5 ms·

The Jackson thing is cracking me up. It's like saying that there are 100 hotel rooms for every resident of Maui, what are they doing with all those hotel rooms?

The Jackson thing is cracking me up. It's like saying that there are 100 hotel rooms for every resident of Maui, what are they doing with all those hotel rooms? Jackson is probably the biggest tourist destination in our tiny little state, so yes, we leave extra room for visitors.

eesmith 8y ago
The report (not the summary from citylab) says: > Jackson’s plentiful parking supply was underutilized. Despite its small land area and population, millions of visitors drive through the city every year so it is plausible that Jackson needs a lot of parking. But a Jackson-commissioned parking occupancy study of the residential core and midtown areas during peak tourist season in 2017 by Kimberly-Horn found, on average, 68 percent of parking stalls were empty in the residential core, and 61 percent were vacant in the midtown area. Occupancy peaked at 43 percent for the residential core and 51 percent for midtown. These low occupancy rates could suggest that parking is overpriced in Jackson, but at the time of this study, all parking in Jackson was provided at no cost. The conclusion must be that Jackson has an oversupply of parking. I am unable to find the original study, cited as "Town Of Jackson Parking Garage Challenges to Success" from http://townofjackson.com/ http://townofjackson.com/ services/police/pr/parking-garage-challenges-success/ . EDIT: in looking around, I found this Reddit comment - https://www.reddit.com/r/JacksonHole/comments/6bpvhl/town_of_jackson_wy_is_officially_renting_parking/ https://www.reddit.com/r/JacksonHole/comments/6bpvhl/town_of... - that the town has such a housing crunch in summer that they will be renting out parking spaces as housing. That fits in with the thesis that there is too much free parking in Jackson.
- kbsletten 8y ago
  That's well and good, but the article linked here is still garbage because of how meaningless the idea of parking spaces/resident actually is. I'm not saying Jackson is a good place to live, but just because you can make up a stat, doesn't make it insightful. The authors of the summary in question clearly didn't try to think about the situation holistically, just chuckled to themselves about their silly number.
- brudgers 8y ago
  The unoccupied spaces optimize the system for time efficiency. Surplus capacity makes finding a parking space reasonably close to the destination faster. That makes reaching the destination (and searching for parking spaces) faster by reducing traffic. Parking is both spatial and temporal. That's why all those empty spaces in Jackson Wyoming don't alleviate parking woes in lower Manhattan. The spatial frequencies at which parking spaces are fungible are less than 400m. Often much less. When human preference comes into play 4m (one stall) can effect selection.
  - eesmith 8y ago
    City planning should optimize for the needs of the city, and not only the time efficiency of people who want to find a parking spot. Indeed, the point of many of these "there is too much (often free) parking" pieces is that the optimization efforts have historically only considered the needs of drivers and/or design principles that were more ideological than anything based on reality.
    - brudgers 8y ago
      I agree. It's Richard Florida, not the people of Jackson Wyoming proclaiming too much parking in Jackson. To put it another way, it's an outsider (an internet personality) telling the locals they're doing it wrong. Jackson has a highly efficient mass transit system: the base of the ski lift is right smack dab downtown.
      - eesmith 8y ago
        Umm, no? I mean, yes, Richard Florida wrote that CityLab piece, but the quote I gave at the start of this thread ("The conclusion must be that Jackson has an oversupply of parking.") is from the report that Florida cites, that is, "Quantified Parking: Comprehensive Parking Inventories for Five U.S. Cities", by Eric Scharnhorst, Principal Data Scientist Parkingmill. As I pointed out, it seems that Jackson is willing to rent out parking spots for housing, which suggests that they think there is too much free parking at the height of the tourist season, and not enough housing. I don't see the point of your seemingly ad hominem statements. Eg, "internet personality"? What does that mean? Wouldn't "urban studies theorist" or "best-selling author" be better descriptions? Since it wasn't Florida making the statement I quoted - it was not made by an 'internet personality' - does it make the statement more accurate? If only we could find the "Town Of Jackson Parking Garage Challenges to Success" document.

eesmith 8y ago

The report (not the summary from citylab) says: > Jackson’s plentiful parking supply was underutilized. Despite its small land area and population, millions of visitors drive through the city every year so it is plausible that Jackson needs a lot of parking. But a Jackson-commissioned parking occupancy study of the residential core and midtown areas during peak tourist season in 2017 by Kimberly-Horn found, on average, 68 percent of parking stalls were empty in the residential core, and 61 percent were vacant in the midtown area. Occupancy peaked at 43 percent for the residential core and 51 percent for midtown. These low occupancy rates could suggest that parking is overpriced in Jackson, but at the time of this study, all parking in Jackson was provided at no cost. The conclusion must be that Jackson has an oversupply of parking. I am unable to find the original study, cited as "Town Of Jackson Parking Garage Challenges to Success" from http://townofjackson.com/ http://townofjackson.com/ services/police/pr/parking-garage-challenges-success/ . EDIT: in looking around, I found this Reddit comment - https://www.reddit.com/r/JacksonHole/comments/6bpvhl/town_of_jackson_wy_is_officially_renting_parking/ https://www.reddit.com/r/JacksonHole/comments/6bpvhl/town_of... - that the town has such a housing crunch in summer that they will be renting out parking spaces as housing. That fits in with the thesis that there is too much free parking in Jackson.

kbsletten 8y ago
That's well and good, but the article linked here is still garbage because of how meaningless the idea of parking spaces/resident actually is. I'm not saying Jackson is a good place to live, but just because you can make up a stat, doesn't make it insightful. The authors of the summary in question clearly didn't try to think about the situation holistically, just chuckled to themselves about their silly number.
brudgers 8y ago
The unoccupied spaces optimize the system for time efficiency. Surplus capacity makes finding a parking space reasonably close to the destination faster. That makes reaching the destination (and searching for parking spaces) faster by reducing traffic. Parking is both spatial and temporal. That's why all those empty spaces in Jackson Wyoming don't alleviate parking woes in lower Manhattan. The spatial frequencies at which parking spaces are fungible are less than 400m. Often much less. When human preference comes into play 4m (one stall) can effect selection.
- eesmith 8y ago
  City planning should optimize for the needs of the city, and not only the time efficiency of people who want to find a parking spot. Indeed, the point of many of these "there is too much (often free) parking" pieces is that the optimization efforts have historically only considered the needs of drivers and/or design principles that were more ideological than anything based on reality.
  - brudgers 8y ago
    I agree. It's Richard Florida, not the people of Jackson Wyoming proclaiming too much parking in Jackson. To put it another way, it's an outsider (an internet personality) telling the locals they're doing it wrong. Jackson has a highly efficient mass transit system: the base of the ski lift is right smack dab downtown.
    - eesmith 8y ago
      Umm, no? I mean, yes, Richard Florida wrote that CityLab piece, but the quote I gave at the start of this thread ("The conclusion must be that Jackson has an oversupply of parking.") is from the report that Florida cites, that is, "Quantified Parking: Comprehensive Parking Inventories for Five U.S. Cities", by Eric Scharnhorst, Principal Data Scientist Parkingmill. As I pointed out, it seems that Jackson is willing to rent out parking spots for housing, which suggests that they think there is too much free parking at the height of the tourist season, and not enough housing. I don't see the point of your seemingly ad hominem statements. Eg, "internet personality"? What does that mean? Wouldn't "urban studies theorist" or "best-selling author" be better descriptions? Since it wasn't Florida making the statement I quoted - it was not made by an 'internet personality' - does it make the statement more accurate? If only we could find the "Town Of Jackson Parking Garage Challenges to Success" document.