14 ms·

No minimum parking requirements? No problem for Fayetteville, Arkansas

145 points by jseliger 5y ago

exabrial 5y ago
YES, but.... there's a whole part of this that is missing. Bentonville and Fayetteville have built almost 1000 miles of bike specific, particularly Mountain Biking specific trails, right through town. This is not the faux "bike friendly" BS crap with "bike lanes" that painted in traffic that everyone ignores... These are not an attempt to squeeze bikes into an automotive infrastructure and all the other crap politicians pull... these are trails through the woods, backyards, down neighborhoods, paralleling sidewalks, etc. This is making Biking a first class citizen. Very few people are comfortable riding bikes in automovtive traffic. You will eventually get hit by someone posting selfies on instagram or playing their friends in wordle. If cities want actual change, they need dedicated infrastructure for bikes, and these two cities have shown that it absolutely works.
- meetups323 5y ago
  > Very few people are comfortable riding bikes in automovtive traffic. You will eventually get hit by someone posting selfies on instagram or playing their friends in wordle. And what's worse, I've had drivers stop to yell at me for riding on the (completely empty) sidewalk when crossing a narrow bridge busy with car traffic. As if hundreds of bikers don't die every year from getting whacked by careless drivers.
  - thesuitonym 5y ago
    I can do you one better, I've been yelled out by drivers for riding my bike through a bike lane that happened to be in the way of the turning lane. You just can't win if you're trying to cycle in the US.
    - fuzzer37 5y ago
      Because bikes DO NOT belong on roads. Getting hit by a car while you're on a bike is deadly. A bike running into a pedestrian on a sidewalk is an inconvenience.
      - alistairSH 5y ago
        Then give them someplace appropriate! As soon as I have dedicated/safe bike lanes, I’ll get out of your road. Until then, please try not to kill me.
        notch656a 5y ago
        I disagree agree with poster, but to play devils advocate bicyclists are a free rider problem on public roads. It's pretty clear based on the design of most roads they were designed for motor vehicles, not bicycles. Fuel taxes are a major way these roads are funded and maintained, and bicyclists don't pay registration / licensing / fuel tax. Especially in heavily urban areas, roads have extremely high land value that bicyclists are unjustly profiting from. It's not clear to me why there should be any right for bicyclists to be allowed on the road.
        8note 5y ago
        I'm not clear that there should be any right for cars to be on the road either. Roads are for people to walk on, historically, and it's adding cars that made them dangerous. They're paid for by people who largely don't need them, too - the folks who live in the inner city
        notch656a 5y ago
        People driving fuel consuming vehicles are paying for the roads via fuel tax, and registration fees to the states maintaining those roads. These drivers are funding these roads thus it makes sense for them to be compensated for their payment. It's conceivable a bicyclist can get away without paying any tax whatsoever on the road, especially if their income is small. Free rider, welfare queens of the road. >Roads are for people to walk on, historically, and it's adding cars that made them dangerous In urban areas that's actually typically what the sidewalk for, and it's often illegal to walk on the road. But this is why I'm against public roads, there are all sorts of bad problems associated with this being a public good.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      > I've been yelled out by drivers for riding my bike through a bike lane that happened to be in the way of the turning lane. You just can't win if you're trying to cycle in the US. Some people are jerks in every situation. I don't believe bicyclists stand out as victims, except the expectation that they ride in traffic and the consequences of colliding with a car.
- xerox13ster 5y ago
  Having lived in Bentonville, the trails are absolutely meaningless if there aren't sidewalks off the trail with which to get to final destinations. I was a pedestrian cyclist there from 2017-2020 and I frequently was walking or riding in the roads or ditches when the sidewalk ran out. Sure, I could get across town, but when I get there, who knows if there's sidewalks? If I wanted to go grocery shopping and be on a sidewalk/bike trail, I had to go an extra mile out of my way to go under the overpass and through the community college to get to neighborhood market. That trip was already a mile if I rode along the road, so double the distance. That's not making cycling a first class citizen! That's hiding cyclists from cars who are the real first class citizen. I know, I grew up there. Fayetteville and Rogers get this right(ish), Bentonville wants to pretend they have it right so talent will move there for Walmart after Walmart spent decades making sure brain drain was inevitable by keeping the area "small town" (they bragged about this during my corporate orientation) and fighting density that could have naturally precipitated good pedestrian and biking infrastructure. And the separate bike lanes through the woods are not some grand way to make cycling first class they are NECESSARY or the rural drivers who come into the "city" would be playing chicken games and trying to run cyclists off the road. When I grew up this was a common thing to joke about!
  - black_puppydog 5y ago
    > who knows if there's sidewalks? Living in Europe this question doesn't compute at all. Such a foreign idea to even contemplate. If it doesn't have a sidewalk, it must be a country road or a highway right? Couldn't happen in a reasonably densely populated area...?
    - reaperducer 5y ago
      What a strange thing to read. I've been to dozens and dozens of urban places in Europe that have streets without sidewalks. Or in many of the places, the sidewalks exist, but are useless because cars are allowed to park on them. I've never understood how people in wheelchairs are able to get anywhere in most of "civilized" Europe.
      - 5y ago
- AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  Minneapolis has a lot of bike paths through its city parks (there are a lot of parks in Minneapolis: the chain of lakes, the Mississippi river, etc) and they really enhance the city when snow isn't on the ground. They enhance the use of parks, they don't make parks more noxious, they increase property values, they keep the city valuable. E-bikes are going to magnify the value of cities with good biking infrastructure. All of a sudden car trips become bike trips, and there are no concerns about hills or headwinds or towing a burly of stuff: the electric motor handles some or all of the required needed power. Need to haul ten bags of groceries and a kiddo up the big hill on the Mississippi? the electric motor will get you there. It hopefully will reduce the amount of surface area dedicated to cars, and switch those over to more parks and more recreation.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    e-bikes in parks need to be limited in speed though. Don't turn our parks into dangerous for pedestrians bike freeways. Bicycles in walkers do not mix very well, while it isn't as deadly as a car, getting hit by a bike still hurts.
  - dillondoyle 5y ago
    Minneapolis takes biking seriously. In huge amounts of snow and horrible weather!! Weather down there seems even more conducive. My dad can bike from their house to downtown in 15 minutes (more like 30 as getting older). It's amazing. Completely protected separate bike lane going through old rail corridor. I can bike to whole foods from there too without having to go on a busy street. They are expanding light rail there too but seems like similar to most cities it isn't great yet. Hopefully we'll see more density around the stops. My city Denver feels the same it's not actually used as much as it could be.
- tombert 5y ago
  In NYC, a lot of people (especially cops) seem to be under the impression that bike lanes are just extra parking.It's pretty irritating because going around them involves getting on the street, which isn't usually an issue, but occasionally roads in NY get extremely busy, and people in here seem to lack the ability to read speed limit signs (at least in Brooklyn).
  - ahoy 5y ago
    I think thats because, for all the progress NYC has made in installing bike infrastructure, they've done basically nothing to reduce the number of cars on our streets.
    - bitcurious 5y ago
      https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/29/nyregion/nyc-congestion-pricing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/29/nyregion/nyc-congestion-p... https://mashable.com/article/nyc-city-council-lyft-uber-cap-minimum-wage https://mashable.com/article/nyc-city-council-lyft-uber-cap-... Two specific policies, but there’s also just the fact that every bike lane/pedestrian street/bus lane/low speed limit/etc. makes the city less car friendly and at some point that makes a difference.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      There should be a banner for any transit discussions that state you cannot optimize environments for both individual cars and non individual car transportion.
    - tombert 5y ago
      It's strange, because NYC is simultaneously overpopulated with cars, but is also one of the only places in the US where you can reasonably live without a car (I don't have one).
      - Kluny 5y ago
        It's even stranger when you realize that probably only 20% of trips in New York are conducted by car, and yet they are by far the largest physical presence everywhere you go. Actually quite obnoxious.
- johnatthebar 5y ago
  Agreed that the recreational biking infrastructure in NW Arkansas is great, but not enough Fayetteville people bike for transportation for that to be a big part of this outcome. It's just 1% of all commutes, for example. Compare that to 4%-10% in university towns that use a lot of on-street bike lanes that take you more directly to destinations: Eugene, Corvallis, Bozeman, Madison, Fort Collins, Palo Alto, Berkeley, Ann Arbor. (Not saying those cities are perfect either, to be clear.) It's true that shitty bike lanes on auto-oriented streets are shitty, and that off-street paths are great. But lanes and paths are not the same thing, and neither of them is the reason this policy is working in Fayetteville.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  > You will eventually get hit by someone posting selfies on instagram or playing their friends in wordle. You will eventually get hit by someone who punishment passes you and is dangerously negligent because they've dehumanized you, and they just don't care if they do violence to you, and its you're fault because you're slow. Or you will get hit by people who simply don't register bikes and consciously or unconsciously think that bicyclists must yield to cars, sometimes turning left in front of you with no time for you to stop. Or you will get right hooked by someone who just passed you a second earlier and that is too long for their minds to track the fact that you're still there, or they again think they're entitled to drive however they want and you need to yield to whatever they do.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I bought a dashcam for my car because of bicyclists: 1. randomly wandering out of the bike lane and into the car lane 2. stopped in the middle of the car lane around a blind curve 3. drafting 3 feet behind the panel truck in front of them at 40 mph 4. riding two or three abreast, with the 2 or 3 well into the car lane 5. continuing to cycle at 25 mph in the right hand bike lane while the traffic is going much slower, and there's a right hand turn coming up (it's difficult to spot these bikers while driving, heck, even cars are hard to see there which is why overtaking on the right is illegal) None of these incidents were kids on bikes, they were all middle aged adults who really should know better. I talked to a couple of these cyclists (in their tour de france outfits, naturally) once, and they laughed and said if they get hit by a car it'll be their big payday lawsuit. I replied getting crippled isn't worth a billion dollars. Ride defensively, folks, regardless of what the law says or who is at fault.
    - mindslight 5y ago
      Comments like yours are exactly why I'm somewhat predisposed against bike lanes - there is no such thing as a "car lane". By all means yes, get a dashcam. The more evidence, the better. While driving, I've had a few cyclists come around around blind corners going the wrong way. Any type of road user can be an idiot. But the main commonality of your list is people clashing with your own personal expectations. Don't assume that evidence of such will exculpate you (eg #2).
- dahfizz 5y ago
  The town I grew up in spent millions of dollars criss crossing the whole place with bike trails. Cyclists still just rode on the roads.
duxup 5y ago
This appears to already be a very walk-able kinda place. Not to say this can't be done elsewhere but this seems like a place that was going to be popular / this was going to work regardless.
- rogerdb 5y ago
  These shouldn't be thought of as orthogonal issues. You can dramatically improve the walkability of a place by reducing the amount of space reserved for parking.
  - uoaei 5y ago
    City centers in forward-thinking European cities are trying things like this: forbidding cars from the central square and a few blocks' perimeter results in much calmer and more pleasant pedestrian experiences. Instead of roads for cars you have pedestrian boulevards, avenues, and alleys with greenery throughout and a distinct sense that you live in a community, rather than merely among it.
- andys627 5y ago
  Chicken or egg. The whole US was once walkable, then we massively subsidized driving for 2 generations, and now they are not walkable.
vletal 5y ago
I am perplexed that this makes headlines. Even the free market has spoken. People pay premium to live in a more dense areas where the stuff they enjoy and interact with is within their proximity. Interesting how successful the car manufacturer lobby was in the US, transforming whole cities and life styles of ordinary Americans for generations.
- cortesoft 5y ago
  It makes headlines because almost all cities in the US still require a minimum number of parking spaces per building, even if it doesn't make sense. Even if it is common sense, it is new and rare, which is newsworthy.
- mwt 5y ago
  To take nothing away from the power of the manufacturers, I wonder to what extent local dealerships have had influence. In suburbia and mid-sized cities, the owners of dealerships tend to have a big say in local politics.
- viro 5y ago
  Then why was there a mass exodus during the height of WFH? Data seems to show that people pay that premium to reduce commute time. Let's not forget full remote was a lot harder to get before covid.
  - quantumwannabe 5y ago
    That's because the HN urbanist crowd is a very small and vocal minority. The vast majority of people WANT to live in suburban or rural areas. Only 19% of Americans want to live in a dense urban environment. [1] [1] https://pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/12/16/americans-are-less-likely-than-before-covid-19-to-want-to-live-in-cities-more-likely-to-prefer-suburbs/psdt_12-16-21_covid-community0_0/ https://pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/12/16/americans-a...
    - bluGill 5y ago
      People have no idea what they really want. They however know how they live now, so when asked they will say they don't want to change. Where someone lives is a compromise. Everyone wants the best of ALL words: the dense urban area with a subway entrance on the same street, plenty of shopping and other entertainment. They also want a ski lift up a mountain, finish your day ski day in your own backyard, and a tropical beach in the front yard, among the other benefits of rural living. That is physically impossible no matter how much money you have, so you make the best of what you can get even though it cannot be perfect. With the current situation of the US subrubs are the best compromise, but as things change different compromises become better. Right now dense areas are a lot more expensive for a lot less space, and often that space comes with the problems of living in a very old building. Note that change will not happen overnight. Even if 30000 square foot apartments (intentionally be absurdly large to make the point) in neighborhoods with good schools was free it would take a lot of time for people to move even though the rent savings would allow for more than enough other lifestyle changes as to make it a better compromise for most people.
SeanLuke 5y ago
Fayetteville is less than 100K people, and the entire metro area (the so-called "Northwest Arkansas" region) is about 500K people. It seems small, self-contained, and isolated. I live in Alexandria, a famous historical neighborhood in the Washington DC metro area. Alexandria proper has about 160K people, in a metropolis of 6-7 million, and Alexandria attracts a large number of outside visitors from around the region because of its notoriety. I think that eliminating parking requirements for businesses is an interesting idea worth consideration. But I wonder how far this can really be taken in my city. We already have high and problematic overflow of visitor parking into residential neighborhoods. I wonder if Fayetteville can pull this off primarily because of its size.
- kevincox 5y ago
  > I wonder how far this can really be taken in my city. We already have high and problematic overflow of visitor parking into residential neighborhoods. The problematic thinking is that the cars need to be here in the first place. If it is easy to get to the residential neighborhoods by walking, biking or public transit then most of these cars don't need to exist. Of course it isn't easy. It takes a long time to shift habit, culture and perception. But the upsides are great. It is easier and faster to get around, less people getting hit by cars, less noise. Plus there are other benefits like I can go out and drink without worrying how I can get home or who is the DD.
  - geofft 5y ago
    Not disagreeing, really, but - habit, culture, perception, and infrastructure. Minimum parking requirements, and more generally streets designed around cars, are a form of infrastructure. I'm not saying it's a good form of infrastructure, but it is one. Local government needs to invest in alternatives: pervasive sidewalks, well-designed protected bike lanes so that people who are interested in biking but worried about being hit - which is over 50% of adults in US metro regions, see https://jenniferdill.net/types-of-cyclists/ https://jenniferdill.net/types-of-cyclists/ - actually decide to bike, legal use of e-bikes, intersection designs that don't prioritize high-speed cars, reliable and frequent and ideally 24-hour public transit with dense stops (so probably buses and bus lanes), and so forth. And yes, to be fair, habit and culture and perception play into this too. Cities build this infrastructure when people demand it and can convincingly argue that it will get used. Potential bus stops are more useful when there isn't a parking lot separating the bus route and the store people want to get to. Useful sidewalks are a natural consequence of commercial districts designed to be accessed by foot/bike/transit instead of by car, and so forth. But it does take both of these.
falsenapkin 5y ago
I didn't even know that minimum parking was an issue, where else can I read about this? How prevalent is it in other cities? It sounds like some 50s/60s era white flight policy permanently enshrining cars into city life. I've been to Bentonville (~2016) quite a bit for work, always said I'd go to Fayetteville next time. Bentonville wasn't anything worth writing about for how I want to live but I can see it being an attractive place for quite a lot of people, I was kind of surprised by how underpopulated it seemed. I guess not a lot of jobs outside of the obvious few. Crystal Bridges was a great museum, the Ozarks are lovely. In general I felt a lot more positive visiting that area than I was expecting to.
- mperham 5y ago
  So much of American zoning code makes our suburbs into ugly, inhumane places. StrongTowns.org is a good place to start. Their blog is great and will quickly radicalize you.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- drivers99 5y ago
  A couple YouTube channels I'd suggest: https://www.youtube.com/notjustbikes https://www.youtube.com/notjustbikes https://www.youtube.com/c/OhTheUrbanity https://www.youtube.com/c/OhTheUrbanity https://www.youtube.com/c/CityBeautiful https://www.youtube.com/c/CityBeautiful If you want to go deep on parking policy, here's a talk by Donald Shoup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0gokb4rPik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0gokb4rPik
- Cryptid 5y ago
  the webiste Strong Towns has some good info on parking minimums: https://www.strongtowns.org/parking https://www.strongtowns.org/parking https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/11/25/parking-minimums-from-101-to-taking-action https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/11/25/parking-minim... Some more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-26/to-save-the-planet-kill-minimum-parking-mandates https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-26/to-save-t...
- 5y ago
pessimizer 5y ago
Seeing as this just changed six years ago, it's a bit early to start calling it a success. I spent a lot of my teenage years in Fayetteville, and remember parking sucking downtown and near Dickson. Ending parking requirements six years ago just means that they're six years into a project during which they're going to gradually make parking even worse, and see what happens. "And that’s kind of the point. Business owners shouldn’t have to be experts in parking regulations to decide if a site will work for them." If that's the point, it's a shit point. What other regulations shouldn't they be forced to read or think about?
- andys627 5y ago
  It's more about the city planners not having to be parking experts. Parking minimums are one of many subsidies to drivers in that they set a supply floor for parking spots. If driving is so popular then why do we have to shower drivers with money at every level of government?
  - treis 5y ago
    The restaurant mentioned likely relies on street parking for those that drive there. As a shared & city owned resource it's within the purview of the city to manage it. For the most part this story is overblown. Few cities have parking minimums in their cores these days. And you'll find few that support parking minimums there.
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      It would be interesting to see city ban all traffic in their area. No private or public vehicles, taxis, delivery trucks, busses or emergency vehicles. Just allow certain sized cargo bikes and like. The true only walking neighbourhood.
    - 8note 5y ago
      Within covid lockdown, plenty of restaurants have moved their seating into the street parking spaces in seattle, and they seem to be doing fine
- 5y ago
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
Uber, Chomp and 100 other modern innovations may have put the one-person-one-car idea in the dust bin.
- vkou 5y ago
  Yes, by flooding our cities with 'zero-person-one-car' traffic. (An Uber driver going to a pickup point is a car on the road that is, effectively, transporting exactly zero people.) From a fewer-cars-need-to-be-built perspective, it's an improvement. From a traffic/GHG emissions/more-roads-need-to-be-built perspective, it's a regression.
  - lkbm 5y ago
    Not sure we'd need more roads. Nearly every road in my area could add a lane by simply eliminating street parking on one side. (Pickup/dropoff might be annoying with no parking lane, but honestly, they use the bike lane for that more often than the parking lane.)
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    If Uber is working properly the amount of time drivers are alone should be very small.
  - JoeAltmaier 5y ago
    All good points. But not related to parking, which was the OP's point.
  - 8note 5y ago
    Roads are already full of zero-person-one-car traffic, too. It's called on street parking
    - vkou 5y ago
      A car in motion requires a lot more road space than a parked car. Two seconds of travel time in good road conditions, up to four seconds in bad.
DannyB2 5y ago
Obvious conclusion: since the removal of minimum parking requirements worked in this particular situation, they work everywhere for everyone in all situations.
mchusma 5y ago
I do recommend the book "The High Cost of Free Parking." The podcast EconTalk did an episode with him too. It's very clear to me after reading these that government enforced parking minimums and free parking should go.
- chizhik-pyzhik 5y ago
  I considered getting that book until I realized it's 733 pages. Is it worth at least reading some sections of it?
  - johnatthebar 5y ago
    The author's follow-up, Parking and the City, is a mere 534 pages and more readable. (Part of the reason Shoup has been so successful as a policy change agent is that he's a gifted writer.) Still goes for an academic price, unfortunately. https://www.amazon.com/Parking-City-Donald-Shoup/dp/1138497126 https://www.amazon.com/Parking-City-Donald-Shoup/dp/11384971... Henry Grabar is working on what will hopefully be a more popular-press approach: https://twitter.com/henrygrabar/status/1156649614596038656 https://twitter.com/henrygrabar/status/1156649614596038656
eterevsky 5y ago
US has minimum parking mandate for businesses? Why?!
dizzant 5y ago
It is good to see support for better urban planning on Hacker News. Issues of urban planning and city design often escape notice of the popular milieu due to the banality of local politics, but are nonetheless important. One of the lasting impacts of our lives is the places we build. Make America Walkable Again.
stevage 5y ago
Ohhh is this why in American cities you see so many free standing restaurants with parking all around them? I always find them a bit weird, we don't have many like that here in Melbourne. Usual pattern here if driving to restaurant is spending a long time looking for a park then a long walk. It's good to get the exercise afterwards
- bradlys 5y ago
  The problem is that in the US - that can often mean an hour long walk or more both ways. People don’t want to go out for food if it means walking near a loud and ugly street (where there might not even be a pathway for pedestrians) for over an hour each way…
radres 5y ago
Oh, those ugly looking parking spaces in front of every business was an enforced thing in the US?
- ceras 5y ago
  Yes. Parking is required for essentially all building types in the US, including office buildings and residential buildings (houses, apartments) too. Often even in very dense areas with public transit.
mywittyname 5y ago
Cars are a fundamental requirement for living in most of America. The problems which arise from lack of parking is that cars become a nuisance fast. I lived in an apartment complex where the parking minimum requirements were...bent... by the developer and it was by far the worst place I ever lived. Basically, what happened was the complex was under development, and the soil couldn't support a parking lot where one was planned due to drainage. So parking was added to another section of the development, around 1.0mi or so down the road. Meaning one complex had 4 spots per unit, with the other had like 0.5 spots per unit, but it worked out to 2.25 or something spots per unit on average. (I know this because I was friends with the complex manager, and she gave me the details) The end result was people would park on sidewalks, in the middle of the road, in front of garages, double park, etc. It was a nightmare of epic proportions. People blocked in by assholes would blare their horns at 6AM. Others would intentionally "move" cars out of the way, which led to fights. There was a shooting. The fire marshal stepped in and started fining the complex, but they couldn't get people to stop, short of evictions. The people who paid ridiculous amounts of money for their town homes next door were so pissed off about people parking in their private community that the cops were constantly harassing people for trespassing. I faced this myself just by going for a walk. Why didn't people just get cars towed? Because tow trucks won't come out on someone's word. You actually have to go and tell the main office, then they have to call the tow company. But the thing is, the tow company doesn't tell you that, they just say they are "on their way," so you wait an hour or two for them to tow the car blocking you in and they never come. So yeah, minimum parking is bad. But no minimum parking when everyone ones a car is worse. You need space for cars somewhere. I say this as a person who absolutely loves walkable cities, and lives in a decently walkable one myself. We need to get rid of parking minimums, but we need to be smart about it. Maybe have the developers build parking in lots in designated areas on the perimeter of the development (kind of like those outdoor malls have)?
- johnatthebar 5y ago
  Pretty persuasive! Though also (I think) a pretty good illustration of why developers will almost always try to include some on-site parking even if it's not mandatory. In this case it seems as if they decided that completing construction on an unpleasant apartment building would be more profitable than walking away from it mid-project, and then persuaded the city to let them complete it. Which city was this, if you don't mind saying? About how many units in your building? Was there any attempt by the city to manage the curbsides with permits etc? I'd think that'd be part of the solution in this case.

145 points by jseliger 5y ago

YES, but.... there's a whole part of this that is missing. Bentonville and Fayetteville have built almost 1000 miles of bike specific, particularly Mountain Biking specific trails, right through town. This is not the faux "bike friendly" BS crap with "bike lanes" that painted in traffic that everyone ignores... These are not an attempt to squeeze bikes into an automotive infrastructure and all the other crap politicians pull... these are trails through the woods, backyards, down neighborhoods, paralleling sidewalks, etc. This is making Biking a first class citizen. Very few people are comfortable riding bikes in automovtive traffic. You will eventually get hit by someone posting selfies on instagram or playing their friends in wordle. If cities want actual change, they need dedicated infrastructure for bikes, and these two cities have shown that it absolutely works.

meetups323 5y ago
> Very few people are comfortable riding bikes in automovtive traffic. You will eventually get hit by someone posting selfies on instagram or playing their friends in wordle. And what's worse, I've had drivers stop to yell at me for riding on the (completely empty) sidewalk when crossing a narrow bridge busy with car traffic. As if hundreds of bikers don't die every year from getting whacked by careless drivers.
- thesuitonym 5y ago
  I can do you one better, I've been yelled out by drivers for riding my bike through a bike lane that happened to be in the way of the turning lane. You just can't win if you're trying to cycle in the US.
  - fuzzer37 5y ago
    Because bikes DO NOT belong on roads. Getting hit by a car while you're on a bike is deadly. A bike running into a pedestrian on a sidewalk is an inconvenience.
    - alistairSH 5y ago
      Then give them someplace appropriate! As soon as I have dedicated/safe bike lanes, I’ll get out of your road. Until then, please try not to kill me.
      - notch656a 5y ago
        I disagree agree with poster, but to play devils advocate bicyclists are a free rider problem on public roads. It's pretty clear based on the design of most roads they were designed for motor vehicles, not bicycles. Fuel taxes are a major way these roads are funded and maintained, and bicyclists don't pay registration / licensing / fuel tax. Especially in heavily urban areas, roads have extremely high land value that bicyclists are unjustly profiting from. It's not clear to me why there should be any right for bicyclists to be allowed on the road.
        8note 5y ago
        I'm not clear that there should be any right for cars to be on the road either. Roads are for people to walk on, historically, and it's adding cars that made them dangerous. They're paid for by people who largely don't need them, too - the folks who live in the inner city
        notch656a 5y ago
        People driving fuel consuming vehicles are paying for the roads via fuel tax, and registration fees to the states maintaining those roads. These drivers are funding these roads thus it makes sense for them to be compensated for their payment. It's conceivable a bicyclist can get away without paying any tax whatsoever on the road, especially if their income is small. Free rider, welfare queens of the road. >Roads are for people to walk on, historically, and it's adding cars that made them dangerous In urban areas that's actually typically what the sidewalk for, and it's often illegal to walk on the road. But this is why I'm against public roads, there are all sorts of bad problems associated with this being a public good.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > I've been yelled out by drivers for riding my bike through a bike lane that happened to be in the way of the turning lane. You just can't win if you're trying to cycle in the US. Some people are jerks in every situation. I don't believe bicyclists stand out as victims, except the expectation that they ride in traffic and the consequences of colliding with a car.
xerox13ster 5y ago
Having lived in Bentonville, the trails are absolutely meaningless if there aren't sidewalks off the trail with which to get to final destinations. I was a pedestrian cyclist there from 2017-2020 and I frequently was walking or riding in the roads or ditches when the sidewalk ran out. Sure, I could get across town, but when I get there, who knows if there's sidewalks? If I wanted to go grocery shopping and be on a sidewalk/bike trail, I had to go an extra mile out of my way to go under the overpass and through the community college to get to neighborhood market. That trip was already a mile if I rode along the road, so double the distance. That's not making cycling a first class citizen! That's hiding cyclists from cars who are the real first class citizen. I know, I grew up there. Fayetteville and Rogers get this right(ish), Bentonville wants to pretend they have it right so talent will move there for Walmart after Walmart spent decades making sure brain drain was inevitable by keeping the area "small town" (they bragged about this during my corporate orientation) and fighting density that could have naturally precipitated good pedestrian and biking infrastructure. And the separate bike lanes through the woods are not some grand way to make cycling first class they are NECESSARY or the rural drivers who come into the "city" would be playing chicken games and trying to run cyclists off the road. When I grew up this was a common thing to joke about!
- black_puppydog 5y ago
  > who knows if there's sidewalks? Living in Europe this question doesn't compute at all. Such a foreign idea to even contemplate. If it doesn't have a sidewalk, it must be a country road or a highway right? Couldn't happen in a reasonably densely populated area...?
  - reaperducer 5y ago
    What a strange thing to read. I've been to dozens and dozens of urban places in Europe that have streets without sidewalks. Or in many of the places, the sidewalks exist, but are useless because cars are allowed to park on them. I've never understood how people in wheelchairs are able to get anywhere in most of "civilized" Europe.
    - 5y ago
AtlasBarfed 5y ago
Minneapolis has a lot of bike paths through its city parks (there are a lot of parks in Minneapolis: the chain of lakes, the Mississippi river, etc) and they really enhance the city when snow isn't on the ground. They enhance the use of parks, they don't make parks more noxious, they increase property values, they keep the city valuable. E-bikes are going to magnify the value of cities with good biking infrastructure. All of a sudden car trips become bike trips, and there are no concerns about hills or headwinds or towing a burly of stuff: the electric motor handles some or all of the required needed power. Need to haul ten bags of groceries and a kiddo up the big hill on the Mississippi? the electric motor will get you there. It hopefully will reduce the amount of surface area dedicated to cars, and switch those over to more parks and more recreation.
- bluGill 5y ago
  e-bikes in parks need to be limited in speed though. Don't turn our parks into dangerous for pedestrians bike freeways. Bicycles in walkers do not mix very well, while it isn't as deadly as a car, getting hit by a bike still hurts.
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  Minneapolis takes biking seriously. In huge amounts of snow and horrible weather!! Weather down there seems even more conducive. My dad can bike from their house to downtown in 15 minutes (more like 30 as getting older). It's amazing. Completely protected separate bike lane going through old rail corridor. I can bike to whole foods from there too without having to go on a busy street. They are expanding light rail there too but seems like similar to most cities it isn't great yet. Hopefully we'll see more density around the stops. My city Denver feels the same it's not actually used as much as it could be.
tombert 5y ago
In NYC, a lot of people (especially cops) seem to be under the impression that bike lanes are just extra parking.It's pretty irritating because going around them involves getting on the street, which isn't usually an issue, but occasionally roads in NY get extremely busy, and people in here seem to lack the ability to read speed limit signs (at least in Brooklyn).
- ahoy 5y ago
  I think thats because, for all the progress NYC has made in installing bike infrastructure, they've done basically nothing to reduce the number of cars on our streets.
  - bitcurious 5y ago
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/29/nyregion/nyc-congestion-pricing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/29/nyregion/nyc-congestion-p... https://mashable.com/article/nyc-city-council-lyft-uber-cap-minimum-wage https://mashable.com/article/nyc-city-council-lyft-uber-cap-... Two specific policies, but there’s also just the fact that every bike lane/pedestrian street/bus lane/low speed limit/etc. makes the city less car friendly and at some point that makes a difference.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    There should be a banner for any transit discussions that state you cannot optimize environments for both individual cars and non individual car transportion.
  - tombert 5y ago
    It's strange, because NYC is simultaneously overpopulated with cars, but is also one of the only places in the US where you can reasonably live without a car (I don't have one).
    - Kluny 5y ago
      It's even stranger when you realize that probably only 20% of trips in New York are conducted by car, and yet they are by far the largest physical presence everywhere you go. Actually quite obnoxious.
johnatthebar 5y ago
Agreed that the recreational biking infrastructure in NW Arkansas is great, but not enough Fayetteville people bike for transportation for that to be a big part of this outcome. It's just 1% of all commutes, for example. Compare that to 4%-10% in university towns that use a lot of on-street bike lanes that take you more directly to destinations: Eugene, Corvallis, Bozeman, Madison, Fort Collins, Palo Alto, Berkeley, Ann Arbor. (Not saying those cities are perfect either, to be clear.) It's true that shitty bike lanes on auto-oriented streets are shitty, and that off-street paths are great. But lanes and paths are not the same thing, and neither of them is the reason this policy is working in Fayetteville.
lamontcg 5y ago
> You will eventually get hit by someone posting selfies on instagram or playing their friends in wordle. You will eventually get hit by someone who punishment passes you and is dangerously negligent because they've dehumanized you, and they just don't care if they do violence to you, and its you're fault because you're slow. Or you will get hit by people who simply don't register bikes and consciously or unconsciously think that bicyclists must yield to cars, sometimes turning left in front of you with no time for you to stop. Or you will get right hooked by someone who just passed you a second earlier and that is too long for their minds to track the fact that you're still there, or they again think they're entitled to drive however they want and you need to yield to whatever they do.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I bought a dashcam for my car because of bicyclists: 1. randomly wandering out of the bike lane and into the car lane 2. stopped in the middle of the car lane around a blind curve 3. drafting 3 feet behind the panel truck in front of them at 40 mph 4. riding two or three abreast, with the 2 or 3 well into the car lane 5. continuing to cycle at 25 mph in the right hand bike lane while the traffic is going much slower, and there's a right hand turn coming up (it's difficult to spot these bikers while driving, heck, even cars are hard to see there which is why overtaking on the right is illegal) None of these incidents were kids on bikes, they were all middle aged adults who really should know better. I talked to a couple of these cyclists (in their tour de france outfits, naturally) once, and they laughed and said if they get hit by a car it'll be their big payday lawsuit. I replied getting crippled isn't worth a billion dollars. Ride defensively, folks, regardless of what the law says or who is at fault.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    Comments like yours are exactly why I'm somewhat predisposed against bike lanes - there is no such thing as a "car lane". By all means yes, get a dashcam. The more evidence, the better. While driving, I've had a few cyclists come around around blind corners going the wrong way. Any type of road user can be an idiot. But the main commonality of your list is people clashing with your own personal expectations. Don't assume that evidence of such will exculpate you (eg #2).
dahfizz 5y ago
The town I grew up in spent millions of dollars criss crossing the whole place with bike trails. Cyclists still just rode on the roads.

duxup 5y ago

This appears to already be a very walk-able kinda place. Not to say this can't be done elsewhere but this seems like a place that was going to be popular / this was going to work regardless.

rogerdb 5y ago
These shouldn't be thought of as orthogonal issues. You can dramatically improve the walkability of a place by reducing the amount of space reserved for parking.
- uoaei 5y ago
  City centers in forward-thinking European cities are trying things like this: forbidding cars from the central square and a few blocks' perimeter results in much calmer and more pleasant pedestrian experiences. Instead of roads for cars you have pedestrian boulevards, avenues, and alleys with greenery throughout and a distinct sense that you live in a community, rather than merely among it.
andys627 5y ago
Chicken or egg. The whole US was once walkable, then we massively subsidized driving for 2 generations, and now they are not walkable.

vletal 5y ago

I am perplexed that this makes headlines. Even the free market has spoken. People pay premium to live in a more dense areas where the stuff they enjoy and interact with is within their proximity. Interesting how successful the car manufacturer lobby was in the US, transforming whole cities and life styles of ordinary Americans for generations.

cortesoft 5y ago
It makes headlines because almost all cities in the US still require a minimum number of parking spaces per building, even if it doesn't make sense. Even if it is common sense, it is new and rare, which is newsworthy.
mwt 5y ago
To take nothing away from the power of the manufacturers, I wonder to what extent local dealerships have had influence. In suburbia and mid-sized cities, the owners of dealerships tend to have a big say in local politics.
viro 5y ago
Then why was there a mass exodus during the height of WFH? Data seems to show that people pay that premium to reduce commute time. Let's not forget full remote was a lot harder to get before covid.
- quantumwannabe 5y ago
  That's because the HN urbanist crowd is a very small and vocal minority. The vast majority of people WANT to live in suburban or rural areas. Only 19% of Americans want to live in a dense urban environment. [1] [1] https://pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/12/16/americans-are-less-likely-than-before-covid-19-to-want-to-live-in-cities-more-likely-to-prefer-suburbs/psdt_12-16-21_covid-community0_0/ https://pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/12/16/americans-a...
  - bluGill 5y ago
    People have no idea what they really want. They however know how they live now, so when asked they will say they don't want to change. Where someone lives is a compromise. Everyone wants the best of ALL words: the dense urban area with a subway entrance on the same street, plenty of shopping and other entertainment. They also want a ski lift up a mountain, finish your day ski day in your own backyard, and a tropical beach in the front yard, among the other benefits of rural living. That is physically impossible no matter how much money you have, so you make the best of what you can get even though it cannot be perfect. With the current situation of the US subrubs are the best compromise, but as things change different compromises become better. Right now dense areas are a lot more expensive for a lot less space, and often that space comes with the problems of living in a very old building. Note that change will not happen overnight. Even if 30000 square foot apartments (intentionally be absurdly large to make the point) in neighborhoods with good schools was free it would take a lot of time for people to move even though the rent savings would allow for more than enough other lifestyle changes as to make it a better compromise for most people.

SeanLuke 5y ago

Fayetteville is less than 100K people, and the entire metro area (the so-called "Northwest Arkansas" region) is about 500K people. It seems small, self-contained, and isolated. I live in Alexandria, a famous historical neighborhood in the Washington DC metro area. Alexandria proper has about 160K people, in a metropolis of 6-7 million, and Alexandria attracts a large number of outside visitors from around the region because of its notoriety. I think that eliminating parking requirements for businesses is an interesting idea worth consideration. But I wonder how far this can really be taken in my city. We already have high and problematic overflow of visitor parking into residential neighborhoods. I wonder if Fayetteville can pull this off primarily because of its size.

kevincox 5y ago
> I wonder how far this can really be taken in my city. We already have high and problematic overflow of visitor parking into residential neighborhoods. The problematic thinking is that the cars need to be here in the first place. If it is easy to get to the residential neighborhoods by walking, biking or public transit then most of these cars don't need to exist. Of course it isn't easy. It takes a long time to shift habit, culture and perception. But the upsides are great. It is easier and faster to get around, less people getting hit by cars, less noise. Plus there are other benefits like I can go out and drink without worrying how I can get home or who is the DD.
- geofft 5y ago
  Not disagreeing, really, but - habit, culture, perception, and infrastructure. Minimum parking requirements, and more generally streets designed around cars, are a form of infrastructure. I'm not saying it's a good form of infrastructure, but it is one. Local government needs to invest in alternatives: pervasive sidewalks, well-designed protected bike lanes so that people who are interested in biking but worried about being hit - which is over 50% of adults in US metro regions, see https://jenniferdill.net/types-of-cyclists/ https://jenniferdill.net/types-of-cyclists/ - actually decide to bike, legal use of e-bikes, intersection designs that don't prioritize high-speed cars, reliable and frequent and ideally 24-hour public transit with dense stops (so probably buses and bus lanes), and so forth. And yes, to be fair, habit and culture and perception play into this too. Cities build this infrastructure when people demand it and can convincingly argue that it will get used. Potential bus stops are more useful when there isn't a parking lot separating the bus route and the store people want to get to. Useful sidewalks are a natural consequence of commercial districts designed to be accessed by foot/bike/transit instead of by car, and so forth. But it does take both of these.

falsenapkin 5y ago

I didn't even know that minimum parking was an issue, where else can I read about this? How prevalent is it in other cities? It sounds like some 50s/60s era white flight policy permanently enshrining cars into city life. I've been to Bentonville (~2016) quite a bit for work, always said I'd go to Fayetteville next time. Bentonville wasn't anything worth writing about for how I want to live but I can see it being an attractive place for quite a lot of people, I was kind of surprised by how underpopulated it seemed. I guess not a lot of jobs outside of the obvious few. Crystal Bridges was a great museum, the Ozarks are lovely. In general I felt a lot more positive visiting that area than I was expecting to.

mperham 5y ago
So much of American zoning code makes our suburbs into ugly, inhumane places. StrongTowns.org is a good place to start. Their blog is great and will quickly radicalize you.
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drivers99 5y ago
A couple YouTube channels I'd suggest: https://www.youtube.com/notjustbikes https://www.youtube.com/notjustbikes https://www.youtube.com/c/OhTheUrbanity https://www.youtube.com/c/OhTheUrbanity https://www.youtube.com/c/CityBeautiful https://www.youtube.com/c/CityBeautiful If you want to go deep on parking policy, here's a talk by Donald Shoup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0gokb4rPik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0gokb4rPik
Cryptid 5y ago
the webiste Strong Towns has some good info on parking minimums: https://www.strongtowns.org/parking https://www.strongtowns.org/parking https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/11/25/parking-minimums-from-101-to-taking-action https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/11/25/parking-minim... Some more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-26/to-save-the-planet-kill-minimum-parking-mandates https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-26/to-save-t...
5y ago

pessimizer 5y ago

Seeing as this just changed six years ago, it's a bit early to start calling it a success. I spent a lot of my teenage years in Fayetteville, and remember parking sucking downtown and near Dickson. Ending parking requirements six years ago just means that they're six years into a project during which they're going to gradually make parking even worse, and see what happens. "And that’s kind of the point. Business owners shouldn’t have to be experts in parking regulations to decide if a site will work for them." If that's the point, it's a shit point. What other regulations shouldn't they be forced to read or think about?

andys627 5y ago
It's more about the city planners not having to be parking experts. Parking minimums are one of many subsidies to drivers in that they set a supply floor for parking spots. If driving is so popular then why do we have to shower drivers with money at every level of government?
- treis 5y ago
  The restaurant mentioned likely relies on street parking for those that drive there. As a shared & city owned resource it's within the purview of the city to manage it. For the most part this story is overblown. Few cities have parking minimums in their cores these days. And you'll find few that support parking minimums there.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    It would be interesting to see city ban all traffic in their area. No private or public vehicles, taxis, delivery trucks, busses or emergency vehicles. Just allow certain sized cargo bikes and like. The true only walking neighbourhood.
  - 8note 5y ago
    Within covid lockdown, plenty of restaurants have moved their seating into the street parking spaces in seattle, and they seem to be doing fine
5y ago

JoeAltmaier 5y ago

Uber, Chomp and 100 other modern innovations may have put the one-person-one-car idea in the dust bin.

vkou 5y ago
Yes, by flooding our cities with 'zero-person-one-car' traffic. (An Uber driver going to a pickup point is a car on the road that is, effectively, transporting exactly zero people.) From a fewer-cars-need-to-be-built perspective, it's an improvement. From a traffic/GHG emissions/more-roads-need-to-be-built perspective, it's a regression.
- lkbm 5y ago
  Not sure we'd need more roads. Nearly every road in my area could add a lane by simply eliminating street parking on one side. (Pickup/dropoff might be annoying with no parking lane, but honestly, they use the bike lane for that more often than the parking lane.)
- thehappypm 5y ago
  If Uber is working properly the amount of time drivers are alone should be very small.
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  All good points. But not related to parking, which was the OP's point.
- 8note 5y ago
  Roads are already full of zero-person-one-car traffic, too. It's called on street parking
  - vkou 5y ago
    A car in motion requires a lot more road space than a parked car. Two seconds of travel time in good road conditions, up to four seconds in bad.

DannyB2 5y ago

Obvious conclusion: since the removal of minimum parking requirements worked in this particular situation, they work everywhere for everyone in all situations.

mchusma 5y ago

I do recommend the book "The High Cost of Free Parking." The podcast EconTalk did an episode with him too. It's very clear to me after reading these that government enforced parking minimums and free parking should go.

chizhik-pyzhik 5y ago
I considered getting that book until I realized it's 733 pages. Is it worth at least reading some sections of it?
- johnatthebar 5y ago
  The author's follow-up, Parking and the City, is a mere 534 pages and more readable. (Part of the reason Shoup has been so successful as a policy change agent is that he's a gifted writer.) Still goes for an academic price, unfortunately. https://www.amazon.com/Parking-City-Donald-Shoup/dp/1138497126 https://www.amazon.com/Parking-City-Donald-Shoup/dp/11384971... Henry Grabar is working on what will hopefully be a more popular-press approach: https://twitter.com/henrygrabar/status/1156649614596038656 https://twitter.com/henrygrabar/status/1156649614596038656

eterevsky 5y ago

US has minimum parking mandate for businesses? Why?!

dizzant 5y ago

It is good to see support for better urban planning on Hacker News. Issues of urban planning and city design often escape notice of the popular milieu due to the banality of local politics, but are nonetheless important. One of the lasting impacts of our lives is the places we build. Make America Walkable Again.

stevage 5y ago

Ohhh is this why in American cities you see so many free standing restaurants with parking all around them? I always find them a bit weird, we don't have many like that here in Melbourne. Usual pattern here if driving to restaurant is spending a long time looking for a park then a long walk. It's good to get the exercise afterwards

bradlys 5y ago
The problem is that in the US - that can often mean an hour long walk or more both ways. People don’t want to go out for food if it means walking near a loud and ugly street (where there might not even be a pathway for pedestrians) for over an hour each way…

radres 5y ago

Oh, those ugly looking parking spaces in front of every business was an enforced thing in the US?

ceras 5y ago
Yes. Parking is required for essentially all building types in the US, including office buildings and residential buildings (houses, apartments) too. Often even in very dense areas with public transit.

mywittyname 5y ago

Cars are a fundamental requirement for living in most of America. The problems which arise from lack of parking is that cars become a nuisance fast. I lived in an apartment complex where the parking minimum requirements were...bent... by the developer and it was by far the worst place I ever lived. Basically, what happened was the complex was under development, and the soil couldn't support a parking lot where one was planned due to drainage. So parking was added to another section of the development, around 1.0mi or so down the road. Meaning one complex had 4 spots per unit, with the other had like 0.5 spots per unit, but it worked out to 2.25 or something spots per unit on average. (I know this because I was friends with the complex manager, and she gave me the details) The end result was people would park on sidewalks, in the middle of the road, in front of garages, double park, etc. It was a nightmare of epic proportions. People blocked in by assholes would blare their horns at 6AM. Others would intentionally "move" cars out of the way, which led to fights. There was a shooting. The fire marshal stepped in and started fining the complex, but they couldn't get people to stop, short of evictions. The people who paid ridiculous amounts of money for their town homes next door were so pissed off about people parking in their private community that the cops were constantly harassing people for trespassing. I faced this myself just by going for a walk. Why didn't people just get cars towed? Because tow trucks won't come out on someone's word. You actually have to go and tell the main office, then they have to call the tow company. But the thing is, the tow company doesn't tell you that, they just say they are "on their way," so you wait an hour or two for them to tow the car blocking you in and they never come. So yeah, minimum parking is bad. But no minimum parking when everyone ones a car is worse. You need space for cars somewhere. I say this as a person who absolutely loves walkable cities, and lives in a decently walkable one myself. We need to get rid of parking minimums, but we need to be smart about it. Maybe have the developers build parking in lots in designated areas on the perimeter of the development (kind of like those outdoor malls have)?

johnatthebar 5y ago
Pretty persuasive! Though also (I think) a pretty good illustration of why developers will almost always try to include some on-site parking even if it's not mandatory. In this case it seems as if they decided that completing construction on an unpleasant apartment building would be more profitable than walking away from it mid-project, and then persuaded the city to let them complete it. Which city was this, if you don't mind saying? About how many units in your building? Was there any attempt by the city to manage the curbsides with permits etc? I'd think that'd be part of the solution in this case.