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xrunner posted:It's quite possible to park in an area with greater parking availability and take transit for the last few miles. There is no reason most people need to park at exactly the place where they are going. Sure, people do it in DC all the time. But in DC there are a number of problems with that model: 1) All the parking is typically on the ends of a metro system. For someone who is fairly close to downtown it makes no sense to drive the other way, and then take a train or bus. People aren't going to pick options that add too much time to their commute. 2) Said parking usually fills up by 8 AM. Work a later shift? gently caress you. 3) The DC Metro as it is, is falling apart. I know people who have missed interviews and meetings because of relying on public transit so you have to add a huge "Metro is on fire today" factor to your commute. 4) Not everywhere has good public transit coverage. What if you live in DC and work out in the more suburban areas? Public transit is an option for some people, just as driving is an option for some people. We should build our cities in a way that we try and gently push people towards public transit as it's generally more efficient/cheaper, but recognize that isn't going to be a solution that works for everyone and build other things (bike lanes, parking garages, HOV lanes, HOT lanes, etc.) to accomodate those people.
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Jun 27, 2017 16:33
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silence_kit posted:I feel they mostly are better because they had the benefit of being built before the invention of the automobile. The inner cores, sure. But once you leave that, a whole ton of cities now have suburbs that might as well be copy-pasted out of the LA or Atlanta or Boston suburbs. Vast swathes of cookie cutter houses slapped up in a field outside Paris or Madrid, say, within easy access to the motorway. In some countries these primarily attract the middle/upper-middle class, in others they're a further pushing out of the low income classes from the cities. And in tandem there's car usage growing faster, and the cars already in use being driven more. And there's places like the UK where there are plenty of sprawling suburbs that are theoretically livable with just public transit but in practice the residents almost always commute and run many of their errands by car.
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Jun 27, 2017 16:44
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xrunner posted:Portland, Oregon. Lol isn't Portland now a city for wealthy retirees from California? Don't you see an issue with extrapolating from your experiences in Portland, OR to the rest of the US?
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Jun 27, 2017 16:46
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xrunner posted:Your city should be built around my suburban car culture needs and you're an elitist rear end in a top hat who wants to exclude the poors if you disagree. I should not have to change in any way. Maybe you should tell that to the people who've been pushed to the very edges of my city, the only places they can afford? Light rail only serves bougie communities here, ditto for express bus service, and single moms and the like don't really have the time to spend 3x as long commuting between their jobs just so the people in luxury condos downtown can have a "walkable, urban live/work experience". You don't hear poor people talking about parking costs? drat, you must live somewhere with awesome transit. The cheapest monthly parking pass downtown is $150/mo here (post tax, natch, since lovely employers don't have parking cards and pre-tax deduction) and you'd better believe that loving *hurts* at $11.35/hr call to action fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Jun 27, 2017 |
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Jun 27, 2017 16:52
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call to action posted:Maybe you should tell that to the people who've been pushed to the very edges of my city, the only places they can afford? Light rail only serves bougie communities here, ditto for express bus service, and single moms and the like don't really have the time to spend 3x as long commuting between their jobs just so the people in luxury condos downtown can have a "walkable, urban live/work experience". This is getting a bit off topic but these are arguments for improving transit and affordability. Door to door car culture is absolutely a subsidization of middle class and up suburbanites who want to have their big house and yard and still pop into the city when they need to go to work or feel like doing their shopping in the bougie retail districts. You're being disingenuous as hell when you use the poor as an excuse to make the urban core more convenient for yourself at the expense of residents and useful spaces. silence_kit posted:Lol isn't Portland now a city for wealthy retirees from California? Don't you see an issue with extrapolating from your experiences in Portland, OR to the rest of the US? It wasn't when I moved here many years ago - and even back then when I lived way out on the edge of town there was completely functional bus system I made plenty of use of. But again - isn't that an argument for functional transit and not an argument for taking up valuable space to devote to more parking?
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Jun 27, 2017 17:08
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PT6A posted:Why not provide a free-market solution to the parking problem by increasing the cost of parking until there's always some availability out of the present on-street spaces?
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Jun 27, 2017 17:21
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It's definitely true that America needs much better transit, walkability, and bikability. Part of why it sucks to be poor in America is that in most cities cars are the only sensible form of transportation, and cars are inherently expensive things.
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Jun 27, 2017 17:24
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xrunner posted:This is getting a bit off topic but these are arguments for improving transit and affordability. Cool. Well, while we wait on transit to improve (took decades for our rail to get to this point where it only serves the upper middle class) and do ~something~ about affordability (lol), we're gonna drive if y'all don't mind.
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Jun 27, 2017 17:30
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Cicero posted:This is exactly what Seattle does and it's a good idea. It means parking availability is more consistent for those who need it, and reduces congestion from people circling around looking for a place to park. Seattle also has pretty reliable transit that isn't completely terrible. I can't even remember the last time I attended an event in Seattle where I just didn't hop on to the 594 and get off in the middle of downtown.
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Jun 27, 2017 17:33
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call to action posted:Cool. Well, while we wait on transit to improve (took decades for our rail to get to this point where it only serves the upper middle class) and do ~something~ about affordability (lol), we're gonna drive if y'all don't mind. Do they not have buses in Denver?
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Jun 27, 2017 17:38
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silence_kit posted:Lol isn't Portland now a city for wealthy retirees from California? Don't you see an issue with extrapolating from your experiences in Portland, OR to the rest of the US? No. That would be Bend. Or many of the other rural-ish communities in Oregon, where a Californian could sell their California home in a hot market and use the money to buy a mansion in the woods, a nice fishing boat, and a truck to pull it. Portland is mostly filling up with office drones for the various tech and e-commerce companies.
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Jun 27, 2017 18:02
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Cicero posted:This is exactly what Seattle does and it's a good idea. It means parking availability is more consistent for those who need it, and reduces congestion from people circling around looking for a place to park. But that just means that parking's only available to people who can afford the high fees, regardless of how much they need it. A poor person used to have at least the chance of getting lucky and finding a space, but now they're shut out of parking entirely.
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Jun 27, 2017 18:24
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xrunner posted:Do they not have buses in Denver? As I mentioned in my previous posts, express buses only serve the richer areas, and the local buses (in addition to not running at night) take roughly 3x as long as driving, assuming no delays with either. Even at $11/hr, adding 1.5hrs (at minimum) to a commute each day is more expensive than driving and paying the $150 to park.
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Jun 27, 2017 18:29
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:But that just means that parking's only available to people who can afford the high fees, regardless of how much they need it. A poor person used to have at least the chance of getting lucky and finding a space, but now they're shut out of parking entirely. They're also shut out of driving, because driving is really expensive anyway, and putting the squeeze on some middle-class folks that suddenly can't park wherever they like without paying an arm and a leg would seem like a way to increase support and funding for public transit. The sky-high parking costs in our downtown (around $650/month for covered parking, and there are waitlists for monthly parking) have been great for building support and usership of public transit and alternative modes of transportation. Now it's largely affluent suburbanites (who can afford those parking costs) that bitch about the "war on cars," while everyone else uses bikes or public transit -- even people with decent middle-class incomes. It's sure to be rough in the short term, but long term I think it helps spur more balanced development patterns. It would also be great to use the funds from expensive on-street parking as a funding source for public transit, which can obviously always use more money.
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Jun 27, 2017 18:41
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call to action posted:As I mentioned in my previous posts, express buses only serve the richer areas, and the local buses (in addition to not running at night) take roughly 3x as long as driving, assuming no delays with either. Even at $11/hr, adding 1.5hrs (at minimum) to a commute each day is more expensive than driving and paying the $150 to park. Your energy needs to be focused on improving transit, then! Not on making parking more convenient for suburbanites. Tiny Brontosaurus posted:But that just means that parking's only available to people who can afford the high fees, regardless of how much they need it. A poor person used to have at least the chance of getting lucky and finding a space, but now they're shut out of parking entirely. That's because people aren't looking to solve the difficulties faced by poor persons commuting into the city for work. They're trying to solve the difficulties with being a middle class consumer coming into the trendy part of town a couple times of month to shop and go to bars/restaurants. The poor commuters are just a convenient shield.
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Jun 27, 2017 18:43
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xrunner posted:Your energy needs to be focused on improving transit, then! Not on making parking more convenient for suburbanites. There are, of course, reasons that poor people might need to visit "downtown" and need short-term onstreet parking, so it's not entirely a baseless concern. But, yeah, improving transit really is the most important thing for everyone. It increases mobility options for everyone (but especially poor people, including those too poor to afford a car at all), decreases drunk driving, cuts carbon emissions, and once it gets to a certain point, it's also more convenient than driving.
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Jun 27, 2017 18:54
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xrunner posted:Your energy needs to be focused on improving transit, then! Not on making parking more convenient for suburbanites. And where do you think those poor persons commuting actually work? Who do you think staffs those bars and restaurants?
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Jun 27, 2017 19:01
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Solkanar512 posted:And where do you think those poor persons commuting actually work? Who do you think staffs those bars and restaurants? Well, anecdotally, the ones I know tend to use transit. I'm honestly a little surprised at the strength and ferociousness of the defense of suburban car culture and their god-given right to park exactly right where they're going.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:09
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Solkanar512 posted:And where do you think those poor persons commuting actually work? Who do you think staffs those bars and restaurants?
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Jun 27, 2017 19:10
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It's super hard to talk about urban planning stuff in a general way, it's much better to use specific examples of specific cities/areas.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:20
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"Reducing parking minimums is anti-poor people" is definitely a new one for me. I can't wait til the rich white homeowners who complain the most about parking in my city get ahold of it!
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Jun 27, 2017 19:21
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xrunner posted:Well, anecdotally, the ones I know tend to use transit. I'm honestly a little surprised at the strength and ferociousness of the defense of suburban car culture and their god-given right to park exactly right where they're going. I don't think people are defending suburban car culture, I think they're pointing out, rightly, that sneering about cars and pretending there aren't valid use cases for them makes you look like an out of touch bougie who assumes everyone has your same life experiences and needs. Honestly the best solution is a massive fleet of electric, self-driving cars that no one owns but right now that's a fairy tale fantasy. It would fix all the issues though.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:23
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Submarine Sandpaper posted:if you're throwing poo poo hypotheticals you should at least think them through enough to know that owners/management don't let employees park in manners that would inconvenience customers. they dont have control over streetside parking though? citation: i used to have to park streetside when i worked at a restaurant
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Jun 27, 2017 19:24
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xrunner posted:Well, anecdotally, the ones I know tend to use transit. I'm honestly a little surprised at the strength and ferociousness of the defense of suburban car culture and their god-given right to park exactly right where they're going. hi, transit here sucks, if i didn't have a car i would not be able to make it into the city to go to work and would be stuck with whatever jobs were within walking distance (not many), stop sneering about car ownership in a world where everyone has decent transit you're right, but this isn't that world
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Jun 27, 2017 19:25
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Badger of Basra posted:"Reducing parking minimums is anti-poor people" is definitely a new one for me. I can't wait til the rich white homeowners who complain the most about parking in my city get ahold of it! Good thing that's not what I said then, right? Reduce parking spaces, that's great. Vast parking lots suck and are bad for cities. But what parking remains needs to be priced for everyone to get a chance to use it, not just rich people. "Beep Boop Supply and Demand" yeah yeah, but a city is not a business and public resources are not commodities. You can make sure the supply of available spaces turns over regularly by enforcing time limits and scaling parking ticket prices to income.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:30
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BENGHAZI 2 posted:they dont have control over streetside parking though? citation: i used to have to park streetside when i worked at a restaurant Sure they do, it's called "if I see your car parked streetside outside the restaurant, where our customers want to be able to park, you're fired." Besides which, don't most cities have time limits on streetside parking which render them unusable for people working a whole shift? Here in downtown, the longest you can possibly find is 3 hours, and most are either 2 hour or 30 minutes max.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:33
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xrunner posted:That's because people aren't looking to solve the difficulties faced by poor persons commuting into the city for work. They're trying to solve the difficulties with being a middle class consumer coming into the trendy part of town a couple times of month to shop and go to bars/restaurants. The poor commuters are just a convenient shield. What do you think happens more frequently, suburbanites passing up all the malls, all the big box stores, all the P.F. Changs, all the VASTLY more developed retail that's near their house to go... downtown for some reason, OR people going to work at Jimmy Johns, Walgreens, and Red Robin? Suburbanites loving hate downtown. The very, very least we can do is make transit passes free, at least to those making under the median income.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:36
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call to action posted:What do you think happens more frequently, suburbanites passing up all the malls, all the big box stores, all the P.F. Changs, all the VASTLY more developed retail that's near their house to go... downtown for some reason, OR people going to work at Jimmy Johns, Walgreens, and Red Robin? Again this completely falls apart if you're trying to generalize for the whole country. It's too location-specific. I fully believe nobody's schlepping into downtown Tulsa, but cities with actual things to do very commonly have a second rush hour on nights and weekends when suburbanites come in to have dinner and see shows.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:38
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It's really hard to solve problems that are not directed related to class but have a large class component when the only tools/levers we're given are inherently capitalist ones. Things like making parking more expensive, making gas more expensive, congestion taxes, tolls, they all work really well as "sticks" to get people to drive less. The problem of course is that any price based system for deterring a behavior or consumption, it hits the poor very hard and the rich can ignore it. You need to bust out all the carrots and all the sticks at the same time while doing your best to mitigate the transition pains on the most vulnerable to their effects.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:38
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Baronjutter posted:It's really hard to solve problems that are not directed related to class but have a large class component when the only tools/levers we're given are inherently capitalist ones. Things like making parking more expensive, making gas more expensive, congestion taxes, tolls, they all work really well as "sticks" to get people to drive less. The problem of course is that any price based system for deterring a behavior or consumption, it hits the poor very hard and the rich can ignore it. Yeah, I went back to carlessness this year, despite living in Los Angeles, but I pay a huge premium to live in a neighborhood where that's physically possible, and LA has much better public transit than most American cities, as sad as that is.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:40
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Yeah, I went back to carlessness this year, despite living in Los Angeles, but I pay a huge premium to live in a neighborhood where that's physically possible, and LA has much better public transit than most American cities, as sad as that is. Yeah if you rank the cities by public transit infrastructure the only ones where it's even remotely viable to go carless are probably: 1) NYC 2) Chicago 3) SF, maybe depending on where you work 4) DC but not really because you're going to be paying crazy rent 5) Boston? 6) LA? 7) Philly? After that It gets really ugly.
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Jun 27, 2017 19:48
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8) philly 9) cleveland 10) ann arbor
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Jun 27, 2017 19:49
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axeil posted:Yeah if you rank the cities by public transit infrastructure the only ones where it's even remotely viable to go carless are probably: Boston's totally doable. LA's borderline where you can do it if you're willing/able to completely rearrange your life to make it possible - and I'm able to fill in gaps with taxis. Any place too small for reliable taxi service of some sort is going to trap you in your immediate neighborhood if you don't have a car.
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Jun 27, 2017 20:00
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Once a week I drive to a larger supermarket and get 2 big heavy bags full of groceries, but beyond that 90% of my shopping and errands are done on foot, walk to work too, it's great. The car becomes a tool of convenience, a luxury, not an essential item you're crippled without. Wife works in the next town over, car pools on the way there and takes the bus back. It's about an 40-50min trip total using transit/walking vs maybe a 25-30 min drive but she prefers it because driving is stressful and she'll read a book or listen to a podcast or something. But in so many cities this sort of thing isn't an option. The nearest store is a drive away and its just unpleasant to walk anywhere because nothing is set up to make walking feel pleasant or safe. Cycling is even more dangerous and unpleasant. Transit either doesn't exist, or when it does it turns a 20 min drive into an hour and a half trip thats once again very unpleasant. But how do you change it? When a city is already built up with only cars in mind it's extremely hard to break this cycle and politicians just don't have the political capital to do it. Like so many issues, things will have to get really bad to the point that the middle class are effected before there's the political capital needed to change things, and at that point it's 10x as expensive to do.
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Jun 27, 2017 20:10
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But the minute an area gets great, reliable transit, it's going to be turned in to luxury live/work condos. Look at places near the subway, or BART, or light rail in different cities and you'll find better transit pushes property values way up and poor people out. Denver, again, is terrible about this - the W light rail line turned a bunch of working class neighborhoods into upper middle class ones.
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Jun 27, 2017 20:15
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Submarine Sandpaper posted:if you're throwing poo poo hypotheticals you should at least think them through enough to know that owners/management don't let employees park in manners that would inconvenience customers. Ever heard of places like Seattle or San Francisco? These aren't poo poo hypotheticals, these are real people being priced out of homes near their jobs and having to commute in. I'm sorry if you just want to poo poo on rich assholes, but don't do it at the expense of the working class. I don't understand why you're responding to me about owners/management - not being allowed to park in customer parking doesn't alleviate the need for staff to drive to work because nearby housing is too expensive.
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Jun 27, 2017 20:24
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Solkanar512 posted:Ever heard of places like Seattle or San Francisco? These aren't poo poo hypotheticals, these are real people being priced out of homes near their jobs and having to commute in. I'm sorry if you just want to poo poo on rich assholes, but don't do it at the expense of the working class.
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Jun 27, 2017 20:26
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Submarine Sandpaper posted:hahahahahahaha what goalpost shifting you hack. Why, because I started defending the poor instead of the disabled? If you don't like what I posted quit being so loving lazy and respond to my points rather than whatever the gently caress this is.
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Jun 27, 2017 20:34
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call to action posted:But the minute an area gets great, reliable transit, it's going to be turned in to luxury live/work condos. Look at places near the subway, or BART, or light rail in different cities and you'll find better transit pushes property values way up and poor people out. Denver, again, is terrible about this - the W light rail line turned a bunch of working class neighborhoods into upper middle class ones. Yes, but that's not transit's fault, it's zoning's fault. Cities could be much more aggressive about requiring low-income housing, but they'd rather have a ghost town of empty styrofoam-walled condos owned by foreign investors. If I had a magic no-political-obstacles wand I'd make it illegal to own a home in an urban core that's not your primary residence. Shelter's a human necessity, not an investment vehicle.
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Jun 27, 2017 20:37
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:If I had a magic no-political-obstacles wand I'd make it illegal to own a home in an urban core that's not your primary residence. Shelter's a human necessity, not an investment vehicle. How would there be any space for people to rent if people cannot own property they aren't living in? I agree with you in concept, that it's bad to have empty dwellings at all, but especially in desirable areas, but it's not too easy to solve. You could impose a punitive tax on any unoccupied dwelling, but then you have the issue of how to define "occupation" and how to determine if a given dwelling is occupied or not.
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Jun 27, 2017 20:44
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