8 ms·

Its amazing to me how cheap these changes are, and how much people love them after they are implemented. You go to a neighborhood meeting in the US and all you

by tmh79 7y ago

Its amazing to me how cheap these changes are, and how much people love them after they are implemented. You go to a neighborhood meeting in the US and all you hear about is "loss of parking", "traffic", but when you remove the cars, everyone loves it.

mxscho 7y ago
I never knew loss of parking was even a thing in the US. I can't imagine it being as bad as within European cities where most of the streets (and adjacent buildings) have been built before cars were a thing. Probably one of the main reasons why alternatives to cars are well-received is that cars have never been an option anyways, especially in historic districts. Big cars are another dimension of this problem. American cars are usually larger because they don't have these types of issues. You won't see a majority of people driving pickup trucks in Europe. Where I live, the two biggest fears about non-car transportation is that it's a) inconvenient or stressful and full of delays (for public transport) or b) too dangerous (for stuff like electric scooters).
- _delirium 7y ago
  It depends on the city, but there's a weird entitlement in some big, dense American cities from people who feel they have an inherent right to store their car for free or very cheap on public land, when that land is in the middle of a dense city with a ton of competing uses for public land (bike lanes, sidewalks, pickup/delivery zones, street trees, bus lanes, heck even traffic lanes). In the densest cities, these also tend to be more affluent people. Oddly, though, also usually the kind of affluent people who consider themselves environmentalist and liberal. At least that's true in NYC and DC, two cities with substantial neighborhood pushback against reallocating street parking to other uses, happening in well-off neighborhoods that are full of signs promoting liberal causes (Upper West Side NYC, Dupont Circle DC, etc.). I can see it in lower-density, car-dependent areas, where you arguably need somewhere to park, and poorer residents of apartment buildings without their own off-street parking might be impacted. But the cognitive dissonance around being an affluent liberal in Manhattan and suing to stop a bike lane [1] because you don't want to lose free street parking in Manhattan is absurd. Of course, they're still environmentalist because they support banning straws. [1] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/07/30/breaking-upper-west-side-nimbys-sue-city-over-central-park-west-bike-lane/ https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/07/30/breaking-upper-west-s...
  - isostatic 7y ago
    It's crazy that Manhattan doesn't have a blanket "15 minutes only" rule for parking, no return within an hour, which gives enough time for deliveries and dropoff/pickups, but prevents garaging. The value of a typical 17 square metre parking space in Manhattan is about $400k [0]. If you want to park your car on the road, rather than paying for a commercial garage, you should be paying for that land. [0] 22.83 square miles of land in Manhattan is 78304708.32 square metres. Parallel parking space is 2.76m by 6.1m according to https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-size-of-a-standard-parking-spot https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-size-of-a-standard-parking...
- fooblitzky 7y ago
  See 35th Ave NE in Seattle.
- analog31 7y ago
  I live in a mid sized town, and a contentious issue is parking for government employees. The people who have free parking consider it to be a benefit of their jobs. There was a big hooplah in my neighborhood when a nearby government building converted to being leased from a developer, who immediately started charging for parking. Most of the employees found places to park on the nearby residential streets, annoying the residents due to the added congestion and traffic, including on a street that was already a designated bike thoroughfare. I certainly support better urban planning, and I get around town by bike whenever possible, but I'm also sympathetic to the short term disruptions that people have adapted to parking arrangements that can change overnight.
- baud147258 7y ago
  > historic districts. Thing is, historic districts don't make up most of cities, even before the post-war rebuild/new cities expansion.
ArnoVW 7y ago
There is pushback against car-impacting measures in Europe too, make no mistake. The yellow jackets in France started as a protest against increase in tax on petrol. The previous president in France, Hollande, had to roll back a toll system. It took Paris 2 years of legal battles to close the roads along the Seine. The major difference, compared witg the US, is that at least in an urban setting, in Europe you can imagine other alternatives. The problem of the US is that outside of major cities, the entire country was designed and built on the premise of cheap, individual transportation. Everyone has his own little house with a little garden. No town centres. This lack of density means that public transport or bikes will never be able to be able to provide a serious alternative to the automobile, and so people will never given them up.
- simias 7y ago
  I don't know how it is in the USA but in France (and I suspect most old European cities) the richer people who can afford to live in the city center are generally in favor of removing cars because they either don't have a car or can afford to pay for a private parking spot while people who live in the suburbs and take their cars to work every day have to suffer the consequences. So you end up with this "class warfare" type situation. Of course since in practice the richer people who live in the city centers are also those who elect the mayors things still eventually move forward in the direction of fewer cars. I suspect that it might be different in the USA because I've always heard that things worked the other way around here: rich people live in wealthy suburbs and go everywhere by car while poor people stay stuck in the city centers.
  - newaccoutnas 7y ago
    I take your point but you can't also discount the air quality in cities being quite a big factor as to becoming less dependent on cars. LEV's (Low Emission Vehicles) are taxed less, for example (although the infrastructure is still lacking, perhaps CAV's (Connected Autonomous Vehicles) may one day solve that as parking could be placed further away and there may be more of a 'sharing' system in place, such that you don't really own a car, just dial one up like an Uber)
  - 7y ago
tosh 7y ago
In Vienna in 2010 the city decided to transform a huge shopping street into a pedestrian area. There was a lot of fuss and heated discussions. Media reported on it for months. Some people feared the proposed change will lead to fewer customers and this in turn will lead to stores having to close. Public opinion was split but leaning towards the transformation. One segment of the shopping street was kept a street as compromise iirc. Fast forward to 2019 and people love it. Also the stores are thriving. Now the part that was kept as street feels odd. Change is difficult. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariahilfer_Stra%C3%9Fe#Mariahilfer_Stra%C3%9Fe_neu https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariahilfer_Stra%C3%9Fe#Mariah...
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  But are they the same stores? It's probably fine for the landlords, but if you're leasing storespace and selling bulk/heavy goods, or something so specialized that people from afar drive to you, you're going to have trouble. If you're running a restaurant or cafe, you're in a great situation. It's a solvable issue, but it may be ignored.
  - mxscho 7y ago
    I think the ideal solution is to migrate business which depend on transportation into commercial areas like it has been done in the US from the beginning (because everything could be planned from scratch without "technical debt"). Of course it is hard to convince stores to move out of the historic districts of major towns into these kind of areas, but it actually makes sense for them if they're combined with other businesses and people have to spend less time travelling around to get everything done. I have seen it being done like that here in Europe. The biggest argument against that around here is that eventually, all stores want to move to these new business areas which causes the town's center to lose attractiveness. That's why it's usually difficult for city administrations to decide about the locations of individual businesses.
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      I agree. But migration can be difficult when your restaurant supply store is on a 20 year lease. There’s a store near me that sells just hockey goalie equipment. Moving to pedestrian-only would be a net negative for them since most of their business isn’t local foot traffic.
spodek 7y ago
It happened with smoking. The pattern will repeat with flying, decreasing population growth, and moving the economy from producing so much disposable stuff. But we're still in the stage where everyone thinks of what they'll miss, not what they'll gain.

by tmh79 7y ago

mxscho 7y ago

I never knew loss of parking was even a thing in the US. I can't imagine it being as bad as within European cities where most of the streets (and adjacent buildings) have been built before cars were a thing. Probably one of the main reasons why alternatives to cars are well-received is that cars have never been an option anyways, especially in historic districts. Big cars are another dimension of this problem. American cars are usually larger because they don't have these types of issues. You won't see a majority of people driving pickup trucks in Europe. Where I live, the two biggest fears about non-car transportation is that it's a) inconvenient or stressful and full of delays (for public transport) or b) too dangerous (for stuff like electric scooters).

_delirium 7y ago
It depends on the city, but there's a weird entitlement in some big, dense American cities from people who feel they have an inherent right to store their car for free or very cheap on public land, when that land is in the middle of a dense city with a ton of competing uses for public land (bike lanes, sidewalks, pickup/delivery zones, street trees, bus lanes, heck even traffic lanes). In the densest cities, these also tend to be more affluent people. Oddly, though, also usually the kind of affluent people who consider themselves environmentalist and liberal. At least that's true in NYC and DC, two cities with substantial neighborhood pushback against reallocating street parking to other uses, happening in well-off neighborhoods that are full of signs promoting liberal causes (Upper West Side NYC, Dupont Circle DC, etc.). I can see it in lower-density, car-dependent areas, where you arguably need somewhere to park, and poorer residents of apartment buildings without their own off-street parking might be impacted. But the cognitive dissonance around being an affluent liberal in Manhattan and suing to stop a bike lane [1] because you don't want to lose free street parking in Manhattan is absurd. Of course, they're still environmentalist because they support banning straws. [1] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/07/30/breaking-upper-west-side-nimbys-sue-city-over-central-park-west-bike-lane/ https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/07/30/breaking-upper-west-s...
- isostatic 7y ago
  It's crazy that Manhattan doesn't have a blanket "15 minutes only" rule for parking, no return within an hour, which gives enough time for deliveries and dropoff/pickups, but prevents garaging. The value of a typical 17 square metre parking space in Manhattan is about $400k [0]. If you want to park your car on the road, rather than paying for a commercial garage, you should be paying for that land. [0] 22.83 square miles of land in Manhattan is 78304708.32 square metres. Parallel parking space is 2.76m by 6.1m according to https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-size-of-a-standard-parking-spot https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-size-of-a-standard-parking...
fooblitzky 7y ago
See 35th Ave NE in Seattle.
analog31 7y ago
I live in a mid sized town, and a contentious issue is parking for government employees. The people who have free parking consider it to be a benefit of their jobs. There was a big hooplah in my neighborhood when a nearby government building converted to being leased from a developer, who immediately started charging for parking. Most of the employees found places to park on the nearby residential streets, annoying the residents due to the added congestion and traffic, including on a street that was already a designated bike thoroughfare. I certainly support better urban planning, and I get around town by bike whenever possible, but I'm also sympathetic to the short term disruptions that people have adapted to parking arrangements that can change overnight.
baud147258 7y ago
> historic districts. Thing is, historic districts don't make up most of cities, even before the post-war rebuild/new cities expansion.

ArnoVW 7y ago

There is pushback against car-impacting measures in Europe too, make no mistake. The yellow jackets in France started as a protest against increase in tax on petrol. The previous president in France, Hollande, had to roll back a toll system. It took Paris 2 years of legal battles to close the roads along the Seine. The major difference, compared witg the US, is that at least in an urban setting, in Europe you can imagine other alternatives. The problem of the US is that outside of major cities, the entire country was designed and built on the premise of cheap, individual transportation. Everyone has his own little house with a little garden. No town centres. This lack of density means that public transport or bikes will never be able to be able to provide a serious alternative to the automobile, and so people will never given them up.

simias 7y ago
I don't know how it is in the USA but in France (and I suspect most old European cities) the richer people who can afford to live in the city center are generally in favor of removing cars because they either don't have a car or can afford to pay for a private parking spot while people who live in the suburbs and take their cars to work every day have to suffer the consequences. So you end up with this "class warfare" type situation. Of course since in practice the richer people who live in the city centers are also those who elect the mayors things still eventually move forward in the direction of fewer cars. I suspect that it might be different in the USA because I've always heard that things worked the other way around here: rich people live in wealthy suburbs and go everywhere by car while poor people stay stuck in the city centers.
- newaccoutnas 7y ago
  I take your point but you can't also discount the air quality in cities being quite a big factor as to becoming less dependent on cars. LEV's (Low Emission Vehicles) are taxed less, for example (although the infrastructure is still lacking, perhaps CAV's (Connected Autonomous Vehicles) may one day solve that as parking could be placed further away and there may be more of a 'sharing' system in place, such that you don't really own a car, just dial one up like an Uber)
- 7y ago

tosh 7y ago

In Vienna in 2010 the city decided to transform a huge shopping street into a pedestrian area. There was a lot of fuss and heated discussions. Media reported on it for months. Some people feared the proposed change will lead to fewer customers and this in turn will lead to stores having to close. Public opinion was split but leaning towards the transformation. One segment of the shopping street was kept a street as compromise iirc. Fast forward to 2019 and people love it. Also the stores are thriving. Now the part that was kept as street feels odd. Change is difficult. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariahilfer_Stra%C3%9Fe#Mariahilfer_Stra%C3%9Fe_neu https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariahilfer_Stra%C3%9Fe#Mariah...

Scoundreller 7y ago
But are they the same stores? It's probably fine for the landlords, but if you're leasing storespace and selling bulk/heavy goods, or something so specialized that people from afar drive to you, you're going to have trouble. If you're running a restaurant or cafe, you're in a great situation. It's a solvable issue, but it may be ignored.
- mxscho 7y ago
  I think the ideal solution is to migrate business which depend on transportation into commercial areas like it has been done in the US from the beginning (because everything could be planned from scratch without "technical debt"). Of course it is hard to convince stores to move out of the historic districts of major towns into these kind of areas, but it actually makes sense for them if they're combined with other businesses and people have to spend less time travelling around to get everything done. I have seen it being done like that here in Europe. The biggest argument against that around here is that eventually, all stores want to move to these new business areas which causes the town's center to lose attractiveness. That's why it's usually difficult for city administrations to decide about the locations of individual businesses.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    I agree. But migration can be difficult when your restaurant supply store is on a 20 year lease. There’s a store near me that sells just hockey goalie equipment. Moving to pedestrian-only would be a net negative for them since most of their business isn’t local foot traffic.

spodek 7y ago

It happened with smoking. The pattern will repeat with flying, decreasing population growth, and moving the economy from producing so much disposable stuff. But we're still in the stage where everyone thinks of what they'll miss, not what they'll gain.