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>And it's important to understand how inefficient this is to need a car to cross the street; you need parking space on this side, parking space on the other sid

>And it's important to understand how inefficient this is to need a car to cross the street; you need parking space on this side, parking space on the other side, you need to get on and off the stroad, causing wear, interfering with and slowing down the other traffic, which is mostly through traffic that's not interested at all in your house or that Korean market. It's unbelievably inefficient. But is this inefficiency and resultant drag on prosperity balanced out by making the market more efficient to access for people up and down the road? If he had to cross the tracks to get to the market you could basically come up with the same list of gripes. Naive analysis like that is not useful.

mcv 5y ago
But is it actually more efficient for others to access that market? The market needs a massive parking lot to accommodate those cars, which means they need a lot of ground. That too is inefficient. I've seen a comparison of two commercial blocks close together; one was old, had a row of old shops along the street and hadn't really been changed much since the 1920s or so. The other was new, modern, had a parking lot serving a single fast-food restaurant. But that meant it had only a single restaurant, and that single restaurant just didn't make anywhere near as much money as that row of old shops. Elsewhere in this discussion someone pointed out that shops owners often resist attempts to turn their street into a pedestrian-only area, because they fear it will drive away their customers, but every time it turns out to be a boost to those shops. Turns out the car isn't actually that important. You can save a lot of wasted space and money by making shops more accessible to other forms of traffic.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  > But is it actually more efficient for others to access that market? The market needs a massive parking lot to accommodate those cars.... See my point about the train. Sure people who could formerly just walk across the street or tracks lose but those pieces of infrastructure make the destination far more accessible. You turn one person's 1min trip into a 15min trip but you also turn hours long trips into 15-25min trips. Obviously rail is higher density (and much higher cost) but it's farcical to pretend like the road has no net benefit when clearly it allows more access to the attractive destination (market in this case) even if a few people's access is degraded. >Elsewhere in this discussion someone pointed out that shops owners often resist attempts to turn their street into a pedestrian-only area, because they fear it will drive away their customers, but every time it turns out to be a boost to those shops. Perhaps because the changes only ever get implemented where they actually make sense. Where I live people raised the walk-ability issue twice in recent memory. It got implemented where it obviously made sense (near downtown) and didn't where it didn't (a strip mall area farther away). > I've seen a comparison of two commercial blocks close together; one was old, had a row of old shops along the street and hadn't really been changed much since the 1920s or so. The other was new, modern, had a parking lot serving a single fast-food restaurant. But that meant it had only a single restaurant, and that single restaurant just didn't make anywhere near as much money as that row of old shops. This means nothing without knowing the underlying economic circumstances, Buffalo NY vs NYC and all that.
  - mcv 5y ago
    Of course the road has a benefit, as does the train. But this gets to the central issue: the train doesn't stop at every shop; it stops only at the station. It gets you very efficiently to the station, and from there you walk to the shop, and there are generally multiple shops at easy walking distance near that station. The road could do that too, but instead, it stops independently at every shop, while simultaneously also trying to be the thoroughfare that gets people from far away. And it's that combination that makes it a lot more complicated and more dangerous. And inefficient. Centralise the stops, and put the stops closer together so you can walk there.
TulliusCicero 5y ago
> But is this inefficiency and resultant drag on prosperity balanced out by making the market more efficient to access for people up and down the road? Nobody's saying we shouldn't have fast roads that are good for cars, just that they shouldn't be the same thing as where people go to shop. Stroads are the compromise of essentially putting businesses along the freeway. > If he had to cross the tracks to get to the market you could basically come up with the same list of gripes. No, this is incorrect. There was actually a housing development I was interested in in Munich with exactly the setup you're talking about: the apartment buildings were on one side of the tracks and directly adjacent to said tracks and the train station, with two grocery stores on the other side. I would go there with my son occasionally to shop, and he and I would both easily cross under said tracks, because there was an underpass, and it's MUCH easier and cheaper to build a ped/bike underpass for two lanes of tracks than a 6+ car lane road. Here it is on Google Maps if you're interested: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Siemenswerke/@48.0927833,11.5320116,158m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x479dded497c7faa7:0xfc5730c15d07a49a!8m2!3d48.0949357!4d11.533119!5m1!1e3?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/place/Siemenswerke/@48.0927833,1...
neilparikh 5y ago
> But is this inefficiency and resultant drag on prosperity balanced out by making the market more efficient to access for people up and down the road? If the current configuration really is the most efficient, why does the government feel the need to mandate it (through parking minimums)? Wouldn't private interests build it anyway? I think big parking lots can be justified sometimes. But what we now is not "build big parking lots when efficient", it's "build big parking lots everywhere, even when it's not needed".

mcv 5y ago

But is it actually more efficient for others to access that market? The market needs a massive parking lot to accommodate those cars, which means they need a lot of ground. That too is inefficient. I've seen a comparison of two commercial blocks close together; one was old, had a row of old shops along the street and hadn't really been changed much since the 1920s or so. The other was new, modern, had a parking lot serving a single fast-food restaurant. But that meant it had only a single restaurant, and that single restaurant just didn't make anywhere near as much money as that row of old shops. Elsewhere in this discussion someone pointed out that shops owners often resist attempts to turn their street into a pedestrian-only area, because they fear it will drive away their customers, but every time it turns out to be a boost to those shops. Turns out the car isn't actually that important. You can save a lot of wasted space and money by making shops more accessible to other forms of traffic.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
> But is it actually more efficient for others to access that market? The market needs a massive parking lot to accommodate those cars.... See my point about the train. Sure people who could formerly just walk across the street or tracks lose but those pieces of infrastructure make the destination far more accessible. You turn one person's 1min trip into a 15min trip but you also turn hours long trips into 15-25min trips. Obviously rail is higher density (and much higher cost) but it's farcical to pretend like the road has no net benefit when clearly it allows more access to the attractive destination (market in this case) even if a few people's access is degraded. >Elsewhere in this discussion someone pointed out that shops owners often resist attempts to turn their street into a pedestrian-only area, because they fear it will drive away their customers, but every time it turns out to be a boost to those shops. Perhaps because the changes only ever get implemented where they actually make sense. Where I live people raised the walk-ability issue twice in recent memory. It got implemented where it obviously made sense (near downtown) and didn't where it didn't (a strip mall area farther away). > I've seen a comparison of two commercial blocks close together; one was old, had a row of old shops along the street and hadn't really been changed much since the 1920s or so. The other was new, modern, had a parking lot serving a single fast-food restaurant. But that meant it had only a single restaurant, and that single restaurant just didn't make anywhere near as much money as that row of old shops. This means nothing without knowing the underlying economic circumstances, Buffalo NY vs NYC and all that.
- mcv 5y ago
  Of course the road has a benefit, as does the train. But this gets to the central issue: the train doesn't stop at every shop; it stops only at the station. It gets you very efficiently to the station, and from there you walk to the shop, and there are generally multiple shops at easy walking distance near that station. The road could do that too, but instead, it stops independently at every shop, while simultaneously also trying to be the thoroughfare that gets people from far away. And it's that combination that makes it a lot more complicated and more dangerous. And inefficient. Centralise the stops, and put the stops closer together so you can walk there.

TulliusCicero 5y ago

> But is this inefficiency and resultant drag on prosperity balanced out by making the market more efficient to access for people up and down the road? Nobody's saying we shouldn't have fast roads that are good for cars, just that they shouldn't be the same thing as where people go to shop. Stroads are the compromise of essentially putting businesses along the freeway. > If he had to cross the tracks to get to the market you could basically come up with the same list of gripes. No, this is incorrect. There was actually a housing development I was interested in in Munich with exactly the setup you're talking about: the apartment buildings were on one side of the tracks and directly adjacent to said tracks and the train station, with two grocery stores on the other side. I would go there with my son occasionally to shop, and he and I would both easily cross under said tracks, because there was an underpass, and it's MUCH easier and cheaper to build a ped/bike underpass for two lanes of tracks than a 6+ car lane road. Here it is on Google Maps if you're interested: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Siemenswerke/@48.0927833,11.5320116,158m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x479dded497c7faa7:0xfc5730c15d07a49a!8m2!3d48.0949357!4d11.533119!5m1!1e3?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/place/Siemenswerke/@48.0927833,1...

neilparikh 5y ago

> But is this inefficiency and resultant drag on prosperity balanced out by making the market more efficient to access for people up and down the road? If the current configuration really is the most efficient, why does the government feel the need to mandate it (through parking minimums)? Wouldn't private interests build it anyway? I think big parking lots can be justified sometimes. But what we now is not "build big parking lots when efficient", it's "build big parking lots everywhere, even when it's not needed".