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I feel really mixed about things like this. I absolutely appreciate the need for additional housing in urban centers, especially if it makes housing more afford

I feel really mixed about things like this. I absolutely appreciate the need for additional housing in urban centers, especially if it makes housing more affordable. However, I’m also someone who lives relatively far from an urban center with no reliable public transportation for the sake of having housing that isn’t ridiculously expensive. This means I’m required to drive into the urban center for work where parking is already expensive and difficult to find. The lot where I usually park has months long waiting lists to get a monthly pass. Again, I totally understand the rationale behind it. It’s just frustrating for those of us who have no better options in the near future.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
secabeen 8y ago
Park-and-ride is the usual solution. Can you drive in from your home to a large lot where the reliable public transit begins, and then ride from there? That can work pretty well.
- finaliteration 8y ago
  We have some of those available, but they would increase my commute time by 30 minutes both ways, and the busses can be unreliable, which means sometimes it can take an hour. It may work for some people, but unfortunately I’m not willing to give up an extra two hours of my day when I can drive in. I used to take a train, but it took 50-60 minutes, and any delay meant I missed a connection or transfer which then added even more time. As much as I want to do it and support it’s just not feasible.
  - another-cuppa 8y ago
    > I’m not willing to give up an extra two hours of my day when I can drive in. Right. But in the future you won't be able to drive in. So move closer to work, I guess.
    - Kephael 8y ago
      The self driving car will go park outside of the city.
      - mikepurvis 8y ago
        Hopefully that dream will be the self driving car bringing you to kiss-and-ride and then going home, not bringing you all the way downtown. Otherwise everyone's congestion problems just got 2x as bad (and that's before you account for the current mass transit users who may suddenly decide that personal automobile use is more attractive now that you can pay for your empty car to drive off to cheap/free parking instead of paying for a downtown spot).
        Reelin 8y ago
        What you describe would be a temporary problem - tolls for entering the city would appear out of necessity (see London for a present day example). Life would go on as before except for a bunch of now outraged self driving car owners, mass transit would still be terrible (this is the US after all), and the bickering over parking minimums, zoning, gentrification, etc would continue unaffected with no end in sight (the same as at present). Or perhaps we'd finally get our act together and build out functional mass transit, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      Or, as many do today, companies will keep much of their office space in the suburbs both because of rent prices and because it’s where most of their employees including execs want to live. I commutes into the relatively nearby city both by rail and car at one point. Wouldn’t have done it long term and probably wouldn’t again without buying a small property in the city for during the week. Added: Companies will do whatever makes business sense. But potential employees who would find commuting into a city location a nightmare is a factor. As of course is new grads who insist on a location they can get to without a car.
    - closeparen 8y ago
      Closer to work where? To a close-in suburb that doesn't want apartment buildings ruining their detached home values and neighborhood character? Or to an urban neighborhood that doesn't want to be gentrified and displaced? Without solving zoning, "move closer to work" is zero sum advice. All you can do is switch places with someone poorer than you.
  - parthdesai 8y ago
    >It may work for some people, but unfortunately I’m not willing to give up an extra two hours of my day when I can drive in. Right, and that's a convenience and you pay extra for that. People renting downtown pay more for a smaller unit compared to units not in downtown.
paulsutter 8y ago
A parking minimum is good for you, because it creates excess spaces, making prices go below market rates. Since I live downtown, I'd prefer severely limiting parking. Call it a "parking maximum", reducing congestion at commute times, as parking costs would shoot way above a market price. The fair solution is to have neither parking minimums nor maximums. Then parking is developed in proportion to expected demand, competing for space against offices and homes, neither subsidized nor penalized. Yes it would cost more than you prefer, and less than I prefer, but probably a fairer situation.
- finaliteration 8y ago
  I guess my ideal solution would be housing that’s more affordable downtown so that I and other commuters could live there. If I could eliminate my commute or make it much shorter then it would be one of the best changes in my life. Unfortunately even with my decent salary that’s not possible because housing is 3-4x more expensive than where I’m at now.
  - greglindahl 8y ago
    One thing that makes new housing downtown more expensive is parking minimums. Food for thought.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
  The naive free market analysis doesn't work here, because it's not typically possible for a real estate developer to purchase a random building and convert it to a parking structure if more parking is demanded. Even when it is possible, that kind of project ends up taking years and years to complete.
  - greglindahl 8y ago
    I didn't see a naive free market analysis in progress, but anyway, I have noticed that people build new parking structures around my urban area on a regular basis. It does take a while, but it happens.
chrisseaton 8y ago
> This means I’m required to drive into the urban center for work where parking is already expensive and difficult to find. Do you mean you literally drive into a city centre at rush hour, park there, and go into an office? It blows my mind that people are even able to do that. It actually says something perversely positive about US roads and cities that it's possible! I would not attempt to drive into the centre of a city in the UK for any reason at any time of day ever. You would not make it to your office before the day ended and when you got there you'd simply find there was no parking anyway and you'd have to go home again!
- buckminster 8y ago
  I know lots of people who commute by car into the centre of Birmingham every day. My train commute is only 30 minutes door to door, but I'd be quicker driving. Do you live in London?
- closeparen 8y ago
  That's basically everyone in all but the top ~5 cities. In a mid-sized metro area, there might be a bus system with hourly or worse frequency as a handout for the destitute. The working poor drive beaters. Even in New York's non-Manhattan boroughs, 35-75% drive.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    Hilariously enough, the working poor in Europe wish they could afford to drive beater cars.
    - mijamo 8y ago
      Mhh no they don't. Working poors in Europe have vars because they live in suburbs with bad connections and have to work far outside city centers. People without cars are mostly richer households living close to city center and working inside the city or not far around.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
TulliusCicero 8y ago
Yup, it sucks but is ultimately necessary. Having parking minimums is a big part of why there are no good alternatives much of the time, after all: why even build alternatives where abundant parking everywhere is legally mandated?
cayblood 8y ago
There is an easy solution to this that has been around for a long time. What most people do is park on the outskirts of town, where there tend to be lots of park and ride lots, then take public transit downtown. So, in your case, you drive your car until you get to the outskirts of whatever large metropolitan area you are visiting, then take public transit. When we lived in the UK, we frequently drove to a car park near the Hammersmith Station and then took the tube from there to central London.
- benatkin 8y ago
  In the San Francisco Bay Area, there is a dearth of reserved parking at the BART Park n Rides. You can show up to the Park n Ride super early and pay the daily rate for a spot, and you can get on a long waiting list (sometimes more than a year long) to purchase monthly parking (still expensive, but not as bad as daily parking). There is also likelihood of getting stuck in traffic on the way to parking lots. There's no great option, just a choice between different last-mile options with pros and cons, including driving a car, driving a motorcycle, bicycles (electric and otherwise), electric scooters and skateboards, Uber/Lyft, and shuttles (I used Emery Go Round a fair bit). All have to deal with traffic to get to the park-n-rides. The cars and busses have to go single-file in their lanes, but others can go past them. Unlike most other states, California allows motorcycles to split lanes. http://lanesplittingislegal.com/ http://lanesplittingislegal.com/ My favorites were taking the Emery-Go-Round while I was living in Emeryville, and walking two miles each way every single day while I was living in Redwood City while listening to podcasts/audiobooks.
  - Karrot_Kream 8y ago
    It's not hard to find parking in BART stations at the ends of the line. The problem is, people want to use as little public transportation as possible, so parking lots fill up in a spoke like fashion from the downtown SF area.
    - benatkin 8y ago
      If you live in the suburbs but don't live at the end of the line, it's going to be unpalatable to drive all the way to the end of the line. The gap between stations near the end of the line can be big, too. It's about 10 miles from Orinda to Concord. Orinda seemed like it would be hard to find parking. Walnut Creek wasn't bad though. Point taken though. The tone of the article seemed to be about the lifestyle of some place like Liverpool or Vallejo, which might have a decent park and ride situation (I think it would be a supercommute and traffic would be bad, so that wouldn't be a pleasant commute overall). By the way some of the hardest commuting problems to solve are couples or people who otherwise really want to live together who have jobs at different parts of the Bay Area. They could be making a combined $400K but no amount of money will make their commute reasonable. I'm surprised telepresence robots like AnyBots haven't gained more traction.
thucydidesofusa 8y ago
I'm in the same boat. To some degree, parking is less expensive than it should be because the State compels construction companies to make more than the market might demand in some instances and the price of parking is probably below what it would be absent this subsidy. As the price of parking changes to reach it's equilibrium, folks like you and I are going to see the price signals and make more-optimal decisions. We may come to find that living out in the burbs isn't the deal we thought it would be because parking in the city is expensive and we might discover better configurations - perhaps living within biking distance, riding motorcycles to work, etc.
pkulak 8y ago
Just sounds to me like the price of parking is artificial low for some reason. That garage should never have a waiting list. Is it run by morons? Is ever other garage, or is there something else going on?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

secabeen 8y ago

Park-and-ride is the usual solution. Can you drive in from your home to a large lot where the reliable public transit begins, and then ride from there? That can work pretty well.

finaliteration 8y ago
We have some of those available, but they would increase my commute time by 30 minutes both ways, and the busses can be unreliable, which means sometimes it can take an hour. It may work for some people, but unfortunately I’m not willing to give up an extra two hours of my day when I can drive in. I used to take a train, but it took 50-60 minutes, and any delay meant I missed a connection or transfer which then added even more time. As much as I want to do it and support it’s just not feasible.
- another-cuppa 8y ago
  > I’m not willing to give up an extra two hours of my day when I can drive in. Right. But in the future you won't be able to drive in. So move closer to work, I guess.
  - Kephael 8y ago
    The self driving car will go park outside of the city.
    - mikepurvis 8y ago
      Hopefully that dream will be the self driving car bringing you to kiss-and-ride and then going home, not bringing you all the way downtown. Otherwise everyone's congestion problems just got 2x as bad (and that's before you account for the current mass transit users who may suddenly decide that personal automobile use is more attractive now that you can pay for your empty car to drive off to cheap/free parking instead of paying for a downtown spot).
      - Reelin 8y ago
        What you describe would be a temporary problem - tolls for entering the city would appear out of necessity (see London for a present day example). Life would go on as before except for a bunch of now outraged self driving car owners, mass transit would still be terrible (this is the US after all), and the bickering over parking minimums, zoning, gentrification, etc would continue unaffected with no end in sight (the same as at present). Or perhaps we'd finally get our act together and build out functional mass transit, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    Or, as many do today, companies will keep much of their office space in the suburbs both because of rent prices and because it’s where most of their employees including execs want to live. I commutes into the relatively nearby city both by rail and car at one point. Wouldn’t have done it long term and probably wouldn’t again without buying a small property in the city for during the week. Added: Companies will do whatever makes business sense. But potential employees who would find commuting into a city location a nightmare is a factor. As of course is new grads who insist on a location they can get to without a car.
  - closeparen 8y ago
    Closer to work where? To a close-in suburb that doesn't want apartment buildings ruining their detached home values and neighborhood character? Or to an urban neighborhood that doesn't want to be gentrified and displaced? Without solving zoning, "move closer to work" is zero sum advice. All you can do is switch places with someone poorer than you.
- parthdesai 8y ago
  >It may work for some people, but unfortunately I’m not willing to give up an extra two hours of my day when I can drive in. Right, and that's a convenience and you pay extra for that. People renting downtown pay more for a smaller unit compared to units not in downtown.

paulsutter 8y ago

A parking minimum is good for you, because it creates excess spaces, making prices go below market rates. Since I live downtown, I'd prefer severely limiting parking. Call it a "parking maximum", reducing congestion at commute times, as parking costs would shoot way above a market price. The fair solution is to have neither parking minimums nor maximums. Then parking is developed in proportion to expected demand, competing for space against offices and homes, neither subsidized nor penalized. Yes it would cost more than you prefer, and less than I prefer, but probably a fairer situation.

finaliteration 8y ago
I guess my ideal solution would be housing that’s more affordable downtown so that I and other commuters could live there. If I could eliminate my commute or make it much shorter then it would be one of the best changes in my life. Unfortunately even with my decent salary that’s not possible because housing is 3-4x more expensive than where I’m at now.
- greglindahl 8y ago
  One thing that makes new housing downtown more expensive is parking minimums. Food for thought.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
The naive free market analysis doesn't work here, because it's not typically possible for a real estate developer to purchase a random building and convert it to a parking structure if more parking is demanded. Even when it is possible, that kind of project ends up taking years and years to complete.
- greglindahl 8y ago
  I didn't see a naive free market analysis in progress, but anyway, I have noticed that people build new parking structures around my urban area on a regular basis. It does take a while, but it happens.

chrisseaton 8y ago

> This means I’m required to drive into the urban center for work where parking is already expensive and difficult to find. Do you mean you literally drive into a city centre at rush hour, park there, and go into an office? It blows my mind that people are even able to do that. It actually says something perversely positive about US roads and cities that it's possible! I would not attempt to drive into the centre of a city in the UK for any reason at any time of day ever. You would not make it to your office before the day ended and when you got there you'd simply find there was no parking anyway and you'd have to go home again!

buckminster 8y ago
I know lots of people who commute by car into the centre of Birmingham every day. My train commute is only 30 minutes door to door, but I'd be quicker driving. Do you live in London?
closeparen 8y ago
That's basically everyone in all but the top ~5 cities. In a mid-sized metro area, there might be a bus system with hourly or worse frequency as a handout for the destitute. The working poor drive beaters. Even in New York's non-Manhattan boroughs, 35-75% drive.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Hilariously enough, the working poor in Europe wish they could afford to drive beater cars.
  - mijamo 8y ago
    Mhh no they don't. Working poors in Europe have vars because they live in suburbs with bad connections and have to work far outside city centers. People without cars are mostly richer households living close to city center and working inside the city or not far around.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

TulliusCicero 8y ago

Yup, it sucks but is ultimately necessary. Having parking minimums is a big part of why there are no good alternatives much of the time, after all: why even build alternatives where abundant parking everywhere is legally mandated?

cayblood 8y ago

There is an easy solution to this that has been around for a long time. What most people do is park on the outskirts of town, where there tend to be lots of park and ride lots, then take public transit downtown. So, in your case, you drive your car until you get to the outskirts of whatever large metropolitan area you are visiting, then take public transit. When we lived in the UK, we frequently drove to a car park near the Hammersmith Station and then took the tube from there to central London.

benatkin 8y ago
In the San Francisco Bay Area, there is a dearth of reserved parking at the BART Park n Rides. You can show up to the Park n Ride super early and pay the daily rate for a spot, and you can get on a long waiting list (sometimes more than a year long) to purchase monthly parking (still expensive, but not as bad as daily parking). There is also likelihood of getting stuck in traffic on the way to parking lots. There's no great option, just a choice between different last-mile options with pros and cons, including driving a car, driving a motorcycle, bicycles (electric and otherwise), electric scooters and skateboards, Uber/Lyft, and shuttles (I used Emery Go Round a fair bit). All have to deal with traffic to get to the park-n-rides. The cars and busses have to go single-file in their lanes, but others can go past them. Unlike most other states, California allows motorcycles to split lanes. http://lanesplittingislegal.com/ http://lanesplittingislegal.com/ My favorites were taking the Emery-Go-Round while I was living in Emeryville, and walking two miles each way every single day while I was living in Redwood City while listening to podcasts/audiobooks.
- Karrot_Kream 8y ago
  It's not hard to find parking in BART stations at the ends of the line. The problem is, people want to use as little public transportation as possible, so parking lots fill up in a spoke like fashion from the downtown SF area.
  - benatkin 8y ago
    If you live in the suburbs but don't live at the end of the line, it's going to be unpalatable to drive all the way to the end of the line. The gap between stations near the end of the line can be big, too. It's about 10 miles from Orinda to Concord. Orinda seemed like it would be hard to find parking. Walnut Creek wasn't bad though. Point taken though. The tone of the article seemed to be about the lifestyle of some place like Liverpool or Vallejo, which might have a decent park and ride situation (I think it would be a supercommute and traffic would be bad, so that wouldn't be a pleasant commute overall). By the way some of the hardest commuting problems to solve are couples or people who otherwise really want to live together who have jobs at different parts of the Bay Area. They could be making a combined $400K but no amount of money will make their commute reasonable. I'm surprised telepresence robots like AnyBots haven't gained more traction.

thucydidesofusa 8y ago

I'm in the same boat. To some degree, parking is less expensive than it should be because the State compels construction companies to make more than the market might demand in some instances and the price of parking is probably below what it would be absent this subsidy. As the price of parking changes to reach it's equilibrium, folks like you and I are going to see the price signals and make more-optimal decisions. We may come to find that living out in the burbs isn't the deal we thought it would be because parking in the city is expensive and we might discover better configurations - perhaps living within biking distance, riding motorcycles to work, etc.

pkulak 8y ago

Just sounds to me like the price of parking is artificial low for some reason. That garage should never have a waiting list. Is it run by morons? Is ever other garage, or is there something else going on?