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Park and rides are actually less egalitarian and worse for the system. An apartment close by is much more likely to generate ridership. Walking is the cheapest

Park and rides are actually less egalitarian and worse for the system. An apartment close by is much more likely to generate ridership. Walking is the cheapest form of transportation available, so no need to own vehicles that cost thousands off dollars to reach the station. Also, increasing the supply of housing in general means more access. I'd be willing to bet that housing would allow more people per square foot to ride than a parking garage. Cars take up huge amounts of space. Truly tremendous amounts. Move people and goods, not cars.

closeparen 10y ago
Walking is great, but it is staggeringly expensive to live close to useful things, and similarly expensive in time costs to go from a 60mph freeway to a 4mph brisk walk. I don't disagree that cars take up a lot of space, but from my recent assessment when finding a place to live in the Bay Area, car-centric lifestyle is really a lot cheaper unless you're prepared to make enormous sacrifices in what you accept in terms of living space. >I'd be willing to bet that housing would allow more people per square foot to ride than a parking garage A parking lot requires about 300sqft per car. A stacker system should cut that roughly in half, but to be generous with the fixed costs let's say 200sqft. Every person we serve with a modest 600sqft 1-bedroom within walking distance is 2 people who can't get to the train effectively at all. Drivers can live arbitrarily far away, at whatever cost:space:time tradeoff makes sense for them, and still take the train. If all 3 drivers decide they'd like to sell their cars and walk, the price on apartments within walking distance must rise until 2 of them back off. Bulldozing the parking delivers an awesome lifestyle for the one guy who can afford the housing that replaces it, but at great expense to him and greater expense to the other 2 guys, who now can't get to the train effectively at all. This is why park-n-ride is egalitarian and hip urban development is elitist. Even though you're adding housing, you're increasing the cost to be able to get to the station easily (rent > transportation costs by a long shot) and decreasing the number of people who can do it (unless you're suggesting we live in car-sized apartments). If we want to demolish the walking-distance parking, we need to replace it with something approximately as good for as many people at approximately the same cost. Apartments are better, but they fail the other two tests. Self-driving Uber, bike racks, motorcycle/scooter spaces, all of the above, whatever.
- ubernostrum 10y ago
  I live 1.2 miles from a Caltrain station. The office where I work is 1.1 miles from a Caltrain station. On days when it's raining or I'm feeling too tired to walk, I can Lyft to the station or ride a commute.org shuttle that gets to Caltrain and has a pickup/dropoff spot a block from my apartment. Which is a good thing, because the parking lot at the Caltrain station is completely full by the time I wake up (and shifting my schedule 2-3 hours earlier would take away my ability to actually work with the people I work with).
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - closeparen 10y ago
    For context, the average car commute in a sprawling metro is 25 minutes total. Assuming your walking speed is near average, you spend more than 45 minutes just on the first and last miles each way. That's brutal and insane. We should not have to live this way.
    - ubernostrum 10y ago
      On the other hand, I just got back from Amsterdam, where I can get from pretty much anywhere in the city to anywhere else in the city, without a car, in that 25-minute time period. Transit doesn't have to be bad.
scharfstevenm 10y ago
The problem with housing and transit is that people change jobs, and companies change locations, so often that it's impractical to move every time a job location changes (and for couples, there are two people to deal with). When I have a contract in SF, I use Caltrain. I have a gig in Fremont now, and I drive. I tried combining a bicycle ride with VTA light rail, and it was really terrible, taking two hours, rather than a 25-30 minute drive. A large industrial area in southern Fremont, with no VTA bus from the light rail station on Tasman, and no A/C transit bus from BART. Maybe when the BART extension opens they'll add a bus from the station over to the industrial park area.

closeparen 10y ago

Walking is great, but it is staggeringly expensive to live close to useful things, and similarly expensive in time costs to go from a 60mph freeway to a 4mph brisk walk. I don't disagree that cars take up a lot of space, but from my recent assessment when finding a place to live in the Bay Area, car-centric lifestyle is really a lot cheaper unless you're prepared to make enormous sacrifices in what you accept in terms of living space. >I'd be willing to bet that housing would allow more people per square foot to ride than a parking garage A parking lot requires about 300sqft per car. A stacker system should cut that roughly in half, but to be generous with the fixed costs let's say 200sqft. Every person we serve with a modest 600sqft 1-bedroom within walking distance is 2 people who can't get to the train effectively at all. Drivers can live arbitrarily far away, at whatever cost:space:time tradeoff makes sense for them, and still take the train. If all 3 drivers decide they'd like to sell their cars and walk, the price on apartments within walking distance must rise until 2 of them back off. Bulldozing the parking delivers an awesome lifestyle for the one guy who can afford the housing that replaces it, but at great expense to him and greater expense to the other 2 guys, who now can't get to the train effectively at all. This is why park-n-ride is egalitarian and hip urban development is elitist. Even though you're adding housing, you're increasing the cost to be able to get to the station easily (rent > transportation costs by a long shot) and decreasing the number of people who can do it (unless you're suggesting we live in car-sized apartments). If we want to demolish the walking-distance parking, we need to replace it with something approximately as good for as many people at approximately the same cost. Apartments are better, but they fail the other two tests. Self-driving Uber, bike racks, motorcycle/scooter spaces, all of the above, whatever.

ubernostrum 10y ago
I live 1.2 miles from a Caltrain station. The office where I work is 1.1 miles from a Caltrain station. On days when it's raining or I'm feeling too tired to walk, I can Lyft to the station or ride a commute.org shuttle that gets to Caltrain and has a pickup/dropoff spot a block from my apartment. Which is a good thing, because the parking lot at the Caltrain station is completely full by the time I wake up (and shifting my schedule 2-3 hours earlier would take away my ability to actually work with the people I work with).
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- closeparen 10y ago
  For context, the average car commute in a sprawling metro is 25 minutes total. Assuming your walking speed is near average, you spend more than 45 minutes just on the first and last miles each way. That's brutal and insane. We should not have to live this way.
  - ubernostrum 10y ago
    On the other hand, I just got back from Amsterdam, where I can get from pretty much anywhere in the city to anywhere else in the city, without a car, in that 25-minute time period. Transit doesn't have to be bad.

scharfstevenm 10y ago

The problem with housing and transit is that people change jobs, and companies change locations, so often that it's impractical to move every time a job location changes (and for couples, there are two people to deal with). When I have a contract in SF, I use Caltrain. I have a gig in Fremont now, and I drive. I tried combining a bicycle ride with VTA light rail, and it was really terrible, taking two hours, rather than a 25-30 minute drive. A large industrial area in southern Fremont, with no VTA bus from the light rail station on Tasman, and no A/C transit bus from BART. Maybe when the BART extension opens they'll add a bus from the station over to the industrial park area.