What if I told you that in many areas households don’t even need a single car?

If you require large amounts of parking everywhere and commensurately large roads, everything ends up so spread out that car based transportation seems like a necessity. It’s a self perpetuating cycle. If you don’t require so much land to be dedicated to cars you can build things denser and lower or even remove the need for personal cars.

I think one car per household is fine for townhomes assuming most are 2-3 bedrooms. A lot of families only need one car.

It's just not like that in reality. There is a townhouse neighborhood near me with 1.25 spots per house, and it is a disaster. A lot of places are occupied by people with roomates, not families. It's the kind of place where most people need a car for their job- work trucks abound, people drive uber or doordash, etc. Not everyone takes a laptop to the office every day. The roads are nearly impassable, people park 1km away. I knew someone trying to run a small business out of their home there (piano lessons) but there was nowhere for customers to park. There is bus service there, but they reduced the number of routes due to insufficient usage.

Yeah, there is for sure a chicken-egg problem here. If the existing public transportation isn’t good then people will just not have enough parking. If everything is still spread apart, or there aren’t sidewalks or biking infrastructure, there won’t be walking or biking to the office or work site.

Although I will say, living in a neighborhood with very little parking, I am sure people who insist on owning a car anyway will think it’s a disaster too. But I love it because everything is close by and I can get around through a variety of non-car methods. But to get to that point takes time.

> What if I told you that in many areas households don’t even need a single car?

Any part of the US where a street of townhomes would be more dense than the existing status quo is not one of these areas.

In my city (Milwaukee Wi) there are plenty of areas with single family houses, less than 10 units/acre with 0-1 cars per house.

It’s not that uncommon in the US, especially in poorer areas

> What if I told you that in many areas households don’t even need a single car?

That's in very dense urban cities. Given the numbers in question (low density 10 houses/acre) that's not going to be the case.

This really depends on too many variables of the surrounding area. There are places this could work, but I would argue there are more areas where this would not.

> What if I told you that in many areas households don’t even need a single car?

Sure, if they live near public transportation. I would vote down a dense housing development of it didn't have access to public transportation

So, what? What business is it of the local government? Why can't we just let consenting adults make their own personal decisions about the details of the housing and parking they choose to live in?

Some people may only need limited parking. Some people may not need any parking. Maybe they're making a mistake and will regret it. Maybe not. Maybe nobody wants that, in which case the developer will pay the cost. Who cares! This is how freedom works. Can we please just stop ramming regulations down people's throats. "Well, no trust me. I'm from the zoning board and I know you're really gonna need two parking spots."

Imagine if we had a clothing board, and anytime a company came out with a new apparel style they had to get approval. "I just don't think anybody wants shorts that far above the knee. Permission denied". Just let the market decide, for God's sakes.

Because there are external costs. The “consenting adults” narrative is false. Not enough parking means people living there will use street parking in nearby areas affecting the residents of those communities. This happens all the time.

This line of dialogue is a very strong demonstration of how car-centric transportation model leads to a perverse anti-social urban development mindset. Unused parking is quite literally the least productive and least attractive use of land, I simply can't fathom seeing it as attractive.

If the discussion was about high density living then sure. It's not, it's about 10 houses per acre, that's decidedly low density - lower than the tipping point where people don't own cars.

Sure, I'm saying it's a mistake for governments to have planned to support such districts in the first place (by building wide roads with on-street parking, the highways to connect the district to the productive parts of the city, presumably lots of car-oriented policy in other parts of the city to keep density low for the sake of traffic, keep parking high for the sake of those in low-density districts, etc).

This problem only exists because street parking is heavily subsidized at below market rates. In urban cores, street parking is often 90% cheaper than garage parking.

True, but again, if there exist people who currently rely on street parking and your solution is to raise prices so that new residents could compete for street parking then this still affects old residents. Gentrification is an externality too.

I am not saying we should stop doing everything that has externalities -- clearly we can't do that. It's just important to know that these transactions are not "between consenting adults" that dont affect others. Just because an owner of some land, some developers, and some perspective tenants agree on something doesn't mean it wont negatively affect a bunch of other people. And ignoring a bunch of other people entirely is not the correct choice.

The market doesn't decide, and everyone suffers. Ban people from storing their vehicles on public property and you're fine, but until that happens you're stuck with the externalities.

Oh and stop low density housing like this being built in cities.

The real disaster (environmental and economic) is that so many places regulate parking so strictly rather than being more market-oriented and allowing people to figure out how much they want.

https://www.planetizen.com/features/113459-perils-central-pl...

If nobody was allowed to park on public land, that could work

Certainly in the UK it's common for people to expect to own an extra 50 square foot of land for a car or two, usually abandoned to block the pavement. This impacts everyone, especially those of us who don't drive.

It's not really market oriented, it's tragedy of the commons oriented, as developers will build the cheapest thing they can on the premise that new residents can use existing parking, resulting in a reduction of value for others utilizing those commons. By not having parking minimums, it allows developers to pass those costs onto surrounding residents. There are townhouse neighborhoods near me with nearly impassable streets, people crossing 4 lane roads, spreading into surrounding areas, having to walk over 1km to their home from their parking due to insufficient parking minimums. Everyone sees it is a giant problem now, but it is too late to fix. These minimums are there for a reason.

The solution isn't to build more parking, its to reduce the need for car trips. Improve transit and support commercial development in the neighborhood.

The fact is that we're in a housing affordability crisis. We need builders to build "cheapest thing they can" right now because housing is insanely expensive in most urban areas. Parking minimums make housing more expensive, and the fact that people are buying these homes is saying something important: housing is more important than parking.

Yes parking is nice, and there are costs associated with not having a dedicated parking space for each person. But those costs pale in comparison to the costs we pay for having a severe housing shortage. The economic costs, the costs paid in rents, the costs paid in health.

There isn't a world where you can have it all. But its clear that we need more housing, not more parking, and there is an unavoidable trade-off between the two.

Improved transit works in megacities because of rapid transit but in this case they might add a bus route or the bus might come every 1/2 hour. You still do not have the scale to make public transit work unless you turn this place into an actual city.

You can't improve the transport until you start building high density housing, that's not 10 units per acre.

10 units per acre is 1 house per 5k sqft lot--this is plainly single family detached housing. No one in that zoning is having parking issues. When you start talking about 35duc then you start having parking issues--but at 35duc, you're totally within the realm of being able to justify more frequent bus service for a town with 200k+ people. But if you're in a small town with very progressive density allowances like that, then the solution is simple: improve zoning to encourage more neighborhood commercial. No need to worry about transit in that case.

But 10 units per acre is what was being proposed with just 1 parking space per dwelling. That acre is not going to get increased commercial (not enough customers in walking distance, no parking for people driving in), or transit (not dense enough)

Go for 35 per acre sure, you don't need 70 parking spaces then, because (assuming it isn't literally 35 units in the middle of suburbia) you get commercial and transit (people still got to get to work - maybe in WFH stays around that will change)

I'd be interested to see the land use code where this 10 duc with one allowable parking spot is going. This must be a HUUUGE townhouse to go there if its only permitted to fit one car.

is it 1 car garage or literally, a garage with no driveway? if a link to a specific example was mentioned above in this thread i missed it

Another solution is robotaxis. If ridehailing becomes easily affordable You will have your nice neighborhood back. Robotaxis can pick you up in a minute and go to park and recharge in some distant multi story parking.

If you have an area dense enough to have reliable uber then perhaps it works, but uber (and taxis in general) fall down with families with young children - the kind of people buying low density housing being suggested

That is a science fiction fantasy, not something we can plan on in any reasonable time frame.

The issue is that in areas with sufficient parking, on-street parking has few restrictions; maybe you have to move your car every few days and might have a scheduled street cleaning that you need to move for, but you don't need to obtain a permit or feed a meter or worry about where guests might park.

If you put a building with insufficient parking near there, users of that building are likely to park on the nearby streets and that reduces the utility of the street parking for the existing residents; either they may no longer be able to find parking readily, or they need to manage permits, etc.

It's different if you build in an area that already has tightly restricted parking. If you move into a downtown LA building without enough parking for your vehicles, you're not going to be able to find a free spot nearby and you won't reduce the utility of your neighbors.

It's impossible to take a "market-oriented" approach to parking when street parking exists. Either you remove the street parking, you regulate the space somehow, or you have a tragedy of the commons that pisses everyone off. In context, it sounds like the developer was obviously planning to take advantage of existing street parking to reduce the number of spaces built; it was, as described, the densest development in the area, at a below-normal spaces-per-unit for such an area.

>Minimum of 3 parking spaces for a 4 bed in the UK?

This is certainly not my experience, unless you are counting on street parking and even then, that's a stretch

I'm only thinking of new developments

I'm thinking 5 bed sorry, yes 2 spaces for 3/4, 3 spaces for 5 - at least in my local authority.

Given that almost always one of those is a garage which almost never has a car, reality is tons of on street parking (or rather on pavement parking)

What if that development was walking distance to transit? I live in SF Bayarea suburb in a SFH with a wife and a elementary school aged kid. We have 1 car that is parked in our driveway(on our property). For everything else there is a commuter train within 10-15minute walk and uber within reach.

Limited parking does incentivize non-car-oriented lifestyle. Im all for it.

> Limited parking does incentivize non-car-oriented lifestyle. Im all for it.

No it doesn't, it incentivizes parking arguments and a tragedy of the commons, and creates people who will vote for policies that will convert public land into parking spaces.

I would prefer to reduce on street parking, and increase on street cycle lanes. It sounds like you would too.

By only providing 1 parking space per dwelling you end up with an increased demand for on street parking.

I'm all in for subways everywhere but do you feel as comfortable getting in a rush hour car after covid? I'm starting to think subways and megacities might not be the safest way to live.

I do actually feel safe getting in public transit while covid’s ongoing, and I’m in Tokyo (and taking two of the busiest lines in the world as part of my commute - Chuo and Yamanote).

At this point it seems obvious to me that having windows open, everyone wearing masks, and everyone shutting up, is sufficient to make public transit safe. Because if it wasn’t Tokyo would be in a _much_ worse situation. I fully admit I don’t have rigorous data to back this up, but I kind of can’t see how it could be otherwise.

I feel perfectly safe using public transit. 36,120 people died in traffic in 2019 in the United States. When there isn't a pandemic going on and I'm getting the annual flu vaccine, I feel pretty darn safe compared to driving

But there is an ongoing pandemic going on we can't go back to 2019. The new delta variant makes the vaccine weak. What are the chances this mutates again and again? It doesn't seem like a healthy approach for humans anymore.

The US has notably low public transport usage, yet has one of the highest death rates in the world

Singapore has high barriers to car ownership and has one of the lowest.

https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollecti...

Another example that cars take too much space. Public transportation is the answer.

and bikes