In Europe generally all new bigger construction has most parking below ground, even 2-3 floors. Very few outside if any, normally just for quick drop off or services.
I've even seen locals blocking a successful local bank trying to build a additional building and planning way too many of those - citing concern of too much added traffic in neighborhood. Not entirely sure if thats the best approach, but thats how how respect for laws and locals looks like. At the end, bank managed just fine despite that restriction.
> Parking standards were created arbitrarily, without adequate data. Zoning laws usually require one parking space per apartment, one per 300 square feet of commercial development, and one per 100 square feet for restaurants. For context, a parking space measures 160 square feet on average, plus additional area for driveways and driving lanes, so an eatery’s parking lot may be three times the size of its dining area.
Idk, don't move there if having on-site parking is a dealbreaker for you. It isn't for a lot of people. Why should they subsidize someone else's parking preferences?
OTOH, having 4/6/8 new tinyhouses worth of neighbours and the streets filled with their cars sucks for many in the neighbourhood - so you'd expect them to resist, or at least ask the question. Where will the cars go?
> you'd expect them to resist, or at least ask the question. Where will the cars go?
Sounds like a streetside-parking regulation problem. Everyone asking questions every time someone wants to build anything is why we don’t build anymore. If we want to require parking we don’t get to complain about housing affordability.
The groups of people that "require parking" are largely different to the groups of people that "complain about housing affordability".
It's no surprise that complex issues will have various factions arguing about "their happiness".
It does seem like many countries are beyond the point of further conversation and need positive impactful action regarding housing affordability. Or even just any action at all so we can tell if it is the correct action...
Free parking is also regressive, the poor pay a much higher portion of their income for "free" parking than the rich do.
More generally, parking is a service. All market goods & services are highly regressive, because the rich and poor pay basically the same price. Addressing inequality at the individual goods level always creates more problems than it solves. Addressing it for parking is particularly unfair, because the very poorest don't have cars.
The poor would be far better off with more welfare and a less regressive tax system so they have more money to choose what they need. Paying for "free" parking via property taxes and baked into the costs of local stores is inefficient and regressive.
This is true, but only in a car-centric city like those in the US. If we extend this hypothetical to include additional changes to our infrastructure such as: reclaiming lanes for wider sidewalks, bike lanes, and bus/taxi lanes, restricting car traffic on heavily foot-trafficked streets, or building housing where parking was, cars remain cumbersome to use.
I’m not actually pitching this course of action for any specific city; I actually live in an extremely rural area and don’t have a horse in this race. Just want to make the point that mass transit investments can’t happen in a vacuum if we want to achieve the desired results.
We don't build parking smart here in the States, period. Parking lots should be multi-story to serve multiple buildings and have an array of solar panels on the roof to contribute to the city's power needs.
In theory? In practice and when I have a choice, I will always pick mass transit instead of driving because I prefer to walk and avoid the hassles of traffic lights, risk of crashing or running someone over, wear and tear on my car, gasoline, etc...
I'm going to guess you've never had some drugged-up crazy try to stab you in a bus? After the second time it happens, you never ever consider it again. Life is too short to die like that.
I'm going to guess you've never had some drugged-up crazy nearly ram into you at high speed in a car? Life is too short to die like that, and to spend it sitting in traffic to boot.
Car has airbags. My chances are better than “knifed on BART”. And your chances of a fatal collision in stop-and-go traffic are as close to zero as a number can be - the kinetic energy just isn't there at those speeds.
Maybe, maybe not. But you need to solve people's transportation problems first, not claim that if they give up car transportation options something else will materialize later.
> > problems first, not claim that if they give up
> > car transportation options something else will
> > materialize later
.
> I never said otherwise, but continuing to prioritize
> cars only makes everything, even car travel, worse.
.
You have JUST said otherwise! You want to deprioritize what works in favour of what does not exist while offering no path for it to exist and dodging the reality that no such path exists.
Okay, thank you for telling me what I want to do. You see, I thought I wanted start working on other forms of transit while still leaving cars as they are. I thought I wanted to stop saying one more lane will fix it, and actually try adding transit options. I thought I wanted to build safe sidewalks and bike infrastructure that actually goes somewhere, instead of just adding more parking lots.
I'm really glad you were here to tell me what I actually wanted. I'm glad you were here to twist my words up so bad that I finally understand that what I really wanted is to completely get rid of cars overnight, and then sit around on our thumbs and hope that someday a magic carpet will come and carry us all off to our destinations.
If you're not able to afford a regular-sized house in some area, you're likely not able to afford a car either. Also, the places with more residential density already have public transit that is heavily used by normal people. Sadly cities will always have crime, but IMO crimes on public transit are the least of your problems if you're stuck in a neighborhood like that. And nothing is stopping miscreants from stealing stuff from your car trunk, breaking a window in your car just for fun, or keying your car, or possibly much worse if your car is a Tesla these days.
This is where you have to be smart about parking. Building small houses like that, raised up so you can park a car underneath, gets dual use out of the same square footage. While you are at it, orient the building properly so that installing PV panels on the roof makes sense. Now we have three uses for the same square footage.
And please spare me the tired “transit that is safe and not full of stabby hoboes will magically sprout out of nothing overnight” nonsense.