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Free Parking Is Killing Cities
- dredmorbius 5y agohttps://archive.is/hm9nT https://archive.is/hm9nT
- happytiger 5y agoI normally go out of my way to avoid anything that goes to this site out of protest for their horrid paywall. Thank you.
- noasaservice 5y agoWith firefox, look up the plugin "Bypass Paywalls Clean". That'll deal with the bulk of news sites' garbage paywalls.
- asdff 5y agoWhat's killing American cities is a lack of an ability to construct any beneficial infrastructure at all without litigious NIMBYs turning out in enough droves to outright kill or dilute all utility out of a given project. The free parking is just a side effect.
- notsureaboutpg 5y agoAnd in a way this is one of the negatives of too much democracy
- smitty1e 5y ago'Beneficial'. Therein lies the rub.
- avianlyric 5y agoOnly true if you ignore the history of American zoning laws, and Americas obsession with the car. Current zoning laws in most of the US make it pretty much impossible to build anything except suburbs, attached to ginormous parking lots you call cities, by massive highways. It’s not hard to see why building better public infrastructure is so difficult when the current layout of most American cities means it’s difficult to even walk between shops on the same road, so public transport can’t move people between pedestrian hubs. Changing that fundamental issue with American cities would require people to realise that current approach (which they grew up with, and was touted as the future for most of their lives) is broken and needs to change. As much as it needs to change, I can understand why people have a lot of difficulty accepting that.
- ericmay 5y agoGreat point and I would actually further emphasize the car aspect of this. Houston for example doesn’t have zoning restrictions like other suburban cities and yet still chose sprawl. It sucks because we are just sleepwalking through this. Everyone takes it for granted that energy will be cheap and plentiful and that we can always just spread further out or build a bigger highway.
- modriano 5y agoIt's much less than the full picture to say Houston doesn't have zoning restrictions. Technically there are no rules called "zoning restrictions" there, but they have complex ordinances that produce very similar effects. [0] [0] https://youtu.be/TaU1UH_3B5kl https://youtu.be/TaU1UH_3B5kl
- ericmay 5y agoSure but even in the absence of such ordinances they would still choose sprawl. The law is certainly not helping across the country (zoning, etc.) but the culprit is cars and infrastructure dollars going to roads and highways. If I were dictator I would stop all new road construction for 50 years and then review after that. The issue is that we have extraordinarily cheap energy so of course people are going to buy cars. Oh and gotta keep the domestic car manufacturing industry alive in case we need to build tanks. Nobody has been paying the price for global warming either - so cars are subsidized big time in that way too.
- mkr-hn 5y agoI don't see the distinction. Zoning laws are NIMBYism encoded in policy.
- snomad 5y agoThat is a pretty broad brush. Would you be ok with a strip club and liquor store next to a elementary school? I wouldn't, and appreciate zoning laws for that reason. Simply blaming NIMYism feels like lazy analysis. Every community is different.. how, why, and where things are built is far too complex to explain w/one word.
- jl2718 5y ago‘NIMBY’ is usually in reference to low-income housing projects. I think you would get a lot of ‘YIMBY’ in response to a reasonably well-isolated parking development if it came with removing parked cars from the road.
- throwoutway 5y agoIt sounds like you have a personal anecdote that you have seen?
- kkoncevicius 5y ago> Some other parking reform efforts are trying to take cars more fully out of the equation. In car-heavy Phoenix, real estate developers are building a 17-acre neighborhood called Culdesac Tempe that won’t have any parking, period. (Residents and visitors will have to bike or take public transit.) Isn't this focused on the young, single, and healthy? I can't imagine having multiple children and living with no car. You cannot bike your 3 kids to schools and hospitals during rainy autumn days. The bigger part of the proposal actually read like it has a big blind zone about the needs of families - having a family or children weren't even mentioned. EDIT to address some repeating replies: - Some form of "school" starts at around 2-3 y/o. 2-3 year olds cannot take a bus. - There is winter, heavy rains, and wind. In most places you cannot rely on a bike all the time. - In most cities people work far from home, and the early schools the kids go to are also far away. A young family with two 2-5 y/o children will not be able to rely on a bus and a bike, unless they live in some expensive area where everything is nearby and are lucky to have jobs at the same place.
- klipt 5y agoIn some areas your children can take school buses to school, no?
- PostThisTooFast 5y agoYou shouldn't have to drive your kids to school. WTF? Why don't they take the school bus?
- CJefferson 5y agoMy family, and many families near where I grew up, didn't have cars. It does plan you build with this in mind -- in the UK it is assumed kids will walk to school, or take a free bus (which is provided by the school). Most schools strongly discourage parents from driving to school, as it causes road blockages and the chance of accidents near the school entrance.
- kkoncevicius 5y agoI lumped nurseries, kindergartens, and pre-schools under "school". 2-5 year olds will not walk and will not take buses. Also if there is a nursery nearby it would probably have long waiting lines just to get a spot for your child, so in most cities it's essential to be able to choose from at least 4-mile radius.
- jimnotgym 5y agoIn the UK you are very unlikely to be able to park anywhere in any city centre without paying. We often have these out-of-town shopping areas that have big grocery supermarkets, furniture and DIY stores, they might be free. High Street parking may be free for 20 or 30 minutes.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago> High Street parking may be free for 20 or 30 minutes. There's a surprising amount of free street parking in San Francisco, although it's often possible to see a meter maid waiting patiently on the sidewalk for the street to go into "no parking" mode, at which point everyone is ticketed immediately.
- HPsquared 5y agoWhat ends up happening is, people in cars just avoid the city centre (who are usually doing several other measures to repel cars), and end up going to the out-of-town places instead. This fuels a proliferation of sprawl, of course.
- the-dude 5y agoMy city has large parking lots just outside the city center, great public transport and the city is actually walkable. The city council limits the sprawl by ... not allowing it(sic). We welcome many foreign visitors (mostly German) every weekend and they seem to have no problems with it.
- PostThisTooFast 5y agoThis anti-car shit is already way beyond tiresome, especially from some L.A douche. L.A. is a COUNTY, not a city. It's not fucking Amsterdam; it's a sprawling geographic region with no public transportation to speak of. Therefore it's time to stop whining that people in such places have cars, and stop pretending that everyone else is somehow "paying" for them. Car owners pay and pay and pay. You can spot the developer shills in any urban-living-related forum; they're the ones claiming that the elimination of parking requirements will allow people to ride their bikes to the grocery store in the rain and snow. Or to carry 30 bags of dirt on their bikes. Or lumber. Or a table saw. A dresser too. YAAAWWWWWNNNNN
- occz 5y ago> This anti-car shit is already way beyond tiresome, especially from some L.A douche. L.A. is a COUNTY, not a city. It's not fucking Amsterdam; it's a sprawling geographic region with no public transportation to speak of. Build some, then. How do you think Amsterdam got where they did? >Therefore it's time to stop whining that people in such places have cars, and stop pretending that everyone else is somehow "paying" for them. Car owners pay and pay and pay. - Taxes on cars do not cover the cost of roads - Taxes on cars do not cover the increased development cost caused by parking minimums, single family zoning and other complete non-sense zoning rules - Taxes on cars definitely do not pay for the negative externalities they have on the climate - Taxes on cars do not pay for the large amount of deaths they cause Of course, given what the U.S is today, actually making car ownership pay for what it costs would be unfeasible, since this would likely further drive low class people into ruination - which is why it's important to start developing actual alternatives that they can use - bicycle infrastructure, walkable urban environments and public transportation. > You can spot the developer shills in any urban-living-related forum; they're the ones claiming that the elimination of parking requirements will allow people to ride their bikes to the grocery store in the rain and snow. Or to carry 30 bags of dirt on their bikes. Or lumber. Or a table saw. A dresser too. Yes, clearly this is every single trip that anyone could ever consider making. Hence the only conclusion is that every person in the world must have a car. Except that is not true, and there is evidence against it out in the world. I move around the world using walking, bicycling and public transportation. I can do this because I do not live in the U.S, where such a lifestyle would be impossible. As for how I tackle the challenges you listed in your examples: - Groceries: I used to buy my groceries using public transportation, but I have now transitioned to a conbination of getting my groceries delivered and walking 2 minutes to my local supermarket - 30 bags of dirt, lumber, table saw: I rarely have the use-case to transport what I assume is building materials, but should I need to do so, I would likely have it delivered (which costs less than owning a car). This is what I did when I bought lumber for my patio, at least. - Dresser: The last time I transported something like this, I used an uber-style service and had it delivered door-to-door very cheaply. We can easily conclude that car ownership is not necessary, even when listing the most convoluted use-cases that you did.
- kwhitefoot 5y agoHere in Norway, and also in the UK, free parking is killing cities too but the free parking in question isn't in the cities, it is in out of town shopping centres. People go there instead of to the cities partly because they will not have to pay to park and not have to rush back to the car when the ticket runs out.
- esarbe 5y agoCars are killing cities.
- rdtwo 5y agoCovid and extreme liberalism killed mine.
- tomohawk 5y agoThere's a cycle that a lot of people go through when they graduate. They've been told or are predisposed to the idea that cities are the place to be. And they can be like a campus - lots of places to meet others, etc. So they happily move to the city. But then something happens. They get married and realize the schools there suck and are completely unaccountable to meddling from parents. So they have to move to find a decent school. Or, they or their spouse or friend gets mugged, or their house gets burgled, or any number of other crimes that are prevalent in cities run by a single political party. So, they move to escape the crime. If people have the means to move, they will do so to get out from under high crime, high tax, low service regimes.
- rdtwo 5y agoCities are like companies the big ones are ineffective at management or providing services. So when you need city services you go to a smaller city to actually get them.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoArticle could also read "free parking is a thing that no one is making money off of so let's ban it". You have to realize a business oriented magazine and staff have a silo of things they can write about and think about. If it doesn't concern profits then bloomberg is not interested.
- lamontcg 5y agoYeah this sounds to me like a tax that will fall on some of the poorest workers in the city core. If we had the public transportation infrastructure first this would be fine. Just extracting money from people doesn't seem to work as a forcing function though in this country for improvement, it just seems to be a regressive flat tax.
- LordDragonfang 5y agoThe poorest workers generally can't afford cars and rely on public transit, which any tax on parking should fund.
- guilhas 5y agoPaid parking is killing cities. Paid parking incentivises development investors to invest in an outdated infrastructure that does not produce anything, takes a lot of city centre space, while extorting productive people In Portugal most parking is free as an extension of the businesses, that the owners have to consider. You can just leave home and not think about it while going about your business In the UK most parking is paid, and there are hundreds of companies to manage parking lots, check the cars, to issue fines, to go after people that don't pay, a 60£ fine that is now 600£ because you have to pay the salary of the goons putting a wheel lock in your car, everyone in UK has paid a car park fine, it is a whole business in itself that is basically just a capitalist cancer
- spixy 5y agoSeems like a bad implementation. In my city (Czechia) most of the parking lots are owned by the city, so it is fined by the city police. Cars are checked by cameras installed on the side of police cars, and in city centre its fully automated because there are cameras reading plates on each entrance. No wheel locks unless you are very bad offender.
- hytdstd 5y agoAre you saying that parking spaces do not produce value? Just from the fact that people voluntarily pay for it, would suggest that this is not the case. Personally, I think it's good for parking to be handled by the free market and not the government.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]