3 ms·

Public transportation is one piece of the puzzle. Cities that are truly great for car-free living are also walkable and cyclable, and have dedicated infrastruct

Public transportation is one piece of the puzzle. Cities that are truly great for car-free living are also walkable and cyclable, and have dedicated infrastructure to this end. Public transit gets you part-way there, since unlike cars, public transit, even buses, do not really make the streets dangerous and hostile the way that individual transport vehicles do. Still, it's important to remember that public transit is a key part of a broader approach to the problem and not the end-all solution itself.

ethbr0 4y ago
I'm not in zoning, so no idea if this is already done, but it would be great to have a (probably national-level) standardized formula for calculating a transit credit for a development that could be applied to decrease required parking spaces. I.e. having a light or heavy rail stop within 2 miles gives an X credit, having a grocery or mixed use commercial (food and services) within 2 miles gives a Y credit, having bike storage and lanes gives a Z credit Essentially, attempt to quantify the holistic experience of residents, when talking about parking requirements. If we make the kind of housing / communities we'd like to see cheaper, developers will start building it naturally. Edit: From the linked Reddit post: "In January 2013, LA enacted its first major parking reduction, essentially giving developers the option of replacing up to 15% of their required residential parking with bike parking if they are within 1500ft of a major light rail or metro station. However, these bike spaces must be “long term” spaces, which require locked cages, a dedicated bike servicing area." (But also notes some requirements around the bike spaces that increase the cost of making that trade-off)
- actionablefiber 4y ago
  Why not just abolish parking minimums so that car-free neighborhoods are legal to build from the get-go?
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    Because then everyone would always build no-parking developments to maximize profit, even in neighborhoods unsuitable for it. E.g. no public transit, no nearby grocery store.
    - actionablefiber 4y ago
      Market dynamics would solve for this pretty quickly. If a neighborhood of no-parking developments had no grocery store, then building one would be a blindingly obvious opportunity. If the neighborhood is actually incorrigibly unsuitable for zero parking, then developers would have to build parking to attract buyers. But if you mandate parking minimums based on a formula then you have absolutely no mechanism for A) discovering how much or how little parking is actually required in each neighborhood (only top-down prescriptions based on a system that may or may not reflect the reality on the ground), and B) you categorically shut out the scenario where a neighborhood densifies before the commerce/transit is there for it, which then in turn attracts commerce/transit to move in and meet the demand.
      - ethbr0 4y ago
        Ha! Development is... substantially less organized and intelligent, less agile, and happens over longer timeframes than you're thinking. Most developers would have no problem building two apartment buildings right next to each other, on every foot of available space, with no parking, selling everything, and then never giving their futures a second thought. Zoning exists precisely because all building parties involved in are absolutely mercenary, and yet the city has to deal with the mess in the subsequent decades. The entire parking requirement was created because previously developers had overburden street spaces without care.
        actionablefiber 4y ago
        > Most developers would have no problem building two apartment buildings right next to each other, on every foot of available space, with no parking, selling everything, and then never giving their futures a second thought. So what's going on with the developer's counterparty in this transaction? I'd be happy to buy a property without parking because I don't drive a car and I find that all the extra asphalt in a neighborhood dedicated to cars actively makes it worse. I'll grant that removing any parking requirement creates short-term chaos in places where developers under-judge the amount of parking necessary, but I also think that people systematically over-estimate how much parking a place actually needs, and that over-building parking necessarily induces demand for cars because it forces the built environment to become spread out and less walkable. I also think that if the right incentive structures are in place that it's a problem that sorts itself out in fairly short order. In this case if you build a dense housing development with very little parking and no nearby shops then a grocery store on the corner is pretty much risk-free profit since you have a large customer base in close proximity with no competition selling essential goods. If you strip out parking requirements and zoning then you also clear out a lot of the red tape that makes such store difficult or outright illegal to build. > Zoning exists precisely because all building parties involved in are absolutely mercenary, and yet the city has to deal with the mess in the subsequent decades. > The entire parking requirement was created because previously developers had overburden street spaces without care. Zoning is precisely what created communities that have such hopelessly ingrained car dependence and therefore demand huge amounts of dedicated asphalt just for basic transportation. The "streetcar suburbs" in North America, which were built before modern zoning and before car ownership became an explicit assumption of developmental policy, are still in high demand even with the streetcars ripped out because the lower setback requirements, reduced/nonexistent driveway space, narrower streets, and corner shops make it a more livable and friendly environment.
  - DrScump 4y ago
    >car-free neighborhoods Are people in those neighborhoods willing to forgo the hundreds of vehicle trips a month that they will create via their Uber/Lyft/cab trips and Instacart, Amazon, Chewy, Doordash, and Uber Eats orders? Simply outsourcing those car trips to someone else, and leaving them nowhere to stop in the process, is a hypocritical pipe dream.
    - actionablefiber 4y ago
      > Are people in those neighborhoods willing to forgo the hundreds of vehicle trips a month that they will create via their Uber/Lyft/cab trips and Instacart, Amazon, Chewy, Doordash, and Uber Eats orders? Walkable neighborhoods existed for millennia before these apps were invented. People just walked to a shop a block away for the things they needed. Not sure why you think that you have to "outsource those car trips to someone else" when many neighborhoods already don't need car trips at all. I live car-free in the DC metro area. I ride a bicycle with a rack on the rear for attaching bags, I have a collapsible shopping cart that I can take on the bus, and I have a dolly for moving heavy objects short distances. I've gotten a lot done with them.
      - masonic 4y ago
        >People just walked to a shop a block away for the things they needed. Those days are gone because no small "shop a block away" can compete with the behemoths of Amazon, Instacart or major supermarket chains that deliver, or cloud kitchens with DoorDash or UberEats, not unlike how American fast food chains and Starbucks crowded out a lot of former native mom-and-pop cafes and restaurants. What "existed for millennia" only had to compete with nearest such other small business in each direction. Now, they're competing with the world's supply chain. Just look at a traffic cam in any "walkable city" where vehicles still run and count the brand names crowding the streets doing trips that just didn't happen even 20 years ago.
nopenopenopeno 4y ago
It’s the politically difficult, or more often politically impossible, part of the puzzle.
- actionablefiber 4y ago
  Oh, completely. There's a whole host of problems strongly linked to American car-dependent development for which the solutions already exist and have been in use for some time elsewhere. Air quality, street congestion, traffic fatalities, obesity, high cost-of-living, poor accessibility for the disabled, children growing up with little independence or hobbies outside the home, housing shortage, and the general unhappiness of people who have no choice but to drive everywhere to do anything in a congested suburban town. The obstacles are not technological and have not been for some time. It's fully a social and political problem.

ethbr0 4y ago

I'm not in zoning, so no idea if this is already done, but it would be great to have a (probably national-level) standardized formula for calculating a transit credit for a development that could be applied to decrease required parking spaces. I.e. having a light or heavy rail stop within 2 miles gives an X credit, having a grocery or mixed use commercial (food and services) within 2 miles gives a Y credit, having bike storage and lanes gives a Z credit Essentially, attempt to quantify the holistic experience of residents, when talking about parking requirements. If we make the kind of housing / communities we'd like to see cheaper, developers will start building it naturally. Edit: From the linked Reddit post: "In January 2013, LA enacted its first major parking reduction, essentially giving developers the option of replacing up to 15% of their required residential parking with bike parking if they are within 1500ft of a major light rail or metro station. However, these bike spaces must be “long term” spaces, which require locked cages, a dedicated bike servicing area." (But also notes some requirements around the bike spaces that increase the cost of making that trade-off)

actionablefiber 4y ago
Why not just abolish parking minimums so that car-free neighborhoods are legal to build from the get-go?
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Because then everyone would always build no-parking developments to maximize profit, even in neighborhoods unsuitable for it. E.g. no public transit, no nearby grocery store.
  - actionablefiber 4y ago
    Market dynamics would solve for this pretty quickly. If a neighborhood of no-parking developments had no grocery store, then building one would be a blindingly obvious opportunity. If the neighborhood is actually incorrigibly unsuitable for zero parking, then developers would have to build parking to attract buyers. But if you mandate parking minimums based on a formula then you have absolutely no mechanism for A) discovering how much or how little parking is actually required in each neighborhood (only top-down prescriptions based on a system that may or may not reflect the reality on the ground), and B) you categorically shut out the scenario where a neighborhood densifies before the commerce/transit is there for it, which then in turn attracts commerce/transit to move in and meet the demand.
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      Ha! Development is... substantially less organized and intelligent, less agile, and happens over longer timeframes than you're thinking. Most developers would have no problem building two apartment buildings right next to each other, on every foot of available space, with no parking, selling everything, and then never giving their futures a second thought. Zoning exists precisely because all building parties involved in are absolutely mercenary, and yet the city has to deal with the mess in the subsequent decades. The entire parking requirement was created because previously developers had overburden street spaces without care.
      - actionablefiber 4y ago
        > Most developers would have no problem building two apartment buildings right next to each other, on every foot of available space, with no parking, selling everything, and then never giving their futures a second thought. So what's going on with the developer's counterparty in this transaction? I'd be happy to buy a property without parking because I don't drive a car and I find that all the extra asphalt in a neighborhood dedicated to cars actively makes it worse. I'll grant that removing any parking requirement creates short-term chaos in places where developers under-judge the amount of parking necessary, but I also think that people systematically over-estimate how much parking a place actually needs, and that over-building parking necessarily induces demand for cars because it forces the built environment to become spread out and less walkable. I also think that if the right incentive structures are in place that it's a problem that sorts itself out in fairly short order. In this case if you build a dense housing development with very little parking and no nearby shops then a grocery store on the corner is pretty much risk-free profit since you have a large customer base in close proximity with no competition selling essential goods. If you strip out parking requirements and zoning then you also clear out a lot of the red tape that makes such store difficult or outright illegal to build. > Zoning exists precisely because all building parties involved in are absolutely mercenary, and yet the city has to deal with the mess in the subsequent decades. > The entire parking requirement was created because previously developers had overburden street spaces without care. Zoning is precisely what created communities that have such hopelessly ingrained car dependence and therefore demand huge amounts of dedicated asphalt just for basic transportation. The "streetcar suburbs" in North America, which were built before modern zoning and before car ownership became an explicit assumption of developmental policy, are still in high demand even with the streetcars ripped out because the lower setback requirements, reduced/nonexistent driveway space, narrower streets, and corner shops make it a more livable and friendly environment.
- DrScump 4y ago
  >car-free neighborhoods Are people in those neighborhoods willing to forgo the hundreds of vehicle trips a month that they will create via their Uber/Lyft/cab trips and Instacart, Amazon, Chewy, Doordash, and Uber Eats orders? Simply outsourcing those car trips to someone else, and leaving them nowhere to stop in the process, is a hypocritical pipe dream.
  - actionablefiber 4y ago
    > Are people in those neighborhoods willing to forgo the hundreds of vehicle trips a month that they will create via their Uber/Lyft/cab trips and Instacart, Amazon, Chewy, Doordash, and Uber Eats orders? Walkable neighborhoods existed for millennia before these apps were invented. People just walked to a shop a block away for the things they needed. Not sure why you think that you have to "outsource those car trips to someone else" when many neighborhoods already don't need car trips at all. I live car-free in the DC metro area. I ride a bicycle with a rack on the rear for attaching bags, I have a collapsible shopping cart that I can take on the bus, and I have a dolly for moving heavy objects short distances. I've gotten a lot done with them.
    - masonic 4y ago
      >People just walked to a shop a block away for the things they needed. Those days are gone because no small "shop a block away" can compete with the behemoths of Amazon, Instacart or major supermarket chains that deliver, or cloud kitchens with DoorDash or UberEats, not unlike how American fast food chains and Starbucks crowded out a lot of former native mom-and-pop cafes and restaurants. What "existed for millennia" only had to compete with nearest such other small business in each direction. Now, they're competing with the world's supply chain. Just look at a traffic cam in any "walkable city" where vehicles still run and count the brand names crowding the streets doing trips that just didn't happen even 20 years ago.

nopenopenopeno 4y ago

It’s the politically difficult, or more often politically impossible, part of the puzzle.

actionablefiber 4y ago
Oh, completely. There's a whole host of problems strongly linked to American car-dependent development for which the solutions already exist and have been in use for some time elsewhere. Air quality, street congestion, traffic fatalities, obesity, high cost-of-living, poor accessibility for the disabled, children growing up with little independence or hobbies outside the home, housing shortage, and the general unhappiness of people who have no choice but to drive everywhere to do anything in a congested suburban town. The obstacles are not technological and have not been for some time. It's fully a social and political problem.