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It's a fix but a costly one. An underground car spot costs in the tens of thousands and so this ends up boosting the price of housing in addition to making cons

It's a fix but a costly one. An underground car spot costs in the tens of thousands and so this ends up boosting the price of housing in addition to making construction more complex and time consuming. As well there's the environmental impact. Concrete creates a lot of CO2 and we actually need to use less of it going forward.

908B64B197 6y ago
Issue is, cars are incredibly convenient. Need to get somewhere in the suburbs? Carry large items? Go in the nature for the weekend? Any route that's not been anticipated by the central-public-transport-planning-committee is probably way better done with a car latency-wise. Above a certain income threshold, it'll be really hard to convince people to ditch their car completely. You might get away with reducing car footprint from one per adult to one per household. Any dense development should have some sort of underground parking planned for it. Then it makes it much easier to get rid of on-street parking and convert the space into safe cycling infrastructure.
- Tiktaalik 6y ago
  It's no real argument that cars will always win the day on the edge cases, though the real question is whether we should be designing our cities to accomodate the edge cases for the majority cases. The majority of transportation uses are much more mundane and can be well served by active transportation and public transportation. For example creating a bus route to the base of the mountain so that hikers and snowshoers can access the wilderness is a big win for the public at large, but nonetheless there will always be a group of enthusiasts that want go on a further flung mountain hike, and they'll need to use a car to get there. Doesn't mean it wasn't a good idea to create the infrastructure that accommodates the bigger group. Building big expensive concrete car lots, assuming everyone has a car, is an example of building for the edge case. In Vancouver, a city that has done not a bad job of building protected bike lanes, there's data out now to support that the parking lots that it has mandated in new apartment buildings are in fact overbuilt, under utilized and part vacant!
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    > whether we should be designing our cities to accomodate the edge cases for the majority cases. Edge cases will always need to be accommodated. That's one of the foundation of engineering and good design. > In Vancouver, a city that has done not a bad job of building protected bike lanes, there's data out now to support that the parking lots that it has mandated in new apartment buildings are in fact overbuilt, under utilized and part vacant! In a city that's famous for having real estate sold for investment purposes and not actually occupied? Shocking!

908B64B197 6y ago

Issue is, cars are incredibly convenient. Need to get somewhere in the suburbs? Carry large items? Go in the nature for the weekend? Any route that's not been anticipated by the central-public-transport-planning-committee is probably way better done with a car latency-wise. Above a certain income threshold, it'll be really hard to convince people to ditch their car completely. You might get away with reducing car footprint from one per adult to one per household. Any dense development should have some sort of underground parking planned for it. Then it makes it much easier to get rid of on-street parking and convert the space into safe cycling infrastructure.

Tiktaalik 6y ago
It's no real argument that cars will always win the day on the edge cases, though the real question is whether we should be designing our cities to accomodate the edge cases for the majority cases. The majority of transportation uses are much more mundane and can be well served by active transportation and public transportation. For example creating a bus route to the base of the mountain so that hikers and snowshoers can access the wilderness is a big win for the public at large, but nonetheless there will always be a group of enthusiasts that want go on a further flung mountain hike, and they'll need to use a car to get there. Doesn't mean it wasn't a good idea to create the infrastructure that accommodates the bigger group. Building big expensive concrete car lots, assuming everyone has a car, is an example of building for the edge case. In Vancouver, a city that has done not a bad job of building protected bike lanes, there's data out now to support that the parking lots that it has mandated in new apartment buildings are in fact overbuilt, under utilized and part vacant!
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  > whether we should be designing our cities to accomodate the edge cases for the majority cases. Edge cases will always need to be accommodated. That's one of the foundation of engineering and good design. > In Vancouver, a city that has done not a bad job of building protected bike lanes, there's data out now to support that the parking lots that it has mandated in new apartment buildings are in fact overbuilt, under utilized and part vacant! In a city that's famous for having real estate sold for investment purposes and not actually occupied? Shocking!