5 ms·

The main low-hanging fruit is just removing surface parking lots in American downtowns and stopping the development and expansion of highways through the same.

by ericmay 6mo ago

The main low-hanging fruit is just removing surface parking lots in American downtowns and stopping the development and expansion of highways through the same. If you did nothing else that would have a significant positive impact. For almost all communities those surface parking lots are economic extracts from the community. They're woefully underpriced for tax purposes too.

spike021 6mo ago
Maybe the parking lots, but if you know anything about the major Japanese cities with satisfyingly good train systems then you'll also know they have a lot of expressways running through them.
- ericmay 6mo ago
  Yes, I do love the rail system in Japan. Went a few years ago, going back next year most likely. I've also driven in Japan (Osaka). I just meant, in general, a low-hanging fruit we could tackle is making surface parking lots a thing of the past in downtown or urban areas. With actual economically productive constructs there instead, such as business, retail, housing, parks, &c. we could pretty much get to the density where trams make sense, and in some cities we could work on intra-city rail too. I think where I live (Columbus) is very well positioned for this model if only our civic leaders had courage and stopped thinking of transit as a "blue" thing (also our city council needs to stop suburban thinking). We don't need to build any more expressways or highways. We are maxed out. The only sane option is respecting appropriate density, and focusing on categorical changes in how we move people: walk/bike/rail instead of bus/car/roadways.
  - fc417fc802 6mo ago
    > we could pretty much get to the density where trams make sense That's the key issue. We don't need to launch a war on surface parking to achieve the necessary density. Zoning and mass transit buildout go hand in hand and the problem getting in the way is fundamentally a political one. If the politics is solved and the density increases market forces will cause the surface parking to go away on their own.
    - zozbot234 6mo ago
      Surface parking is a huge waste of space that becomes unusable for pedestrians. You can't apply market forces to it because unpaid roadside parking is effectively a tragedy of the commons.
    - ericmay 6mo ago
      You do though, because you need a higher level of density to make transit make sense, and you need more interesting places for people to live and walk to. When you have easy and convenient parking, particularly these surface lots in downtown areas, you kill the downtown because there's nobody there to support business outside of 9-5 office commutes.
al_borland 6mo ago
The removed parking needs to be replaced by transit options people actually want to use. I live just outside a fairly large city. Getting downtown sucks. Driving is the only real option, but parking is annoying and expensive. Even if it was free, it would still be annoying. I almost exclusively take an Uber because of it. Those can add up and be a mixed bag as well. There is bus service, but it’s infrequent and quadruples the time. In some cases, the transit directions say 1h 20 minutes, where 47 minutes of that is walking. Meanwhile, a car is under 20 minutes. I used to live outside of Chicago. The Metra could get me downtown faster than a car (during rush hour) for just a few bucks. The train became the pragmatic choice and dictated where I chose to live. Removing parking doesn’t build a train, it just raises parking rates, keeping people from even bothering to go downtown. I agree that surface lots are terrible, but they have to be replaced by something.
- dnnddidiej 6mo ago
  Buses are a simpler solution. A city should solve the anywhere to downtown is quick on bus or train thing. You need transit lanes and more buses. Ideal is public transit is faster and cheaper. Even someone who already has a car will not use it. Then once solved, let people get across from one suburb to the next on transit quickly but that is harder to do economically.
  - ericmay 6mo ago
    Simpler solution but they’re a strictly worse version of your car and they still depend on highway widening projects. In other words, more of the same. To change the culture in the US we will have to make category changes. Cars and busses are in one category, walking, biking, and rail options in another. We need the latter or we risk just wasting time, effort, and resources. Busses make more sense and work better as an add-on to rail systems and walking/biking.
    - dnnddidiej 6mo ago
      A typical commute bus would carry 30-80 people so that replaces probably 30-80 cars. I don't know how a bus is worse than a train in this regard. Both need land to be built. Unless you are talking underground but they are expensive. If your city is a shit place to commute adding buses and bus lanes can help. Once you are on a bus zooming past all the traffic you can see. Also important point: I'd do min 300m between stops maybe more. I would be more pro train and anti bus for "last mile(s)" if the bus is petrol but if all electric I am for the bus! Where I live there are a plethora of places my kids can get to on a bus much quicker than even if we were near a station and they got a train.
cyberax 6mo ago
> The main low-hanging fruit is just removing surface parking lots You're pre-supposing that transit is _better_ than cars. It's not. ESPECIALLY the Japanese transit. I certainly don't want to suffer through this bullshit every day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9Xg7ui5mLA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9Xg7ui5mLA
- fc417fc802 6mo ago
  That is wild, I wouldn't have nearly enough faith in the structural integrity of the doors for that. Not to mention that packing people in like that seems vaguely unsafe.
- tnk0 6mo ago
  I'm a Tokyo local and yes, this is real. Even I find it uncomfortable. On the Yamanote Line during rush hour, trains come every 2-3 minutes and it can still look close to this. That said, most people's daily commute isn't this extreme -- it depends heavily on the line and direction. The tradeoff most Tokyo residents accept is: 30 minutes of crowded train vs. hours stuck in traffic with nowhere to park.
  - tuna74 6mo ago
    There is ample parking everywhere in Japan, you just have to pay for it.
  - ericmay 6mo ago
    The OP is missing that you do the same thing you just do it in a car in a congested highway with your road rage, spend a lot of money, and all of that to avoid the impression of a subway ride that would never happen in an American city except maybe New York because these cities obviously lack population density at the scale of Tokyo. Oh and you get in car crashes and die. This isn’t an anti-car rant. I’m actually trying to just get folks who don’t want to drive and shouldn’t be driving off the road so we can save money and do more with the infrastructure we already have while restoring economic bases and entrepreneurship to our non-coastal cities. It is quite literally a win for everyone except bloated highway departments and their downstream contractors.
underlipton 6mo ago
Small quibble: visits downtown are an uncommon occurrence for many (most?) Americans. The vast majority of their transit is intra/inter-suburb. Where I live, it's relatively simple and easy to hop on a commuter train or bus to get downtown. It's impossible to use public transit to get from one place along the ring road to another, or from one side of a particular suburb to another. Therefore, everyone still needs a car.

by ericmay 6mo ago

spike021 6mo ago

Maybe the parking lots, but if you know anything about the major Japanese cities with satisfyingly good train systems then you'll also know they have a lot of expressways running through them.

ericmay 6mo ago
Yes, I do love the rail system in Japan. Went a few years ago, going back next year most likely. I've also driven in Japan (Osaka). I just meant, in general, a low-hanging fruit we could tackle is making surface parking lots a thing of the past in downtown or urban areas. With actual economically productive constructs there instead, such as business, retail, housing, parks, &c. we could pretty much get to the density where trams make sense, and in some cities we could work on intra-city rail too. I think where I live (Columbus) is very well positioned for this model if only our civic leaders had courage and stopped thinking of transit as a "blue" thing (also our city council needs to stop suburban thinking). We don't need to build any more expressways or highways. We are maxed out. The only sane option is respecting appropriate density, and focusing on categorical changes in how we move people: walk/bike/rail instead of bus/car/roadways.
- fc417fc802 6mo ago
  > we could pretty much get to the density where trams make sense That's the key issue. We don't need to launch a war on surface parking to achieve the necessary density. Zoning and mass transit buildout go hand in hand and the problem getting in the way is fundamentally a political one. If the politics is solved and the density increases market forces will cause the surface parking to go away on their own.
  - zozbot234 6mo ago
    Surface parking is a huge waste of space that becomes unusable for pedestrians. You can't apply market forces to it because unpaid roadside parking is effectively a tragedy of the commons.
  - ericmay 6mo ago
    You do though, because you need a higher level of density to make transit make sense, and you need more interesting places for people to live and walk to. When you have easy and convenient parking, particularly these surface lots in downtown areas, you kill the downtown because there's nobody there to support business outside of 9-5 office commutes.

al_borland 6mo ago

The removed parking needs to be replaced by transit options people actually want to use. I live just outside a fairly large city. Getting downtown sucks. Driving is the only real option, but parking is annoying and expensive. Even if it was free, it would still be annoying. I almost exclusively take an Uber because of it. Those can add up and be a mixed bag as well. There is bus service, but it’s infrequent and quadruples the time. In some cases, the transit directions say 1h 20 minutes, where 47 minutes of that is walking. Meanwhile, a car is under 20 minutes. I used to live outside of Chicago. The Metra could get me downtown faster than a car (during rush hour) for just a few bucks. The train became the pragmatic choice and dictated where I chose to live. Removing parking doesn’t build a train, it just raises parking rates, keeping people from even bothering to go downtown. I agree that surface lots are terrible, but they have to be replaced by something.

dnnddidiej 6mo ago
Buses are a simpler solution. A city should solve the anywhere to downtown is quick on bus or train thing. You need transit lanes and more buses. Ideal is public transit is faster and cheaper. Even someone who already has a car will not use it. Then once solved, let people get across from one suburb to the next on transit quickly but that is harder to do economically.
- ericmay 6mo ago
  Simpler solution but they’re a strictly worse version of your car and they still depend on highway widening projects. In other words, more of the same. To change the culture in the US we will have to make category changes. Cars and busses are in one category, walking, biking, and rail options in another. We need the latter or we risk just wasting time, effort, and resources. Busses make more sense and work better as an add-on to rail systems and walking/biking.
  - dnnddidiej 6mo ago
    A typical commute bus would carry 30-80 people so that replaces probably 30-80 cars. I don't know how a bus is worse than a train in this regard. Both need land to be built. Unless you are talking underground but they are expensive. If your city is a shit place to commute adding buses and bus lanes can help. Once you are on a bus zooming past all the traffic you can see. Also important point: I'd do min 300m between stops maybe more. I would be more pro train and anti bus for "last mile(s)" if the bus is petrol but if all electric I am for the bus! Where I live there are a plethora of places my kids can get to on a bus much quicker than even if we were near a station and they got a train.

cyberax 6mo ago

> The main low-hanging fruit is just removing surface parking lots You're pre-supposing that transit is _better_ than cars. It's not. ESPECIALLY the Japanese transit. I certainly don't want to suffer through this bullshit every day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9Xg7ui5mLA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9Xg7ui5mLA

fc417fc802 6mo ago
That is wild, I wouldn't have nearly enough faith in the structural integrity of the doors for that. Not to mention that packing people in like that seems vaguely unsafe.
tnk0 6mo ago
I'm a Tokyo local and yes, this is real. Even I find it uncomfortable. On the Yamanote Line during rush hour, trains come every 2-3 minutes and it can still look close to this. That said, most people's daily commute isn't this extreme -- it depends heavily on the line and direction. The tradeoff most Tokyo residents accept is: 30 minutes of crowded train vs. hours stuck in traffic with nowhere to park.
- tuna74 6mo ago
  There is ample parking everywhere in Japan, you just have to pay for it.
- ericmay 6mo ago
  The OP is missing that you do the same thing you just do it in a car in a congested highway with your road rage, spend a lot of money, and all of that to avoid the impression of a subway ride that would never happen in an American city except maybe New York because these cities obviously lack population density at the scale of Tokyo. Oh and you get in car crashes and die. This isn’t an anti-car rant. I’m actually trying to just get folks who don’t want to drive and shouldn’t be driving off the road so we can save money and do more with the infrastructure we already have while restoring economic bases and entrepreneurship to our non-coastal cities. It is quite literally a win for everyone except bloated highway departments and their downstream contractors.

underlipton 6mo ago

Small quibble: visits downtown are an uncommon occurrence for many (most?) Americans. The vast majority of their transit is intra/inter-suburb. Where I live, it's relatively simple and easy to hop on a commuter train or bus to get downtown. It's impossible to use public transit to get from one place along the ring road to another, or from one side of a particular suburb to another. Therefore, everyone still needs a car.