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Articles like this annoy because the underlying tone is, "Well, you shouldn't have a car." But I don't know anyone over 30 who doesn't have one. The bus syste

Articles like this annoy because the underlying tone is, "Well, you shouldn't have a car." But I don't know anyone over 30 who doesn't have one. The bus system doesn't go everywhere. How would I get to Mt. Rainier, or get around Bainbridge, or for that matter over to work? I've taken the bus and I've driven from Seattle to Redmond; the bus takes twice as long for me to get from home to where I'm going. Rent goes up. If you don't like paying high rent, move to Texas.

ericabiz 13y ago
Sounds like you live in Seattle. When I visited there recently, I used car2go instead of renting a car. It's a car sharing service like Zipcar, but unlike Zipcar, you can drop a car off anywhere in their network instead of having to return the car to where you picked it up. Very cool. I use them here in Austin, too, where I live (and they started.) > If you don't like paying high rent, move to Texas. Sadly, not so much true these days, although here in Austin you can make 100% of your mortgage back via Airbnb or having roommates.
- aaronbrethorst 13y ago
  It sounds like they live 30 minutes away from Seattle by ferry (Bainbridge Island). Car2go doesn't 'work' there. The answer, of course, is move to the Seattle urban core. (And car2go actually launched in Germany about 2 years before Austin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car2Go http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car2Go)
thrownaway2424 13y ago
The point is to not force people to build the parking by having minimum parking laws. If some building wants to have lots of underground parking, fine, and if another building wants to have units that are $20k cheaper because they lack parking, that's also fine.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
dredmorbius 13y ago
I don't know anyone over 30 who doesn't have one For people under 30, not owning a car is becoming increasingly the rule. And I know several above-30 types without cars. They may rely on transit-only (a city designed to be unfriendly to cars is much friendlier to transit and walking), hire cars as needed, or use a car-share service (which still greatly reduces car dependence and parking requirements). Self-driving vehicles which can park themselves elsewhere are another obvious solution. In crowded cities, cars aren't faster than buses (though they're typically more flexible for multi-stop trips), and parking requirements at your destination greatly increase costs ($20 - $50+/day isn't unusual).
- kalleboo 13y ago
  > In crowded cities, cars aren't faster than buses And especially not faster than a well-designed subway system
- dman 13y ago
  I saw quite a few people revisit their decision about not owning a car post hurricane sandy. Zipcar etc are well and good for everyday use but good luck for peak usage scenarios during natural disasters.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    Often a bike or access to some form of group/mass transit is going to do you much better in an evacuation situation: you can navigate through debris-clogged streets, standing water, and above all else, traffic jams.
kalleboo 13y ago
> But I don't know anyone over 30 who doesn't have one. That just completely depends on where you live.
mathgladiator 13y ago
I think it requires strategy going forward, and it's going to require a mixture of things. I highly recommend bicycle; I commute daily from bainbridge island to downtown Seattle. It's a little under 12 miles a day. Having lived downtown, I can say that a car isn't needed as you can walk to 99.9% of where you need to be. That being said, living downtown is often times very limiting if you have aspirations of living freely. (Personally, I hate having neighbors that I can't control since I prefer quiet.)
njs12345 13y ago
As is touched on in the article, one of the problems with parking quotas is that they shift a major cost of owning a car in a city (parking) on to everyone, rather than just car owners. If all the external costs of driving were priced in correctly then driving would become far less attractive, increasing demand for public transit and hopefully improving service to the point where it is a realistic option for more people. FWIW, I've lived in Seattle and can understand your frustration --- the system there isn't great. When you live in a city with a good transit system you use it for your commute to work and day-to-day things and rent a car (services like Zipcar have made this easier than ever before) every once in a while when you really need it.
icambron 13y ago
Parking minimums are subsidy towards car owners from non-car owners. Why do you believe you should receive that subsidy, instead of the developers being able to choose what to build based on demand? If you want a parking spot, you should pay market price for it and developers will happily sell it to you. In other words, no one is telling you not to have a car; they're telling you that you need to pay for the space it takes up. If you want lots of cheap parking, you move to Texas. As for rent going up as a fact of life, that's silly. Rent goes up because demand increases faster than supply. That's something you can fix by increasingly supply. And since high rent just reduces your income, it doesn't make sense not to.
selfexperiments 13y ago
I'm over 30 and don't have a car. Sure, you don't know me personally, but there's a growing number of environmentally aware people who aren't buying into the car culture. Hopefully you (and your friends) will be in the minority soon.
jseliger 13y ago
Articles like this annoy because the underlying tone is, "Well, you shouldn't have a car." I don't think that's true: the underlying point is that car owners should pay something closer to the total cost of ownership, rather than baking large parts of the cost of ownership into the larger society.
nmcfarl 13y ago
I also live in Seattle, and I also don't know anyone over 30 without a car per coupleº. But, like me and my wife, the vast majority of my friends own one car and that car is, indeed, largely used to get to Bainbridge, Rainier or Redmond. IE they are weekend cars - used to get out of the city and run some errands. A nice luxury for folk rich enough to pay many many 1000s of dollars for a toy they use on the weekend. I love it - it wouldn't be Seattle to me if I couldn't get out on the weekends, but I don't think other folk of any sort - but particularly the large number of people living in Seattle on less than I am - should be subsidizing my toys. And, as such, I don't think we should be requiring parking for new construction. -- º I do know one solo 50-something who manages to go carless and, like our 20 something friends, I don't think she's missing much. She's got a great network of folk with cars to ferry her to the mountains and she (and they) are out there nearly every weekend in the summer. -- I also do know of a lot of people outside of my social circle who have 2 cars per couple and live in places like Puyallup and commute an hour plus each way into downtown Seattle everyday. Seattle is not immune to car culture, but those choices are either economic, or based on a culture I'm not part of. I'm fairly certain the suburbs, and exurbs, shouldn't be driving Seattle's city planning.
mikeash 13y ago
No, the underlying tone is, "If you have a car, you should pay all of the expenses associated with having one, rather than expecting your car ownership to be subsidized by people who don't own one." Any time a city mandates that developers install parking, that's exactly what happens: car owners are being subsidized. Car owners have come to expect free or cheap parking. Cities don't actually need to mandate parking. If they just left developers to decide, then they'd only build parking if it was profitable. That means that the market price for parking would rise until it made economic sense to construct parking. This is a (I would say, the only) sensible way to do things, but car owners would revolt, because they apparently hate the idea of paying for what they use. And just for the record, I do own a car, and live in a city.
- icambron 13y ago
  This is a way better counter than my comment.

ericabiz 13y ago

Sounds like you live in Seattle. When I visited there recently, I used car2go instead of renting a car. It's a car sharing service like Zipcar, but unlike Zipcar, you can drop a car off anywhere in their network instead of having to return the car to where you picked it up. Very cool. I use them here in Austin, too, where I live (and they started.) > If you don't like paying high rent, move to Texas. Sadly, not so much true these days, although here in Austin you can make 100% of your mortgage back via Airbnb or having roommates.

aaronbrethorst 13y ago
It sounds like they live 30 minutes away from Seattle by ferry (Bainbridge Island). Car2go doesn't 'work' there. The answer, of course, is move to the Seattle urban core. (And car2go actually launched in Germany about 2 years before Austin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car2Go http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car2Go)

thrownaway2424 13y ago

The point is to not force people to build the parking by having minimum parking laws. If some building wants to have lots of underground parking, fine, and if another building wants to have units that are $20k cheaper because they lack parking, that's also fine.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

dredmorbius 13y ago

I don't know anyone over 30 who doesn't have one For people under 30, not owning a car is becoming increasingly the rule. And I know several above-30 types without cars. They may rely on transit-only (a city designed to be unfriendly to cars is much friendlier to transit and walking), hire cars as needed, or use a car-share service (which still greatly reduces car dependence and parking requirements). Self-driving vehicles which can park themselves elsewhere are another obvious solution. In crowded cities, cars aren't faster than buses (though they're typically more flexible for multi-stop trips), and parking requirements at your destination greatly increase costs ($20 - $50+/day isn't unusual).

kalleboo 13y ago
> In crowded cities, cars aren't faster than buses And especially not faster than a well-designed subway system
dman 13y ago
I saw quite a few people revisit their decision about not owning a car post hurricane sandy. Zipcar etc are well and good for everyday use but good luck for peak usage scenarios during natural disasters.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Often a bike or access to some form of group/mass transit is going to do you much better in an evacuation situation: you can navigate through debris-clogged streets, standing water, and above all else, traffic jams.

kalleboo 13y ago

> But I don't know anyone over 30 who doesn't have one. That just completely depends on where you live.

mathgladiator 13y ago

I think it requires strategy going forward, and it's going to require a mixture of things. I highly recommend bicycle; I commute daily from bainbridge island to downtown Seattle. It's a little under 12 miles a day. Having lived downtown, I can say that a car isn't needed as you can walk to 99.9% of where you need to be. That being said, living downtown is often times very limiting if you have aspirations of living freely. (Personally, I hate having neighbors that I can't control since I prefer quiet.)

njs12345 13y ago

As is touched on in the article, one of the problems with parking quotas is that they shift a major cost of owning a car in a city (parking) on to everyone, rather than just car owners. If all the external costs of driving were priced in correctly then driving would become far less attractive, increasing demand for public transit and hopefully improving service to the point where it is a realistic option for more people. FWIW, I've lived in Seattle and can understand your frustration --- the system there isn't great. When you live in a city with a good transit system you use it for your commute to work and day-to-day things and rent a car (services like Zipcar have made this easier than ever before) every once in a while when you really need it.

icambron 13y ago

Parking minimums are subsidy towards car owners from non-car owners. Why do you believe you should receive that subsidy, instead of the developers being able to choose what to build based on demand? If you want a parking spot, you should pay market price for it and developers will happily sell it to you. In other words, no one is telling you not to have a car; they're telling you that you need to pay for the space it takes up. If you want lots of cheap parking, you move to Texas. As for rent going up as a fact of life, that's silly. Rent goes up because demand increases faster than supply. That's something you can fix by increasingly supply. And since high rent just reduces your income, it doesn't make sense not to.

selfexperiments 13y ago

I'm over 30 and don't have a car. Sure, you don't know me personally, but there's a growing number of environmentally aware people who aren't buying into the car culture. Hopefully you (and your friends) will be in the minority soon.

jseliger 13y ago

Articles like this annoy because the underlying tone is, "Well, you shouldn't have a car." I don't think that's true: the underlying point is that car owners should pay something closer to the total cost of ownership, rather than baking large parts of the cost of ownership into the larger society.

nmcfarl 13y ago

I also live in Seattle, and I also don't know anyone over 30 without a car per coupleº. But, like me and my wife, the vast majority of my friends own one car and that car is, indeed, largely used to get to Bainbridge, Rainier or Redmond. IE they are weekend cars - used to get out of the city and run some errands. A nice luxury for folk rich enough to pay many many 1000s of dollars for a toy they use on the weekend. I love it - it wouldn't be Seattle to me if I couldn't get out on the weekends, but I don't think other folk of any sort - but particularly the large number of people living in Seattle on less than I am - should be subsidizing my toys. And, as such, I don't think we should be requiring parking for new construction. -- º I do know one solo 50-something who manages to go carless and, like our 20 something friends, I don't think she's missing much. She's got a great network of folk with cars to ferry her to the mountains and she (and they) are out there nearly every weekend in the summer. -- I also do know of a lot of people outside of my social circle who have 2 cars per couple and live in places like Puyallup and commute an hour plus each way into downtown Seattle everyday. Seattle is not immune to car culture, but those choices are either economic, or based on a culture I'm not part of. I'm fairly certain the suburbs, and exurbs, shouldn't be driving Seattle's city planning.

mikeash 13y ago

No, the underlying tone is, "If you have a car, you should pay all of the expenses associated with having one, rather than expecting your car ownership to be subsidized by people who don't own one." Any time a city mandates that developers install parking, that's exactly what happens: car owners are being subsidized. Car owners have come to expect free or cheap parking. Cities don't actually need to mandate parking. If they just left developers to decide, then they'd only build parking if it was profitable. That means that the market price for parking would rise until it made economic sense to construct parking. This is a (I would say, the only) sensible way to do things, but car owners would revolt, because they apparently hate the idea of paying for what they use. And just for the record, I do own a car, and live in a city.

icambron 13y ago
This is a way better counter than my comment.