cambridge has also historically been pretty hostile toward building parking garages. Parking permits were pretty cheap but garage parking was very limited and very expensive. So it's not really a free-market-ish system. Agree with the basic point which is essentially how things work in areas like Manhattan where people can't generally depend on inexpensive on-street parking.
- jacalata 10y ago
  it's only a fundamental problem if you already decided that the obvious solution (policing the illegally parked cars) is impossible. New residents owning cars which they cannot park on the street without being towed would not affect current permit holders at all. Sure, policing might not be done now. But is that because it's not worth doing/nobody cares enough, or because there is some law of physics which makes it impossible? Even a street sweep every few days immediately after most people arrive home from work would massively change the risks of parking illegally.
- CalRobert 10y ago
  The solution is the same as it always is when lots of people want a scarce resource. Increase the price, or increase supply. If parking is expensive someone can open a lot, or a garage, and turn a profit. Parking on my street is very limited, so the spots are expensive. This way there's often at least one available. If there isn't, I can park around the corner in a privately-owned garage. Nobody says you can't build new apartments because they expect parking welfare at their neighbours' expense. The problem is that most people feel it's perfectly reasonable to expect to claim a bit of land _for free_ for their car - if I just built a second house on a parking spot people wouldn't say "well the solution is to limit park-house-permits to local residents", they would demand I buy land on which to place my house.
jcriddle4 10y ago
Small lots means no garage or even driveway so street front park is all you get. Imagine forking over several hundred thousand for a house and then a few years later finding out that you cannot park in front of your own home like you have done for years.
- chris_7 10y ago
  If this was important to you, why not purchase land with a private spot, instead of presuming continued free private use of a public resource?
  - jcriddle4 10y ago
    Well lots of people can barely afford a home let alone try and get a home with a garage or driveway. In addition how do home owners anticipate that some nearby development, 5 or 10 years later, is going to go in without parking? Especially since the city council on several occasions has promised to require a reasonable amount of parking for new buildings.
    - twblalock 10y ago
      > In addition how do home owners anticipate that some nearby development, 5 or 10 years later, is going to go in without parking? You can't anticipate it, which is why you should never view street parking as a guaranteed feature of your home. People who can't afford homes with garages or driveways just need to be realistic about the fact that the parking situation on their street might change in the future. Similarly, all homeowners, whether they have garages and driveways or not, need to be realistic about the fact that many things in their neighborhood might change, including density and traffic. That's just life. You can't fully control what happens on land you don't own.
      - nitrogen 10y ago
        As someone who grew up in a low density area this just seems bizarre to me, the idea that an outsider might have more right than you to the curb that is maintained with your property taxes. Almost as bizarre is the idea of houses without driveways.

chris_7 10y ago

Not a Portland resident, but I'd assume it reduces the blight of parking lots and makes neighborhoods more walkable?

WalterSear 10y ago
If the neighbourhood isn't commuteable without a car, the worst-case scenario is to the remove parking and expect everyone to just manage.
- chris_7 10y ago
  The inability to build densely due to parking requirements is one of the things that makes neighborhoods pedestrian/bike commute hostile in the first place. If parking is truly an issue, the market can of course solve it with private parking lots.
  - WalterSear 10y ago
    >If parking is truly an issue, the market can of course solve it with private parking lots. No, it can't - it doesn't.
    - davidw 10y ago
      > No, it can't. I think some supporting evidence would be good in your post. Is there some kind of market failure at work here? Absent regulations preventing it, I see no reason people couldn't build a parking garage or something. Here's a parking garage in the oldest, densest part of Padova, where I used to live: https://goo.gl/maps/sS3dds2h3yt https://goo.gl/maps/sS3dds2h3yt - it's not cheap (they use an elevator system!) but someone built it and operates it at a profit.
      - WalterSear 10y ago
        Supporting evidence is needed to support the idea that 'the market' could be, but isn't, solving something that is endemically not being solved. "Someone built an expensive garage" doesn't demonstrate solving anything.

djsumdog 10y ago

America needs an end to car culture. Other countries have massive train systems that allow people to spread out and not dread commutes. Not everyone needs a car. People can share zip cars or flexi cars. There is an insane amount of rail opposition in the us that had less to us being a massive energy consumer and polluter. I sold my car 5 years ago.

Noos 10y ago
other people like to be able to go places on their own timetable. No one likes having to spend an hour to take a fifteen minute drive.
- throwanem 10y ago
  Good mass transit doesn't have that kind of overhead. (Few places in the US have good mass transit.)
- cauterized 10y ago
  Whereas a subway that runs frequently under a traffic-jam prone area can turn a 50-minute sit-in-traffic to a 25 minute trip. Plus without the subway the traffic would be worse because the subway riders would also be in surface vehicles.
douche 10y ago
There's only about a dozen US cities that are even close to dense enough for mass transit to really be effective. The rest of us do need to have a car. A hundred years ago, there was a rail network that at least linked towns together, but that's long gone, at least as far as passenger service goes - a lot of it is still in service for freight. Amtrak tries, but in comparison to countries that actually have rail service, it's a sad joke.
- djsumdog 10y ago
  This is a big myth. The US is more than dense enough for good rail. Look at Russia with its high speed lines. We just need to start building it. We use to have it. Hundreds of cities in America had trams before GM convinced cities to use buses instead ... and then killed those buses. Just a few key tram lines in major cities can alleviate a lot of traffic, not to mention the growth of business and commerce along rail lines.

CalRobert 10y ago

Boo hoo. I don't have a free place to keep my helicopter but that doesn't mean everyone should have required helicopter storage in their homes. (I don't have a helicopter, it's meant to illustrate the problem with your argument).

mattmcknight 10y ago
No, it means you live in an apartment without helicopter parking, so you and your guests use the helicopter parking that was allocated for my house.
- CalRobert 10y ago
  "so you and your guests use the helicopter parking that was allocated for my house." Are you calling us trespassers? I don't recall putting my property on your land.