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The last line of your reply there really says it all. Every facet of how our cities are built caters to the automobile owner. Universal street parking, parking

The last line of your reply there really says it all. Every facet of how our cities are built caters to the automobile owner. Universal street parking, parking minimums, highways through urban cores, not prioritizing public transit infrastructure... these things all reinforce automobile dominance, and they've been public policy for the last 70 years. In order to fix the issue of congested and dangerous streets, we need to get drivers to shift to other transit modes, and part of the answer is to stop coddling them with free parking.

ars 5y ago
> we need to get drivers to shift to other transit modes No thank you. I've tried them all, and driving is better than all of them. > and part of the answer is to stop coddling them with free parking. Yup, can't make the other options better, so instead the only alternative is to make driving worse. Great plan.
criddell 5y ago
I've been thinking about other transit modes for medium and long distances and I'm having a hard time thinking of great ideas for where I live (central Texas). Public transportation is one, but the last thing many of us want to do right now is get on a crowded train. Bicycles are great until it gets too hot or too cold which is a pretty large chunk of the year. They also aren't an option for many of us with health issues. Ride sharing and taxi services are available, but they can be more expensive and unreliable. In smaller neighborhoods I think electric golf carts can work, but the range isn't great and they usually don't have heat or air conditioning. I saw an older Waymo video where the car was somewhere between a golf cart and a regular car. I think something like that has a lot of promise, but nobody is making them. If downtown areas get rid of free parking, I wonder if that would just push business out to the 'burbs where there's unlimited parking? That's not great for cities either.
- 0_____0 5y ago
  If you try to conceive of The One Weird Trick that will solve urban mobility, it's an impossible problem. The best general purpose plan I can conceive of is to build mixed housing and commercial in places where there is already decent transit. No parking minimums. Build in earnest for a city where people can literally walk to any errand they may need. European planners actually do this -- they require neighborhood plans that offer a mix of residential, commercial (restaurants and nightlife), schools, other amenities. If the local grocery store is 2 blocks away, you don't need to get on a crowded train at all!
  - criddell 5y ago
    But what's decent transit? I don't think mass transit options like buses or trains fit that description anymore, at least not for everyday. Cities ultimately have to be built for the people who live there. In Austin, I'm pretty sure voters are going to continue to demand better car-based infrastructure first and then bus, train, and bicycle infrastructure second. Definitely agree with mixing commercial and residential though. I live in the suburbs but that's because my office is also out here.
sokoloff 5y ago
> we need to get drivers to shift to other transit modes, and part of the answer is to stop coddling them with free parking. Another approach might be to make other transit modes suck less. A lot less.
- 0_____0 5y ago
  If you approach the issue holistically, you both improve transit and wind down subsidies and aids for drivers. Tangent: there's an interesting equilibrium effect with commuter traffic - if a commute is served by an automobile route and a train line, the commute times will be similar. If for some reason, automobile traffic is delayed by loss of road capacity, over the long term some of that auto traffic will switch modes to the rail option, until the systems are in equilibrium once again. Obviously in the real world this is much more complex but it's still observable... let me see if I can find a link...
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    I can believe that; I look at total door to door time as the primary factor in choosing my transit (with cost as a second, but pretty distant second [I’m not commuting daily into the city->I’d have to consider cost higher if doing it 20x/month]). I live in Cambridge, MA (1.4 miles from the Boston red line subway) and, excluding rides where I’m coming home from the airport, I bet I ride the subway less than once per year on average. It’s just not remotely competitive on door-to-door time with a private car, an Uber, or [most commonly] driving in the other direction to an alternative restaurant or shop with parking. (And Boston is probably in the top 10 of functioning mass transit systems in the US.)
    - 0_____0 5y ago
      Somerville here :) Like you, I commute to somewhere where it's annoying to take transit. I've settled on a combination of cycling, WFH and driving on occasion. I can pick up a rail trail for about half my commute, which means that it's actually faster to bike than to dive. I'm actually looking for employment that's a little bit closer. If I worked within about a 2 mile radius, I'd actually have a feasibly walk-only lifestyle.

ars 5y ago

> we need to get drivers to shift to other transit modes No thank you. I've tried them all, and driving is better than all of them. > and part of the answer is to stop coddling them with free parking. Yup, can't make the other options better, so instead the only alternative is to make driving worse. Great plan.

criddell 5y ago

I've been thinking about other transit modes for medium and long distances and I'm having a hard time thinking of great ideas for where I live (central Texas). Public transportation is one, but the last thing many of us want to do right now is get on a crowded train. Bicycles are great until it gets too hot or too cold which is a pretty large chunk of the year. They also aren't an option for many of us with health issues. Ride sharing and taxi services are available, but they can be more expensive and unreliable. In smaller neighborhoods I think electric golf carts can work, but the range isn't great and they usually don't have heat or air conditioning. I saw an older Waymo video where the car was somewhere between a golf cart and a regular car. I think something like that has a lot of promise, but nobody is making them. If downtown areas get rid of free parking, I wonder if that would just push business out to the 'burbs where there's unlimited parking? That's not great for cities either.

0_____0 5y ago
If you try to conceive of The One Weird Trick that will solve urban mobility, it's an impossible problem. The best general purpose plan I can conceive of is to build mixed housing and commercial in places where there is already decent transit. No parking minimums. Build in earnest for a city where people can literally walk to any errand they may need. European planners actually do this -- they require neighborhood plans that offer a mix of residential, commercial (restaurants and nightlife), schools, other amenities. If the local grocery store is 2 blocks away, you don't need to get on a crowded train at all!
- criddell 5y ago
  But what's decent transit? I don't think mass transit options like buses or trains fit that description anymore, at least not for everyday. Cities ultimately have to be built for the people who live there. In Austin, I'm pretty sure voters are going to continue to demand better car-based infrastructure first and then bus, train, and bicycle infrastructure second. Definitely agree with mixing commercial and residential though. I live in the suburbs but that's because my office is also out here.

sokoloff 5y ago

> we need to get drivers to shift to other transit modes, and part of the answer is to stop coddling them with free parking. Another approach might be to make other transit modes suck less. A lot less.

0_____0 5y ago
If you approach the issue holistically, you both improve transit and wind down subsidies and aids for drivers. Tangent: there's an interesting equilibrium effect with commuter traffic - if a commute is served by an automobile route and a train line, the commute times will be similar. If for some reason, automobile traffic is delayed by loss of road capacity, over the long term some of that auto traffic will switch modes to the rail option, until the systems are in equilibrium once again. Obviously in the real world this is much more complex but it's still observable... let me see if I can find a link...
- sokoloff 5y ago
  I can believe that; I look at total door to door time as the primary factor in choosing my transit (with cost as a second, but pretty distant second [I’m not commuting daily into the city->I’d have to consider cost higher if doing it 20x/month]). I live in Cambridge, MA (1.4 miles from the Boston red line subway) and, excluding rides where I’m coming home from the airport, I bet I ride the subway less than once per year on average. It’s just not remotely competitive on door-to-door time with a private car, an Uber, or [most commonly] driving in the other direction to an alternative restaurant or shop with parking. (And Boston is probably in the top 10 of functioning mass transit systems in the US.)
  - 0_____0 5y ago
    Somerville here :) Like you, I commute to somewhere where it's annoying to take transit. I've settled on a combination of cycling, WFH and driving on occasion. I can pick up a rail trail for about half my commute, which means that it's actually faster to bike than to dive. I'm actually looking for employment that's a little bit closer. If I worked within about a 2 mile radius, I'd actually have a feasibly walk-only lifestyle.