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Surprisingly, my little shithole isn't the worst when it comes to transit. After repeatedly spending way too much rebuilding I4 through Orlando, we actually got some light rail. I'm currently waiting on the phase 2 expansion to get to me. Right now I have to drive most of the way to my office before I pick up a train - it's just not worth it for the last 10 minutes. Downtown Orlando is pretty walkable as well, coupled with a free bus-loop service running in dedicated lanes carved out of the existing roadways. Zipcar and bike rentals complete the picture. It's especially impressive given our history with any sort of non-car-based transportation: quote:January 2010 - President Obama announces during a speech at the University of Tampa that Florida will recieve $1.25 billion to begin work on the Tampa-Lakeland-Orlando line. The earlier work of the FHSRA makes Florida the most "shovel-ready" state. Jobs can be created immediately, and the project is scheduled to be completed in 2015.  Yeah, who wants 2.4 billion dollars when you can say "gently caress you" to the ni*BONG* president instead.
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Apr 2, 2016 06:27
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What is the name of the rule that requires a gigantic desert of scalding hot parking lot between the road/sidewalk and the business? That's one of those "gently caress everyone without a car" rules, because there's no practical reason why you can't have parking in the back with the business right up on the sidewalk. Orlando has tried this instead (in one place), which I prefer:  Mixed retail, office and residential, with parking on the roof. While the target itself is set-back the typical distance from the main road, the ocean of parking lot has been replaced with rows of medium-rise buildings with walk-in storefronts the entire distance. I think those are condos on the right, and office space on the left, but I'm not sure, there's still a lot of resistance to mixing commercial and residential in one unit.
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May 10, 2016 03:47
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1337JiveTurkey posted:Rooftop parking is a bit unusual because it requires the building to be able to support the weight of all the vehicles and that structure isn't cheap or unobtrusive. Rules of thumb for the cost of a structured parking space seem to start out around $15,000 and increase significantly as you go up or down. Multi-level subterranean parking can be over three times as expensive and is impossible in places with a high water table. Surface level parking is closer to $5,000 a space which is why it's so ubiquitous but some of that is driven by inordinately high parking requirements. How is it only 3x as expensive to build a multi-story parking garage as it is to tamp down some dirt and pour asphalt on it? I honestly would have pegged it at 10x as expensive if you'd asked me to guess. Is it land cost? That varies so wildly that it's hard to make a generalization about it. 1337JiveTurkey posted:But the rule you're thinking of is minimum parking requirements. Developers are required to provide a certain number of parking spaces based on a formula, like 3 spaces per 1000 square feet office space, 4 spaces per 1000 square feet retail or 2 spaces per residential unit. Since most of those spaces aren't going to be used most of the time, developers are incentivized to build them as cheap as possible to reduce the cost because it's effectively a very silly tax. This is exacerbated by single use zoning requirements which prohibit mixed development, especially when they exclude "less intensive" land use patterns from zones designated for "more intensive" purposes. Many people don't like living next to retail or office space but enforcing these preferences on everyone else prevents mixed use developments like the one in Orlando. Thanks. Minimum-parking requirements make a sort of sick sense in the wasteland of the 'burbs, but when a large fraction of your clientele live within a block it just seems useless. Where can I find resources on convincing zoning boards to reduce the parking requirements based on foot/bike traffic? I'm not developing myself, but I have a neighbor going for city council and I'd like to see if I can convince him to push for more sane policies in our area. In better news: Last week they officially broke ground on the light rail expansion near me. Really near me - 3 miles. Two more years and I can take it to work!
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May 10, 2016 19:28
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Popular Thug Drink posted:parking structures are pretty simple to build. no complex plumbing, bare minimum electrical, no fancy decorations. just throw up a skeleton and pour concrete I'm still surprised that it's only 3x the cost of pouring asphalt on the dirt; you have to do ground-prep for both structures and you don't need the same level of engineering signoffs. Thinking about it though, draining a giant field of asphalt must be more expensive than something 1/3 to 1/4 the surface area.
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May 10, 2016 19:58
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