4 ms·

50% more houses will need 50% more parking spaces and 50% more traffic on that now-one-way pedestrian/car lane. Perhaps what San Fransiscans want is actually no

by Lorento 11y ago

50% more houses will need 50% more parking spaces and 50% more traffic on that now-one-way pedestrian/car lane. Perhaps what San Fransiscans want is actually no increase in the number of residents because of these problems they bring?

techsupporter 11y ago
> will need 50% more parking spaces And that is the problem that is choking US cities. All of the pictures in the article show cities built around the concept of walking, cycling, and bus/train-ing to where people need and want to go. Private car ownership is lower and is far less useful. It does not (and, IMO, should not) follow that building more residences requires more legally-mandated turning over of public right-of-way to store private automobiles. Even forcing parking minimums on private lots drives the cost of housing ever skyward because those spaces take up space that could be used for housing or are located underground and, thus, even more expensive to build.
- Lorento 11y ago
  Judging by the occupied parking spaces in his photo, I think residents want cars. Whether parking is private or public, it'll still need to be there in some form for people to be happy living in that street. For people to walk/bus to work, shops, friends, they'll need much higher density housing, with workplaces mixed in and new public transport. So this single change won't help that.
  - simoncion 11y ago
    As a SF resident, former car owner, and roommate of a current car owner, I can say that we never use our car unless we either 1) Have to go somewhere that's both out of the city and out of public transit range 2) Have to get something heavy and/or bulky that can't be easily shipped to the apartment The car gets pulled out of the nearby parking garage once a month, on average. If parking wasn't such a nightmare, the car would probably get used more often. The only way to improve the parking situation is to either level housing for more parking lots (ha!), or to install more parking garages. The only palatable way to make more garages is to make the garages underground. I don't see that happening anytime soon. :) So very, very many people in SF walk, bike, bus, or Lyft/Uber to work. Very few residents drive to work if their place of work is actually in the city.
    - tizzdogg 11y ago
      Of course very, very many people also drive to work if their work is not downtown, outside the city, or otherwise difficult to access via public transport (which is a lot of places in the bay area). Or if they live outside of SF and commute in to work. I have a car and dont drive it to work, but use it daily for transporting my child. I'd say people who use a car only once a month are definitely a tiny minority. Regardless of whether that is a better way to live, it's not enough people to support eliminating as much parking as the article suggests.
      - simoncion 11y ago
        Both the 2000 and 2010 census indicate that 16% of households in SF have children. [0] Compared to other cities where 25->30% of their households have children, households with children are a tiny minority in SF. :) I agree that folks who go to destinations in the Bay Area that are outside of SF often will use a car to make the trip. Public transit in the Bay Area is shitloads better than in most of the rest of the country, but -for medium-length-to-long trips- it's still not nearly as good as renting or owning a car. I also agree that many folks drive to work if they commute in from outside the city. [1] I don't see what that has to do with parking space allocation policy inside the city. We can always set aside space on the outskirts for Park N' Rides for inbound commuters. There's no need to clutter up the streets with cars of non-residents. The Census Bureau indicates that 13.4% of SF's workers walk or bike to work. [2] That's nearly the same fraction of the city's population that has and lives with children. I wonder what the numbers would look like if it removed folks who work outside of the city.[3] If Muni went more places more frequently and more quickly [4], it's pretty obvious that even more folks would choose it over their private car. Compare New York's numbers to SF's [5]. (SF is on the left half of the table, and NYC is on the right.) Note both the percentage that choose transit over auto, and the percentages of households that don't have cars. [0] http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty.htm http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty.... [1] I guess I didn't make it sufficiently clear that I was speaking as an SF resident, as opposed to an inbound SF commuter. :) [2] http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2014/cb14-r09.html http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2014/cb14-r09.... [3] If you check the link after the text "View more commuting statistics for San Francisco online:", you see that ~23% of the workers surveyed work outside of SF. I wonder if cutting out 23% of the workers who travel by car would give us a reasonable look at the commute habits of those who both live and work in SF. If it does, then ~21% of SF resident workers commute by car, ~32% bus, and ~13% walk or bike. [4] For some routes (e.g. Caltrain -> Polk Gulch), if you miss a bus, it's often faster to just walk the couple of miles to your destination. This is complete horseshit. [5] http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ACS/13_5YR/S0801/1600000US0667000|1600000US3651000 http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ACS/13_5YR/S0... (I hope that this link lasts for a long time. I'm not totally confident that this will be a permanent link.) (Also, note that the "How do we adjust the car-commute numbers to account for city residents that have jobs out of the city?" game gets harder here, as NYC is made up of like five counties or something, and I'm not sure how that's reflected in the Census Bureau's numbers.)
- goatforce5 11y ago
  Demand for parking spaces in new Toronto condos is falling: http://www.thestar.com/business/real_estate/2015/03/16/condo-buyers-in-enormous-shift-saying-no-thanks-to-parking.html http://www.thestar.com/business/real_estate/2015/03/16/condo... http://www.thestar.com/life/homes/2014/11/14/no_parking_condo_only_slightly_flawed.html http://www.thestar.com/life/homes/2014/11/14/no_parking_cond... There has been talk of what to do with unused parking spaces in other buildings (e.g., turning them in to work spaces for artists, etc.). Here's an article saying Vancouver has unused parking spaces: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/unused-parking-stalls-wasting-space-in-crunched-vancouver/article4231201/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/unused-...
deleted 11y ago
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MrZongle2 11y ago
Also consider that additional housing requires additional utility service: water, sewage and electricity. Could the existing local infrastructure handle the load even if the cost of running additional power lines, drains and white-water pipes were negligible?

by Lorento 11y ago

techsupporter 11y ago

> will need 50% more parking spaces And that is the problem that is choking US cities. All of the pictures in the article show cities built around the concept of walking, cycling, and bus/train-ing to where people need and want to go. Private car ownership is lower and is far less useful. It does not (and, IMO, should not) follow that building more residences requires more legally-mandated turning over of public right-of-way to store private automobiles. Even forcing parking minimums on private lots drives the cost of housing ever skyward because those spaces take up space that could be used for housing or are located underground and, thus, even more expensive to build.

Lorento 11y ago
Judging by the occupied parking spaces in his photo, I think residents want cars. Whether parking is private or public, it'll still need to be there in some form for people to be happy living in that street. For people to walk/bus to work, shops, friends, they'll need much higher density housing, with workplaces mixed in and new public transport. So this single change won't help that.
- simoncion 11y ago
  As a SF resident, former car owner, and roommate of a current car owner, I can say that we never use our car unless we either 1) Have to go somewhere that's both out of the city and out of public transit range 2) Have to get something heavy and/or bulky that can't be easily shipped to the apartment The car gets pulled out of the nearby parking garage once a month, on average. If parking wasn't such a nightmare, the car would probably get used more often. The only way to improve the parking situation is to either level housing for more parking lots (ha!), or to install more parking garages. The only palatable way to make more garages is to make the garages underground. I don't see that happening anytime soon. :) So very, very many people in SF walk, bike, bus, or Lyft/Uber to work. Very few residents drive to work if their place of work is actually in the city.
  - tizzdogg 11y ago
    Of course very, very many people also drive to work if their work is not downtown, outside the city, or otherwise difficult to access via public transport (which is a lot of places in the bay area). Or if they live outside of SF and commute in to work. I have a car and dont drive it to work, but use it daily for transporting my child. I'd say people who use a car only once a month are definitely a tiny minority. Regardless of whether that is a better way to live, it's not enough people to support eliminating as much parking as the article suggests.
    - simoncion 11y ago
      Both the 2000 and 2010 census indicate that 16% of households in SF have children. [0] Compared to other cities where 25->30% of their households have children, households with children are a tiny minority in SF. :) I agree that folks who go to destinations in the Bay Area that are outside of SF often will use a car to make the trip. Public transit in the Bay Area is shitloads better than in most of the rest of the country, but -for medium-length-to-long trips- it's still not nearly as good as renting or owning a car. I also agree that many folks drive to work if they commute in from outside the city. [1] I don't see what that has to do with parking space allocation policy inside the city. We can always set aside space on the outskirts for Park N' Rides for inbound commuters. There's no need to clutter up the streets with cars of non-residents. The Census Bureau indicates that 13.4% of SF's workers walk or bike to work. [2] That's nearly the same fraction of the city's population that has and lives with children. I wonder what the numbers would look like if it removed folks who work outside of the city.[3] If Muni went more places more frequently and more quickly [4], it's pretty obvious that even more folks would choose it over their private car. Compare New York's numbers to SF's [5]. (SF is on the left half of the table, and NYC is on the right.) Note both the percentage that choose transit over auto, and the percentages of households that don't have cars. [0] http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty.htm http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty.... [1] I guess I didn't make it sufficiently clear that I was speaking as an SF resident, as opposed to an inbound SF commuter. :) [2] http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2014/cb14-r09.html http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2014/cb14-r09.... [3] If you check the link after the text "View more commuting statistics for San Francisco online:", you see that ~23% of the workers surveyed work outside of SF. I wonder if cutting out 23% of the workers who travel by car would give us a reasonable look at the commute habits of those who both live and work in SF. If it does, then ~21% of SF resident workers commute by car, ~32% bus, and ~13% walk or bike. [4] For some routes (e.g. Caltrain -> Polk Gulch), if you miss a bus, it's often faster to just walk the couple of miles to your destination. This is complete horseshit. [5] http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ACS/13_5YR/S0801/1600000US0667000|1600000US3651000 http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ACS/13_5YR/S0... (I hope that this link lasts for a long time. I'm not totally confident that this will be a permanent link.) (Also, note that the "How do we adjust the car-commute numbers to account for city residents that have jobs out of the city?" game gets harder here, as NYC is made up of like five counties or something, and I'm not sure how that's reflected in the Census Bureau's numbers.)
goatforce5 11y ago
Demand for parking spaces in new Toronto condos is falling: http://www.thestar.com/business/real_estate/2015/03/16/condo-buyers-in-enormous-shift-saying-no-thanks-to-parking.html http://www.thestar.com/business/real_estate/2015/03/16/condo... http://www.thestar.com/life/homes/2014/11/14/no_parking_condo_only_slightly_flawed.html http://www.thestar.com/life/homes/2014/11/14/no_parking_cond... There has been talk of what to do with unused parking spaces in other buildings (e.g., turning them in to work spaces for artists, etc.). Here's an article saying Vancouver has unused parking spaces: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/unused-parking-stalls-wasting-space-in-crunched-vancouver/article4231201/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/unused-...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

MrZongle2 11y ago

Also consider that additional housing requires additional utility service: water, sewage and electricity. Could the existing local infrastructure handle the load even if the cost of running additional power lines, drains and white-water pipes were negligible?