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Comment by jandrese | Hacker News Reader

So the solution is simple: Create a dedicated package delivery/cab pickup/dropoff lane for those vehicle that clearly need to stop frequently but for short times. /s

Maybe try to reclaim some of the street parking spots by making them 5-10 minute stop only. Given the ratio of street parking to population that's probably not enough. Enforcement would be difficult too. It seems the crux of the issue is that there are vehicles that need to make short stops at establishments and cant afford to spend an hour finding a legitimate parking spot each time. The only reasonable option now is to park illegally and try to be quicker than the cops.

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Seattle has more than a few 3-minute loading parking zones around neighborhoods. They're usually placed to be convenient for wheelchairs, walkers, dollys, hand trucks, and carts; but aren't restricted to any group. And unlike most other street parking, most of these spots don't swap to free at 8pm, instead staying loading zones 24/7.

Enforcement is the same as any other priority parking spot - if the police find your unattended car, they'll ticket and tow.

And most people seem pretty honest about it. It's easier to park somewhere else if you're eating or working in your car. And less risky (cheaper) to park in a garage if you'll be a while.

Seattle is kind of an anomaly in a lot of ways where people actually pay attention to the laws and follow them for the intended purpose more than their own benefit. Anecdotal evidence, when they were fixing an expansion joint on I-90 a few years ago they needed 80k people not to drive that week over I-90. They estimated that 130k people worked from home that week. Employers were totally cool about it too. "yeah work from home this week".

I think a good percentage of those 130k would give one of their limbs for a better commute on I-90. :)

The tech industry and canada being next door might help with that :D

For a minute I thought you were saying "steal the employee" then remembered the Canadian stereo types. Tech I'm sure helped but I was in welding class at the same time and Boeing the Boeing folks also shifted

Canada is closer to New York than Oregon.

That's good to know but Seattle is in Washington. Unless you're trying to be funny and we're all wooshing due to Vancouver WA vs Vancouver BC

Feels a lot more like NYC is an anomaly where no one cares about rules directly impacting them.

The Pacific Northwest in general seems to have a more communal culture (moreso Oregon than Western Washington). But NYC.... Dear lord.

Bus lanes and stops are actually empty a lot of the time, they just need to be clear at the particular moment when the bus needs them.

With real-time tracking of bus and delivery vehicle locations, I wonder if it would be feasible to work out a software solution that allows delivery vehicles official, coordinated access to the unused time slices. Much like an automated version of what air traffic controllers do for runways and taxiways.

So for example, when a UPS truck enters a neighborhood where it needs needs to deliver 3 packages, the UPS routing software could query the transit agency software telling it the 3 locations, and it could respond with time ranges that they're available. Bus #123 will be at stop #456 at 2:33pm, and that stop won't be needed by another bus until 2:44pm, so we can reserve the time slot 2:35pm-2:42pm for you to make your delivery.

Great idea. I agree, they only have to be open when the bus is there. And in fact, maybe there is a $ amount that the city would be ok with if the bus lane was parked.I.e. if a ambulance was there. So if there was dynamic parking for city streets then potentially solved.

Accurately predicting when a bus will be at the stop in a window 2 hours into the future is effectively impossible, but being able to say "this stop won't be needed in the next 5 minutes" is almost certainly feasible. So the UPS software would need to dynamically decide the routes based on parking availability that is constantly changing throughout the day. Not an easy problem, but one that seems solveable.

The city only needs to publish the ETA for the next bus on each stop, information that bus riders would also find extremely useful.

Busses get slowed down for any number of reasons. Bus schedules are basically fantasies, as any big city resident can tell you. There are too many things that can slow a bus down. Stop lights, accidents, securing wheelchairs, delivery vehicles blocking your lane, construction, police activity, congestion, the guy who gets on and discovers he doesn't have bus fare and wants to argue about it, and on and on and on.

> as any big city resident can tell you.

I used to take the bus every day in Prague (Czech Republic) for about 6 years. It was almost always on schedule in both the morning and afternoon.

I don't know anywhere near enough to argue why in general. But not having drivers sell tickets, and route planning certainly help. For example, shorter routes are guaranteed to reduce variance. But I'm not sure what the downsides are.

Former Seattle (now Las Vegas) resident here. To make the buses run on time, the planners build in "time stops." These are locations where the bus should go through at specific times to not be too early for the rest of the schedule, and they also provide some buffer for buses to recover time lost due to bike loading, disabled passengers, and traffic congestion. If you're getting the bus after a time stop, you'll likely almost always get it on time. If your stop is before the time stop, bus arrival times will vary wildly.

It gets even more interesting when you add transport of the bus: the Seattle (King County) Metro also serves Vashon Island, so some of the buses travel on ferries with their associated delays and peculiarities.

> some of the buses travel on ferries That's an interesting that they would do that along an entire route rather than splitting the two. I've never heard of that before.

I also do really like how Seattle has that dedicated busway twice a day. It's one of the avenues downtown right?

Third Avenue downtown, yes.

Also an insaneo bike lane iirc.

I get on a bus right before a time stop. It's only about 30 blocks after the previous time stop (Northgate TC) but has arrived as soon as 5 minutes before the posted time. That's always fun when combined with a 10 minute late bus following it.

It always stings to see the bus approach early such that I have to run for it, only to then have it wait for 5 minutes at the time stop 2 stops later.

In smaller cities with less congestion it's much easier to keep the busses running on schedule. I took the bus every day when I was in college and it was like clockwork, but that was in a modest town with low population density. The situation gets worse in a hurry when you're in the middle of Manhattan on roads that were originally laid out for horses.

One thing that helps is that the transit authority (ie. DPP, routes that are run by other companies usually are not that good at keeping the schedule) seems to genuinelly care about keeping the schedule. For streetcars there are online monitored checkpoints at least every kilometer or so (usually on each other stop, as part of the station sign, look for rectangular hole in the upper part) and buses are online GPS tracked, this dat is then used both to improve the scheduling and assess the driver's performance.

Edit: another thing that certainly helps is that most transit lines do not go through the typically congested streets (eg. no daytime public transit goes through the Magistrala in city center) and if they do they are separated (eg. Jecna).

This is the exact opposite of what UPS software does today. It routes based on spending the least amount of gas. Dynamic routing to also conserve fuel in NYC would be a quite a thing and what's the incentive to do that? They would need to get enough tickets to justify the cost.

> They would need to get enough tickets to justify the cost.

That's easy! Even more with the proposed automatic system.

> The city only needs to publish the ETA for the next bus on each stop, information that bus riders would also find extremely useful.

This information already is collected and available by text.

> Bus lanes and stops are actually empty a lot of the time, they just need to be clear at the particular moment when the bus needs them.

Yes, this is true. Here in Chicago, it is only illegal to block a bus stop if it is interfering with a bus [1]. I would imagine that this is the case in NYC as well.

[1] https://chicagocode.org/9-64-140/

Given that at high times of the day buses could be coming every 5 minutes, one could easily argue that you're interfering with buses. Later in the night, seems like a good compromise.

> Create a dedicated package delivery/cab pickup/dropoff lane for those vehicle that clearly need to stop frequently but for short times. /s

I'm not sure why you have to be sarcastic saying this? Toronto is experimenting with this idea by stripping parking spots on some of the most high traffic routes... and exchanging it for taxi/delivery/bike/pedestrian spaces/wider streetcar pick up spots...

It's a real problem that isn't going away. Delivery is getting more and more popular every month throughout North America, not only for traditional ecommerce but also groceries and fast food. Same with 'fleet-based' car systems such as Uber/Lyft (which are better for cities/the environment than owning cars) which will be massively increasing in scale with self-driving cars.

So, why shouldn't we design infrastructure for them as much as bikes?

I not sure why the promotion of bike (lanes) has to always be at the detriment of high demand short-term parking. If anything the only long-term losers should be private car spots, but only because other means have reached higher demand and utility.

But even then that's not exactly an unsolvable problem either absent restrictive municipal policy and that prevent the development of underground parking.

Maybe. But instead of dedicated points. Why not just have a market set the price of parking. So no free parking. And the price of parking is set so that we are at 75% capacity by day/hour or something like that. So that way there are always spots available and everyone pays their due.

A system like that breaks down the first time 10 people need to access the building and there are only 8 spots. Do you tell the UPS driver "Sure, you can park here to deliver the package, but it will cost you $100/minute.". It's also horrifically complex to implement.

The only complex part should be gathering the data (how many spots are open in this street at these times).

I bet in most places these things are measured, and if they aren't it could be simple to measure. LA has parking meters that take credit card payments. You can extrapolate parking spot availability from that. Obviously I'm ignoring the cost of adding credit card parking meters where there aren't, but it proves my point that it could be simple

Choosing a price doesn't have to be complex either. Every quarter raise the price until the desired free space is available

Does this system retroactively raise the price on cars that are already parked there? Or does it create an incentive to get their early and park as long as possible since you'll never find a spot this cheap again?

Sorry, wasn't clear in what I imagined.

Every single street parking meter I have ever seen has working hours (including holidays) and constant price to pay. There's no price increase in certain hours of the day or that sort of thing.

The price adjustment would be changing that constant price per quarter of the year.

So you don't get there early in the day or hog a spot. Every one pays the same regardless of what time they want the spot during the working hours

Assuming 1 spot = 1 vehicle, 10 vehicles won't fit into 8 spots anyway.

I agree! "Cheap" parking is another syndrome of America's car culture. Nothing is free and we pay for the free/cheap parking in other ways.

In this case it trickled down to the buses and bikers. They pay for it in longer more dangerous commutes

How is "car culture" relevant to contractors and delivery vehicles?

They take up all the spots on the street...

I don't follow. What does contractor and delivery vehicles taking up all the spaces have to do with "car culture"?

I could be wrong, but I think you have it the wrong way round. I think what the previous poster means is that cars take up all the spaces which leaves none for delivery vehicles, etc...

Other way around. Parked cars ("car culture" meaning the expectation that there should be free and easy street parking everywhere) take up space that could be otherwise used by contractor and delivery vehicles.

No one is arguing against contractor and delivery vehicles needing space; car free places such as campus quads or (say) Vernazza, Italy allow "special purpose" vehicles in.

1.) Contractor and delivery (and police!) vehicles ought to pay to park, even for 30 seconds. 2.) These fees will be passed to customers, who will pass it onto their customers or move their business somewhere else - where infrastructure exists to support it.

Car culture keeps parking prices down, to the point that all spots are always taken, pushing delivery vehicles into illegality.

In NYC in early 20th century, long-term street parking was uncommon. As cars became more common, street parking was considered a blight and made illegal. The American Automobile Association successfully lobbied to get this regulation overturned in 1950.

The streets are now lined with parked cars, which means that police, taxis, contractors, and delivery vehicles double-park, often blocking bike lanes and bus lanes.

Downside of this strategy is now you have another variable delivery cost that will be passed onto all consumers in the area.

If the person receiving the delivery has to bear the delivery cost, instead of transferring it onto bikers, drivers, bus riders in the form of obstructed streets, I would call that an upside.

That sounds like a plus. The cost of using the infrastructure should be passed on to the end users.

Basically, the Shoup/SFPark system:

https://www.accessmagazine.org/fall-2013/sfpark-pricing-park...

I agree that cities need to allocate street space for very short term parking for deliveries, cab/ubers, etc. We shouldn't be forcing drivers to break the law to do things that are part of the normal routine of the city and endanger pedestrians and bikers. Every metro city should be planning for all types of traffic.

They often do that by taking away space from cars.

London has red-routes, where you absolutely can't park.

There are a lot fewer parking spaces, and a congestion charge, along with lots more bus lanes... this didn't happen all at once though, but over many years.

I have a friend who was an armored truck driver. When they build a lightrail/trolley in my city, they put the track on the road near the only "secure" route out of a mall within the city. Technically, they are parking illegally, but the police look the other way and there doesn't seem to be a political or engineering solution. Now, the trolley waits behind the armored trucks twice a day.

Convert all bus stop areas into 3-minute loading zones? Charge a fee when taxis / ridesharing / delivery providers want to use them, then use that for a transit fund.

>"So the solution is simple: Create a dedicated package delivery/cab pickup/dropoff lane for those vehicle that clearly need to stop frequently but for short times. /s"

The parking lane has already been pushed out to make room for a dedicated biking lane. Proposing another dedicated lane on top of this is not a "simple" solution.

I'm not sure if you missed it, but the "/s" at the end of the message is short for "</sarcasm>". jandrese was not being serious with the given suggestion.

LOL, I just thought it was typo. I guess I didn't get the memo on the new sarcasm tags. It's actually a very fun comment then. Cheers.

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