It’s insane that so much land is dedicated to giving people free space to store their personal vehicles.
“But that’s unfair!” People can take the bus.
“But the bus service isn’t good!” That’s because no one uses the bus, if there’s demand, supply will be added. The biggest determinant of transit use is the availability of parking.
You need to solve this problem before you take away parking, not after. Otherwise people will never accept your proposal (and nor should they tbh, as there's no guarantee that the promised supply will arrive). Right now people are, by and large, content with the status quo. In a democratic system of government, that means you need to convince them to change, and that won't happen unless you address their objections in advance.
Some communities are starting to enforce against amazon trucks that park inappropriately on the street. They often force traffic into dangerous situations as everyone must skirt around them.
The whole urbanism movement of the past decade is evidence of that I think.
Moreover, even if a community is happy with free parking and expensive housing within that community, it doesn’t mean that people outside that community are happy with it.
I think it’s a bit more complicated than people are happy with the status quo.
Isn't pricing street parking the solution the parent comment proposed? It increases parking availability in the short term, while increasing demand for public transport.
If you can't change anything then you can't change anything. Replacing parking spaces with bus lanes can be a huge improvement, but obviously you have to take the parking space away before you can put the bus lane in.
> Right now people are, by and large, content with the status quo.
Boomers might be. Young people who have no hope of ever owning a home anywhere where the jobs are aren't.
>Telling them to take the bus is about as effective as telling Amazon to abandon delivery vans in favor of bicycles.
Ironic that you bring this up as an absurd example, when this is exactly what happens in dense cities with good cycling infrastructure (Holland, Denmark, etc).
And honestly, it’s questionable whether it warrants a car too. In Tokyo it would be perfectly fine to do those trips by public transport. My biweekly cleaner gets around by train to all the places she works at. And local delivery companies all use bicycles for last mile delivery.
Maybe that’s not viable right now, but I think that’s the point of Donald’s advocacy. By not pricing parking correctly we provide perverse incentives as a society that lead us down a vicious cycle. Free parking means more cars means less transit ridership means we need more free parking, and repeat.
This shapes our cities into places that prioritize cars over humans. High housing costs, air pollution, less mobility, less freedom.
If you price parking appropriately, you get a virtuous cycle instead. Expensive parking means less driving means more transit ridership means more free parking slots means more room for other development, etc.
Public transport is not some enterprise, but rather public service. It's literally in the name. You flip the chicken and egg problem around with corporate bs: make public transport usable and use will skyrocket.
The biggest determinants of quality of service are geographic coverage and frequency. Good luck getting political will to increase frequency or extend geographic coverage on routes that no one is riding.
More people got a home to live in that costs less, and some formerly squandered land was better utilized.
And if you start doing other things like legalizing corner stores and neighborhood businesses, rather than designing everything for the automobile Uber alles, maybe some of those people will find they don't need a car.
Also, policy changes almost never happen in one nice tidy package where you do all the things at once, like eliminating expensive and arbitrary parking rules, adding a bunch of transit, re-legalizing neighborhood commercial, right-sizing roads, etc... so there are going to be fits and starts and bumps along the way. Still worth doing though.
I lived in an area that allowed "senior" developments for 55+ people. As old people are all retired and so do not commute/drive, there were far fewer necessary parking spots and the development was deemed not to increase local traffic. Without the need to commute to work, upgrades to mass transit were deemed unnecessary. Total BS. All the care providers and visiting families ended up parking at the nearby mall. And retired people still drive. They don't commute to work but they don't sit still at home all day either. The whole pack of lies was simply a way to bypass parking regs and squeeze more condos onto the lot to the detriment of the surrounding community.