9 ms·

If You Can’t Ban Cars Downtown, Take Away Parking Spaces

32 points by awjr 9y ago

donatj 9y ago
AKA How to keep suburbanites out of downtown completely, lose massive amounts of business, and become a slum.
- chairmanwow 9y ago
  In the age of ride sharing, there is no need for people to park a car downtown. It is a waste when compared with the cost per square foot resting such a huge hunk of steel on the side of the street.
  - donatj 9y ago
    I'm not going to rideshare 15 miles into downtown on any sort of regular basis. I took a Lyft home from downtown last night after drinking and it cost me $40
- matchbok 9y ago
  Use the bus? Subway? Cities have enough people - we don't need suburbanites clogging up our streets with ugly cars.
  - donatj 9y ago
    If I am from out of town, I'm not learning your mass transit system just to meet a friend for lunch. Path of least resistance. It's not worth the effort when I can instead ask them to meet me somewhere with parking.
    - DonbunEf7 9y ago
      You're not very good at traveling, sorry. It's considered an important and invaluable skill for travelers to be able to read subway/train/bus diagrams. Going to San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, London, or Munich, if you can't handle mass transit, you're only impeding yourself.
      - donatj 9y ago
        I'm not talking about traveling, just about living in the suburbs, something I do every day. Going into downtown is already a chore to be avoided because of how hard parking is to find. If there was no parking, other than the times there was a business need, I simply wouldn't. Why would I do something remarkably inconvenient like taking a bus taking an hour plus when I can do the same thing directly in 5ish minutes? It's illogical. It's too much an ask. Life is too short to waste it all in transit. If you remove parking, you remove the suburbanites. It's really that simple.
    - DanBC 9y ago
      > I'll instead ask him to meet me somewhere with parking. In London you've just cut out almost everywhere worth visiting.
    - chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
      Public transit done right should be intuitive. I've visited Boston once or twice in my life and The T is easy enough to use, despite having never used it before. I've flown on different airlines, but the process is still the same for arriving at the airport, checking in, boarding the plane, etc. That's because they all use the same "interface". The process is uniform across airlines. It doesn't matter if you fly United or Southwest, either way you know how to fly. Likewise, transit systems in towns and cities need to do the same. If they focus on user-friendly design and even work with other municipalities to create a standard, they can arrive at a uniform experience no matter which system you are using. We have this uniform experience with cars: we assume that no matter where we drive, there will always be a place to park. This is something that has become so ingrained, that the thought of removing these parking spaces is repulsive. But that's the uniform experience I'm talking about. You just assumed that parking will be available, without doing any research to actually prove it. See how natural we've made the process of driving a car? It will take effort, but we can do the same for public transit. This is a solvable problem! Maybe you've had bad experience in the past with whatever mass transit system a town used, but there is an opportunity there for improvement. How can you make their system as intuitive as possible? How can you make these systems uniform across different cities?
      - donatj 9y ago
        I have used mass transit in San Francisco, Tokyo, Osaka, many other places, I know how to do it, but it's always a huge indirect waste of time I wouldn't want to do in my everyday life. If I'm meeting a friend for drinks after work I wouldn't want to spend an hour on a bus to get there when I can just drive directly to the brewery in town in a matter of minutes, or hell a suburb on the other side of the metro in 15 minutes. I can assure you almost all suburbanites feel the same way.
        chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
        I agree with you that no one wants to spend an hour on a bus just to go grab a drink with a friend. But why do you think the bus takes an hour in the first place? It's probably because we've dumped so much of society's time and money into making our car-system as efficient as possible. Therefore, the public transit is terrible in comparison. Cars have encouraged so much sprawl in our suburbs. It allows buildings to be further away, because now you can travel greater distances. Massive parking lots then need to be constructed to facilitate the placing of our cars, which again, wastes huge swaths of land, further distancing buildings from one another. In my mind, we can't make public transportation viable while continuing to massively subsidize private car use. The latter causes sprawl, drawing us into a feedback loop of even more private ownership, which then in turn causes even more sprawl, and so on. It's a strong reinforcement cycle. We need to break free of this cycle, and I'm afraid the short-term efforts aren't going to be enjoyable, but it's all for what's best in the long run.
    - csydas 9y ago
      An app wouldn't suffice to tell you how to get from A to B? With some investment a mobile app for transit can make for an amazing experience. Pull Kakao Metro from your device's respective app store to see what a simple a well made transit app can be like. The seoul metro is huge and at first blush unwieldly, but this app made getting around Seoul a breeze (though it was pretty easy as is). It's not hard to produce simple apps and get word out around town and cities. If you have a phone you can get the necessary information the same way you would have to look up directions on the map application anyway in an unfamiliar town. I don't see much of a difference in finding the transit app versus using maps app to find the place then struggling to find parking.
- manmal 9y ago
  Exactly what is happening in my town currently. All serious business migrated to megacenters at the outskirts because city parking is expensive and scarce.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    What's a serious business?
    - manmal 9y ago
      Fashion stores, grocery markets, liquor stores...
- obstinate 9y ago
  I would be interested in seeing some empirical numbers on this. I live in NYC and have driven a Zipcar here a handful of times for errands. The experience is . . . not great. This has made me wonder: who are these people in cars? And parked up and down the street? What are their reasons for using the mode of transport they do? I ponder this regularly. Sometimes I have the most irrational urge to go around and knock on people's windows to ask. I never do, of course. I know for most things I do, the car would be the worst possible way to accomplish them. Walking or subway are better, and biking is best. But maybe for others the story is different. There are some obvious good reasons: tradespeople, delivery trucks, taxis and ride-sharing services. But who are the rest? That said, I don't think you can really expect people to buy this claim without providing evidence.
  - burkemw3 9y ago
    My anecdotal NYC experience has been that private cars are useful for leaving the city (upstate, Long island, Jersey shore, etc) and occasional off-peak trips. The outer parts of the boroughs can also be far from transit, and cars don't seem such an inconvenience to deal with.
    - obstinate 9y ago
      True, true. I live in Chelsea. I'm not surprised that people in outer Brooklyn drive in that area. I'm wondering why people drive in lower Manhattan.
  - holydude 9y ago
    I have been regularly sick when i was using public transp. I know my hygiene and I know that when i switched to car only my sick leaves dramatically decreased. I would not trade car even if it would mean to get to the place slower.
- uiri 9y ago
  Maybe that is the case when it comes to large towns in the US (particularly in the South or the Midwest). In cities, even North American ones, you would have to be totally insane to want to drive downtown. To a large extent, this is because parking is a nightmare to begin with in a downtown core. It is far more convenient to Park and Ride in places like San Francisco, New York, Toronto, etc... even somewhere like Boston or Seattle.
  - donatj 9y ago
    I went to San Francisco this last fall for a couple weeks and actually found it far far more drive/parkable than expected. We took the subway and bus a few times but mostly drove and parked, and it was honestly never. I was honestly reasonable surprised and relieved.
- kortex 9y ago
  Do you have any empirical evidence this outcome would occur? Nearly everything I've read suggests the very opposite [1]. Further anecdote: I've been to many European cities with minimal cars, and many American cities ranging from super walkable to Robert Moses-esque highway-organized downtowns. The overwhelming trend is that car-unfriendly zones are the most bustling, and the car-streamlined zones turn to ghost towns after work hours. [1] https://www.citylab.com/solutions/2015/03/the-complete-business-case-for-converting-street-parking-into-bike-lanes/387595/ https://www.citylab.com/solutions/2015/03/the-complete-busin...
sxates 9y ago
I'm not opposed to limiting car space in favor of people space, but I also see EVs as a solution if the problem is emissions. No need to ban all cars, just gas-powered ones.
- lazyjones 9y ago
  > No need to ban all cars, just gas-powered ones. Seconded. Especially since while riding a bicycle, people likely emit more CO₂ than an electric car. ;-)
  - yladiz 9y ago
    Directly, sure, but charging your car generates carbon dioxide, as do the manufacturing processes behind the components. Manufacturing an electric car is in some ways worse for the environment than a traditional car.
    - lazyjones 9y ago
      > charging your car generates carbon dioxide, Not if you charge from a PV array ... > as do the manufacturing processes behind the components. Same as every other manufacturing process, even for bicycles, your clothes etc. ... > Manufacturing an electric car is in some ways worse for the environment than a traditional car. That's nonsense. Says Elon Musk and so do various studies (in contrast to a recent, widely quoted swedish one).
      - majewsky 9y ago
        > > Manufacturing an electric car is in some ways worse for the environment than a traditional car. > That's nonsense. Says Elon Musk and so do various studies (in contrast to a recent, widely quoted swedish one). Well, how much better is an EV car, compared to an ICE car, in terms of emissions over its whole lifetime? If it's only 5% better, or even 20%, it's not enough. If we're judging a mode of transport by its emissions, then EVs don't have to compete with ICEs. They have to compete with bikes and walking where those modes of transport can reasonably displace cars.
throwaway2016a 9y ago
So only people who live downtown can go downtown unless they want to spend an hour in public transportation. Go it. This is a terrible idea. I live 40 minutes outside of Boston but sometimes I have meetings in downtown Boston. If I'm on time I'll park at the T (subway) station and take the T the rest of the way in but if I'm running late I'll usually drive directly in and park downtown. Sure it costs $20 for a couple hours but it is worth it when you are in a time crunch. Making public transit the only way to get downtown is essentially saying you don't want people doing business in your downtown. Since taking public transit turns my 40 minute drive into two hours (each way). Edit: of course I can park and take a taxi or Uber just like I can park and take the T but that adds a lot of time (and cost) to my trip. And that money is money I might spend at business downtown if I didn't just blow it on a taxi.
- obstinate 9y ago
  I think the whole idea is to add cost to bringing a car downtown, so fewer people will do it. The proposition is that the harm this does to suburbanites will be offset by making the city more livable for it's residents, and maybe by doing so encourage suburbanites to move inward at the margin.
  - closeparen 9y ago
    What city (that would plausibly do this) doesn't have a rent crisis? The people who get a more "livable" city (where livable apparently does not include navigable) are those who can pay the most. The people who get locked out of the city are those who can pay the least. Few suburbanites could afford a bedroom per child in the city center, yet this is standard in the suburbs. This is under current prices; think how much worse they'd get if every suburban resident was trying to move in. The city is going to be less livable if people have to pay higher portions of their incomes for less space, and waste more of their lives in transit. We should do this so some people paying $3500/mo rents don't suffer the indignity of looking at a parked car?
    - obstinate 9y ago
lazyjones 9y ago
I don't understand this concept of banning cars, especially by removing parking spaces from cities under the pretext of a reduced environmental footprint. Norway is on the forefront of the EV revolution, so they can go "green" by just banning gasoline cars. There seems to be a second movement hidden behind the climate debate and it's keen on removing private transport altogether (except bicycles, for now), apparently driven by people with a particular urban hipster lifestyle. This is a massive reduction of comfort, a burden for families with small children and people with disabilities, as well as businesses and logistics.
- beambot 9y ago
  I don't understand why such a large fraction of our usable land in people-dense areas needs to be consumed by expanses of ugly, dead cement full of giant deadly "creatures" traveling at high speeds, nor why that state of affairs needs to be imposed everywhere on everyone. It's all about balance...
  - lazyjones 9y ago
    > I don't understand why such a large fraction of our usable land in people-dense areas needs to be consumed by expanses of ugly, dead cement What other useful space would you put between tall buildings? Pedestrians have plenty of space to walk, at least I don't hear much about pedestrian traffic jams. Roads are very valuable and they're being used for many things that everybody needs: buses, ambulances, fire service vehicles. Do you really want them gone?
    - ctdonath 9y ago
      I'm actually surprised that space hasn't been occupied by more buildings.
      - lazyjones 9y ago
        Building codes prohibit this in many places, i.e. the taller the buildings, the more free space is required between them (for light, safety etc.). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floor_area_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floor_area_ratio
hedora 9y ago
My guess is that this works well if you have a workable public transit system (and since 61% of Oslo's carbon is apparently from public transit, they probably do). When places like the SF Bay Area do stuff like this, it ends up being warped into NIMBYism where there is no meaningful investment in public transit or affordable downtown housing to counteract the reduction in car volume. It just increases discrepancies in housing costs, and increases the already punishing commute times of the middle class. I guess eliminating parking would solve the "six figure salary and a trailer by the river" problem we're starting to have where young engineers just buy a motorhome and live out of that.
z1mm32m4n 9y ago
This is already like what many European cities do; the shops and restaurants all cluster in in a pedestrian only zone (in Germany they call it a fussgänger). I've found these places quite pleasant; you can eat outside without fast loud cars passing by. You can cross the streets at will. There's usually even a parking garage at the outset, though a metro system or ride sharing also works.
- pif 9y ago
  That's fine, if at the same time you have private businesses and public offices out of the pedestrian zone.
  - matt4077 9y ago
    These are usually the most expensive parts of town, and of course there are offices and luxury apartments on the upper floors. People are expected to walk two or three blocks, and that distance is kept down by the pedestrian-only zones usually being only two or three streets wide.
iambateman 9y ago
In my city - Columbia, SC - we have a magnificent Saturday farmers market that takes up three blocks of Main street. Thousands of people come to eat and hang out with hundreds of vendors for several hours. And yet. The cross streets between the blocks remain driveable. As a result, little kids cross the road as SUV's come barreling past. Last week I saw a driver speed through with his hands up in disgust, staring down an old couple crossing the street. Walkable cities face very real opposition from the norms of society. Despite 10,000 people creating a hive of street life, we still keep cross streets open for the ~100 cars that will use them. are there examples of American cities who do walkability well? And by well, I guess I mean to European levels.
- KekDemaga 9y ago
  How sure are you about those numbers? 100 cars commuting daily is 4.1 cars an hour that is typical of a rural farm road not a busy city. 10,000 people is Prince George's Stadium[1] full to capacity. [1]http://www.theballparkguide.com/graphics/bowie-baysox/prince-george's-stadium.jpg http://www.theballparkguide.com/graphics/bowie-baysox/prince...
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    The key word is Saturday morning. I've been able to get easily get street parking in lower Manhattan on Saturday morning. People don't work in business districts on Saturday.
pif 9y ago
Some idiots will never understand. If you have private cars in your town, it's because there are good reasons for people to come to your town. You'll never get to keep the latter without the former.
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  Perhaps towns should be more focused on the people that live in them rather than drivers from outside.
  - pif 9y ago
    We are not saying opposite things. I'm stating that a town can either focus on itself, thus strictly limiting private transportation, or try and be the reference centre for the surroundings, which had many advantages but also a cost. In other words, if you are annoyed by the cars parking in front of the regional agency of the national bank just below your windows, ask for the bank to be moved, not for the parking to be dismissed: public services are, by definition, public!
  - pif 9y ago
    We are not saying opposite things. I'm stating that a town can either focus on itself, thus strictly limiting private transportation, or try and be the reference centre for the surroundings, which had many advantages but also a cost. In other words, if you are annoyed by the cars parking in front of the regional agency of the national bank just below your windows, ask for the bank to be moved, not for the parking to be dismissed: public services are, by definition, public!
wolph 9y ago
Lousy solution, improve public transport so people have a decent alternative. Public transport is not a valid alternative if it takes more than twice as long...
- chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
  And public transport takes twice as long because we've been focused on improving car-life as much as possible. This is a good example of "things have to get worse before they get better", because in order to provide a decent alternative, we must, for some time, bite the bullet and ween off cars. It's no wonder that public transport takes longer than private car travel: when you spend tens of millions of dollars on roads, when you illegalize crossing a street (jaywalking), when you optimize traffic lights to the flow of traffic, when you provide free parking, when you guarantee a minimum number of parking spaces per development, (and so on...), you've basically given public-transport the middle finger. Public-transport and private (car ownership) transportation is an opportunity cost, and we've disproportionately spent our time and money on the latter. If we want to improve the former, then we're going to have to make these tough decisions to dis-incentivize private transportation.
- pyrale 9y ago
  Public transport is not a valid alternative because cars create endless neighbourhoods. You can't make an effective transportation system with low pop density because few people will be able to get to stations on foot, and you can't make a fast transportation system because low density means downtown is very far away. On the other hand, in downtown, cars are a big nuisance: they take most of the public space, they pollute, they are dangerous, etc.
dionidium 9y ago
There's an even easier way to start: ban regulations requiring a set number of parking spaces in new developments. Removing these minimums returns parking to the market. Already dense areas would likely end up with fewer spaces that'd cost more, driving the desired result.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Does Oslo have such regulations?
  - dionidium 9y ago
    I don't know. I'm speaking more generally.
- lokedhs 9y ago
  I've seen the opposite. A limit to the number of car parks in a new development. Look up "Hammarby Sjöstad" south of Stockholm.
jeffdavis 9y ago
When I have travelled around the world, I enjoyed public transportation. Everything is new to me, and I have plenty of time to enjoy it. A couple hours to make it somewhere is no big deal. But I have to wonder if it's still as nice when I have things to do and need to get somewhere further from the main transit lines. Or when I need to finish something at work and miss a train. Or when I just want to be home for dinner.
avenoir 9y ago
Why is there this assumption that everyone lives like some of you do in London, NYC, San Francisco, Boston and other large trend-setting cities where you can ride a bike to and from your pad and shit all over people driving cars? This article makes no sense to me having previously lived in a fairly large Midwestern city where a typical wait time for a bus is half an hour in the 'burbs with no other options but driving my own car. Public transport has to be a commonly efficient way of transportation everywhere before we even begin discussing taking parking away.
jackskell 9y ago
From a crippled guy who finds (American, at least) public transport unteniable - thanks!

32 points by awjr 9y ago

donatj 9y ago

AKA How to keep suburbanites out of downtown completely, lose massive amounts of business, and become a slum.

chairmanwow 9y ago
In the age of ride sharing, there is no need for people to park a car downtown. It is a waste when compared with the cost per square foot resting such a huge hunk of steel on the side of the street.
- donatj 9y ago
  I'm not going to rideshare 15 miles into downtown on any sort of regular basis. I took a Lyft home from downtown last night after drinking and it cost me $40
matchbok 9y ago
Use the bus? Subway? Cities have enough people - we don't need suburbanites clogging up our streets with ugly cars.
- donatj 9y ago
  If I am from out of town, I'm not learning your mass transit system just to meet a friend for lunch. Path of least resistance. It's not worth the effort when I can instead ask them to meet me somewhere with parking.
  - DonbunEf7 9y ago
    You're not very good at traveling, sorry. It's considered an important and invaluable skill for travelers to be able to read subway/train/bus diagrams. Going to San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, London, or Munich, if you can't handle mass transit, you're only impeding yourself.
    - donatj 9y ago
      I'm not talking about traveling, just about living in the suburbs, something I do every day. Going into downtown is already a chore to be avoided because of how hard parking is to find. If there was no parking, other than the times there was a business need, I simply wouldn't. Why would I do something remarkably inconvenient like taking a bus taking an hour plus when I can do the same thing directly in 5ish minutes? It's illogical. It's too much an ask. Life is too short to waste it all in transit. If you remove parking, you remove the suburbanites. It's really that simple.
  - DanBC 9y ago
    > I'll instead ask him to meet me somewhere with parking. In London you've just cut out almost everywhere worth visiting.
  - chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
    Public transit done right should be intuitive. I've visited Boston once or twice in my life and The T is easy enough to use, despite having never used it before. I've flown on different airlines, but the process is still the same for arriving at the airport, checking in, boarding the plane, etc. That's because they all use the same "interface". The process is uniform across airlines. It doesn't matter if you fly United or Southwest, either way you know how to fly. Likewise, transit systems in towns and cities need to do the same. If they focus on user-friendly design and even work with other municipalities to create a standard, they can arrive at a uniform experience no matter which system you are using. We have this uniform experience with cars: we assume that no matter where we drive, there will always be a place to park. This is something that has become so ingrained, that the thought of removing these parking spaces is repulsive. But that's the uniform experience I'm talking about. You just assumed that parking will be available, without doing any research to actually prove it. See how natural we've made the process of driving a car? It will take effort, but we can do the same for public transit. This is a solvable problem! Maybe you've had bad experience in the past with whatever mass transit system a town used, but there is an opportunity there for improvement. How can you make their system as intuitive as possible? How can you make these systems uniform across different cities?
    - donatj 9y ago
      I have used mass transit in San Francisco, Tokyo, Osaka, many other places, I know how to do it, but it's always a huge indirect waste of time I wouldn't want to do in my everyday life. If I'm meeting a friend for drinks after work I wouldn't want to spend an hour on a bus to get there when I can just drive directly to the brewery in town in a matter of minutes, or hell a suburb on the other side of the metro in 15 minutes. I can assure you almost all suburbanites feel the same way.
      - chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
        I agree with you that no one wants to spend an hour on a bus just to go grab a drink with a friend. But why do you think the bus takes an hour in the first place? It's probably because we've dumped so much of society's time and money into making our car-system as efficient as possible. Therefore, the public transit is terrible in comparison. Cars have encouraged so much sprawl in our suburbs. It allows buildings to be further away, because now you can travel greater distances. Massive parking lots then need to be constructed to facilitate the placing of our cars, which again, wastes huge swaths of land, further distancing buildings from one another. In my mind, we can't make public transportation viable while continuing to massively subsidize private car use. The latter causes sprawl, drawing us into a feedback loop of even more private ownership, which then in turn causes even more sprawl, and so on. It's a strong reinforcement cycle. We need to break free of this cycle, and I'm afraid the short-term efforts aren't going to be enjoyable, but it's all for what's best in the long run.
  - csydas 9y ago
    An app wouldn't suffice to tell you how to get from A to B? With some investment a mobile app for transit can make for an amazing experience. Pull Kakao Metro from your device's respective app store to see what a simple a well made transit app can be like. The seoul metro is huge and at first blush unwieldly, but this app made getting around Seoul a breeze (though it was pretty easy as is). It's not hard to produce simple apps and get word out around town and cities. If you have a phone you can get the necessary information the same way you would have to look up directions on the map application anyway in an unfamiliar town. I don't see much of a difference in finding the transit app versus using maps app to find the place then struggling to find parking.
manmal 9y ago
Exactly what is happening in my town currently. All serious business migrated to megacenters at the outskirts because city parking is expensive and scarce.
- icebraining 9y ago
  What's a serious business?
  - manmal 9y ago
    Fashion stores, grocery markets, liquor stores...
obstinate 9y ago
I would be interested in seeing some empirical numbers on this. I live in NYC and have driven a Zipcar here a handful of times for errands. The experience is . . . not great. This has made me wonder: who are these people in cars? And parked up and down the street? What are their reasons for using the mode of transport they do? I ponder this regularly. Sometimes I have the most irrational urge to go around and knock on people's windows to ask. I never do, of course. I know for most things I do, the car would be the worst possible way to accomplish them. Walking or subway are better, and biking is best. But maybe for others the story is different. There are some obvious good reasons: tradespeople, delivery trucks, taxis and ride-sharing services. But who are the rest? That said, I don't think you can really expect people to buy this claim without providing evidence.
- burkemw3 9y ago
  My anecdotal NYC experience has been that private cars are useful for leaving the city (upstate, Long island, Jersey shore, etc) and occasional off-peak trips. The outer parts of the boroughs can also be far from transit, and cars don't seem such an inconvenience to deal with.
  - obstinate 9y ago
    True, true. I live in Chelsea. I'm not surprised that people in outer Brooklyn drive in that area. I'm wondering why people drive in lower Manhattan.
- holydude 9y ago
  I have been regularly sick when i was using public transp. I know my hygiene and I know that when i switched to car only my sick leaves dramatically decreased. I would not trade car even if it would mean to get to the place slower.
uiri 9y ago
Maybe that is the case when it comes to large towns in the US (particularly in the South or the Midwest). In cities, even North American ones, you would have to be totally insane to want to drive downtown. To a large extent, this is because parking is a nightmare to begin with in a downtown core. It is far more convenient to Park and Ride in places like San Francisco, New York, Toronto, etc... even somewhere like Boston or Seattle.
- donatj 9y ago
  I went to San Francisco this last fall for a couple weeks and actually found it far far more drive/parkable than expected. We took the subway and bus a few times but mostly drove and parked, and it was honestly never. I was honestly reasonable surprised and relieved.
kortex 9y ago
Do you have any empirical evidence this outcome would occur? Nearly everything I've read suggests the very opposite [1]. Further anecdote: I've been to many European cities with minimal cars, and many American cities ranging from super walkable to Robert Moses-esque highway-organized downtowns. The overwhelming trend is that car-unfriendly zones are the most bustling, and the car-streamlined zones turn to ghost towns after work hours. [1] https://www.citylab.com/solutions/2015/03/the-complete-business-case-for-converting-street-parking-into-bike-lanes/387595/ https://www.citylab.com/solutions/2015/03/the-complete-busin...

sxates 9y ago

I'm not opposed to limiting car space in favor of people space, but I also see EVs as a solution if the problem is emissions. No need to ban all cars, just gas-powered ones.

lazyjones 9y ago
> No need to ban all cars, just gas-powered ones. Seconded. Especially since while riding a bicycle, people likely emit more CO₂ than an electric car. ;-)
- yladiz 9y ago
  Directly, sure, but charging your car generates carbon dioxide, as do the manufacturing processes behind the components. Manufacturing an electric car is in some ways worse for the environment than a traditional car.
  - lazyjones 9y ago
    > charging your car generates carbon dioxide, Not if you charge from a PV array ... > as do the manufacturing processes behind the components. Same as every other manufacturing process, even for bicycles, your clothes etc. ... > Manufacturing an electric car is in some ways worse for the environment than a traditional car. That's nonsense. Says Elon Musk and so do various studies (in contrast to a recent, widely quoted swedish one).
    - majewsky 9y ago
      > > Manufacturing an electric car is in some ways worse for the environment than a traditional car. > That's nonsense. Says Elon Musk and so do various studies (in contrast to a recent, widely quoted swedish one). Well, how much better is an EV car, compared to an ICE car, in terms of emissions over its whole lifetime? If it's only 5% better, or even 20%, it's not enough. If we're judging a mode of transport by its emissions, then EVs don't have to compete with ICEs. They have to compete with bikes and walking where those modes of transport can reasonably displace cars.

throwaway2016a 9y ago

So only people who live downtown can go downtown unless they want to spend an hour in public transportation. Go it. This is a terrible idea. I live 40 minutes outside of Boston but sometimes I have meetings in downtown Boston. If I'm on time I'll park at the T (subway) station and take the T the rest of the way in but if I'm running late I'll usually drive directly in and park downtown. Sure it costs $20 for a couple hours but it is worth it when you are in a time crunch. Making public transit the only way to get downtown is essentially saying you don't want people doing business in your downtown. Since taking public transit turns my 40 minute drive into two hours (each way). Edit: of course I can park and take a taxi or Uber just like I can park and take the T but that adds a lot of time (and cost) to my trip. And that money is money I might spend at business downtown if I didn't just blow it on a taxi.

obstinate 9y ago
I think the whole idea is to add cost to bringing a car downtown, so fewer people will do it. The proposition is that the harm this does to suburbanites will be offset by making the city more livable for it's residents, and maybe by doing so encourage suburbanites to move inward at the margin.
- closeparen 9y ago
  What city (that would plausibly do this) doesn't have a rent crisis? The people who get a more "livable" city (where livable apparently does not include navigable) are those who can pay the most. The people who get locked out of the city are those who can pay the least. Few suburbanites could afford a bedroom per child in the city center, yet this is standard in the suburbs. This is under current prices; think how much worse they'd get if every suburban resident was trying to move in. The city is going to be less livable if people have to pay higher portions of their incomes for less space, and waste more of their lives in transit. We should do this so some people paying $3500/mo rents don't suffer the indignity of looking at a parked car?
  - obstinate 9y ago

lazyjones 9y ago

I don't understand this concept of banning cars, especially by removing parking spaces from cities under the pretext of a reduced environmental footprint. Norway is on the forefront of the EV revolution, so they can go "green" by just banning gasoline cars. There seems to be a second movement hidden behind the climate debate and it's keen on removing private transport altogether (except bicycles, for now), apparently driven by people with a particular urban hipster lifestyle. This is a massive reduction of comfort, a burden for families with small children and people with disabilities, as well as businesses and logistics.

beambot 9y ago
I don't understand why such a large fraction of our usable land in people-dense areas needs to be consumed by expanses of ugly, dead cement full of giant deadly "creatures" traveling at high speeds, nor why that state of affairs needs to be imposed everywhere on everyone. It's all about balance...
- lazyjones 9y ago
  > I don't understand why such a large fraction of our usable land in people-dense areas needs to be consumed by expanses of ugly, dead cement What other useful space would you put between tall buildings? Pedestrians have plenty of space to walk, at least I don't hear much about pedestrian traffic jams. Roads are very valuable and they're being used for many things that everybody needs: buses, ambulances, fire service vehicles. Do you really want them gone?
  - ctdonath 9y ago
    I'm actually surprised that space hasn't been occupied by more buildings.
    - lazyjones 9y ago
      Building codes prohibit this in many places, i.e. the taller the buildings, the more free space is required between them (for light, safety etc.). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floor_area_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floor_area_ratio

hedora 9y ago

My guess is that this works well if you have a workable public transit system (and since 61% of Oslo's carbon is apparently from public transit, they probably do). When places like the SF Bay Area do stuff like this, it ends up being warped into NIMBYism where there is no meaningful investment in public transit or affordable downtown housing to counteract the reduction in car volume. It just increases discrepancies in housing costs, and increases the already punishing commute times of the middle class. I guess eliminating parking would solve the "six figure salary and a trailer by the river" problem we're starting to have where young engineers just buy a motorhome and live out of that.

z1mm32m4n 9y ago

This is already like what many European cities do; the shops and restaurants all cluster in in a pedestrian only zone (in Germany they call it a fussgänger). I've found these places quite pleasant; you can eat outside without fast loud cars passing by. You can cross the streets at will. There's usually even a parking garage at the outset, though a metro system or ride sharing also works.

pif 9y ago
That's fine, if at the same time you have private businesses and public offices out of the pedestrian zone.
- matt4077 9y ago
  These are usually the most expensive parts of town, and of course there are offices and luxury apartments on the upper floors. People are expected to walk two or three blocks, and that distance is kept down by the pedestrian-only zones usually being only two or three streets wide.

iambateman 9y ago

In my city - Columbia, SC - we have a magnificent Saturday farmers market that takes up three blocks of Main street. Thousands of people come to eat and hang out with hundreds of vendors for several hours. And yet. The cross streets between the blocks remain driveable. As a result, little kids cross the road as SUV's come barreling past. Last week I saw a driver speed through with his hands up in disgust, staring down an old couple crossing the street. Walkable cities face very real opposition from the norms of society. Despite 10,000 people creating a hive of street life, we still keep cross streets open for the ~100 cars that will use them. are there examples of American cities who do walkability well? And by well, I guess I mean to European levels.

KekDemaga 9y ago
How sure are you about those numbers? 100 cars commuting daily is 4.1 cars an hour that is typical of a rural farm road not a busy city. 10,000 people is Prince George's Stadium[1] full to capacity. [1]http://www.theballparkguide.com/graphics/bowie-baysox/prince-george's-stadium.jpg http://www.theballparkguide.com/graphics/bowie-baysox/prince...
- Spooky23 9y ago
  The key word is Saturday morning. I've been able to get easily get street parking in lower Manhattan on Saturday morning. People don't work in business districts on Saturday.

pif 9y ago

Some idiots will never understand. If you have private cars in your town, it's because there are good reasons for people to come to your town. You'll never get to keep the latter without the former.

tonyedgecombe 9y ago
Perhaps towns should be more focused on the people that live in them rather than drivers from outside.
- pif 9y ago
  We are not saying opposite things. I'm stating that a town can either focus on itself, thus strictly limiting private transportation, or try and be the reference centre for the surroundings, which had many advantages but also a cost. In other words, if you are annoyed by the cars parking in front of the regional agency of the national bank just below your windows, ask for the bank to be moved, not for the parking to be dismissed: public services are, by definition, public!
- pif 9y ago
  We are not saying opposite things. I'm stating that a town can either focus on itself, thus strictly limiting private transportation, or try and be the reference centre for the surroundings, which had many advantages but also a cost. In other words, if you are annoyed by the cars parking in front of the regional agency of the national bank just below your windows, ask for the bank to be moved, not for the parking to be dismissed: public services are, by definition, public!

wolph 9y ago

Lousy solution, improve public transport so people have a decent alternative. Public transport is not a valid alternative if it takes more than twice as long...

chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
And public transport takes twice as long because we've been focused on improving car-life as much as possible. This is a good example of "things have to get worse before they get better", because in order to provide a decent alternative, we must, for some time, bite the bullet and ween off cars. It's no wonder that public transport takes longer than private car travel: when you spend tens of millions of dollars on roads, when you illegalize crossing a street (jaywalking), when you optimize traffic lights to the flow of traffic, when you provide free parking, when you guarantee a minimum number of parking spaces per development, (and so on...), you've basically given public-transport the middle finger. Public-transport and private (car ownership) transportation is an opportunity cost, and we've disproportionately spent our time and money on the latter. If we want to improve the former, then we're going to have to make these tough decisions to dis-incentivize private transportation.
pyrale 9y ago
Public transport is not a valid alternative because cars create endless neighbourhoods. You can't make an effective transportation system with low pop density because few people will be able to get to stations on foot, and you can't make a fast transportation system because low density means downtown is very far away. On the other hand, in downtown, cars are a big nuisance: they take most of the public space, they pollute, they are dangerous, etc.

dionidium 9y ago

There's an even easier way to start: ban regulations requiring a set number of parking spaces in new developments. Removing these minimums returns parking to the market. Already dense areas would likely end up with fewer spaces that'd cost more, driving the desired result.

icebraining 9y ago
Does Oslo have such regulations?
- dionidium 9y ago
  I don't know. I'm speaking more generally.
lokedhs 9y ago
I've seen the opposite. A limit to the number of car parks in a new development. Look up "Hammarby Sjöstad" south of Stockholm.

jeffdavis 9y ago

When I have travelled around the world, I enjoyed public transportation. Everything is new to me, and I have plenty of time to enjoy it. A couple hours to make it somewhere is no big deal. But I have to wonder if it's still as nice when I have things to do and need to get somewhere further from the main transit lines. Or when I need to finish something at work and miss a train. Or when I just want to be home for dinner.

avenoir 9y ago

Why is there this assumption that everyone lives like some of you do in London, NYC, San Francisco, Boston and other large trend-setting cities where you can ride a bike to and from your pad and shit all over people driving cars? This article makes no sense to me having previously lived in a fairly large Midwestern city where a typical wait time for a bus is half an hour in the 'burbs with no other options but driving my own car. Public transport has to be a commonly efficient way of transportation everywhere before we even begin discussing taking parking away.

jackskell 9y ago

From a crippled guy who finds (American, at least) public transport unteniable - thanks!