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You can take your car if its existence doesn't infringe on everyone else having a nice city where people can walk. For that to happen your convenience of being

by piva00 1y ago

You can take your car if its existence doesn't infringe on everyone else having a nice city where people can walk. For that to happen your convenience of being able to park anywhere close to your final destination will mostly disappear, you will have to find parking in a parking garage, walk up and down stairs (or take an elevator) to get to the street, and walk to your destination. I don't advocate for the extinction of cars, you can have it, just don't expect whole cities to be catered for your individualistic choice of mode of transportation and we are fine.

AnthonyMouse 1y ago
The problem is this: If you try to allow a new dense development near the suburbs and make it affordable by not having minimum parking requirements, people object to it. Not because they want to live there and need somewhere to park their car, but because they don't want local housing to be more affordable or to have a bunch of young people with lower incomes move in and want to send their kids your school district. Developers aren't stupid; the reason they're banned from building housing without parking isn't because they were going to build something nobody wanted to buy. So then that kind of development can't get built, and the bulk of the housing consists of low density suburbs where you need a car, and then everybody drives everywhere. But instead of solving the actual problem, people start trying to come up with ways to make driving worse because they don't like all the cars. Then it's actually the drivers who object, because you're trying to suppress the thing they're forced to do without letting them do the thing that allows them to avoid it.
- bmicraft 1y ago
  So, not stupid, instead only selfish. Much better.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    It changes what you have to do in order to fix it. The problem isn't the parking spaces, the parking spaces are the symptom. The problem is that medium and high density housing construction and mixed use zoning are heavily restricted, and the cause is zoning boards captured by incumbent homeowners who want housing prices to go up instead of becoming more affordable. You can't win if you're fighting the wrong fight.
JoshTriplett 1y ago
To clarify something: I feel the same way about excessive amounts of parking. Taxis are much better on that front, and provide point-to-point transportation. I would love to see a fleet of electric taxis forming part of the public transportation strategy. (In an ideal future world, I'd love to see self-driving electric taxis.) And I absolutely think that paths for walkers and paths for cars should not intersect; either cars should be underground or walking paths should be raised (which, if built densely enough, is roughly equivalent).

by piva00 1y ago

AnthonyMouse 1y ago

The problem is this: If you try to allow a new dense development near the suburbs and make it affordable by not having minimum parking requirements, people object to it. Not because they want to live there and need somewhere to park their car, but because they don't want local housing to be more affordable or to have a bunch of young people with lower incomes move in and want to send their kids your school district. Developers aren't stupid; the reason they're banned from building housing without parking isn't because they were going to build something nobody wanted to buy. So then that kind of development can't get built, and the bulk of the housing consists of low density suburbs where you need a car, and then everybody drives everywhere. But instead of solving the actual problem, people start trying to come up with ways to make driving worse because they don't like all the cars. Then it's actually the drivers who object, because you're trying to suppress the thing they're forced to do without letting them do the thing that allows them to avoid it.

bmicraft 1y ago
So, not stupid, instead only selfish. Much better.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  It changes what you have to do in order to fix it. The problem isn't the parking spaces, the parking spaces are the symptom. The problem is that medium and high density housing construction and mixed use zoning are heavily restricted, and the cause is zoning boards captured by incumbent homeowners who want housing prices to go up instead of becoming more affordable. You can't win if you're fighting the wrong fight.

JoshTriplett 1y ago

To clarify something: I feel the same way about excessive amounts of parking. Taxis are much better on that front, and provide point-to-point transportation. I would love to see a fleet of electric taxis forming part of the public transportation strategy. (In an ideal future world, I'd love to see self-driving electric taxis.) And I absolutely think that paths for walkers and paths for cars should not intersect; either cars should be underground or walking paths should be raised (which, if built densely enough, is roughly equivalent).