In Some US Cities, There Are Over Ten Times More Parking Spaces Than Households
motherboard.vice.com
motherboard.vice.com
A city could have 10x the number of parking spaces as households and still not have nearly enough parking spaces available for, say, downtown parking.
I'd like to see most parking gone and cars into the city banned (unless you reside downtown, or are a delivery vehicle/bus) or a high dollar toll on downtown exits. This would force public transit to get better and make people demand it get better. It would cut commute times significantly for the lower classes commuting every weekday.
The city taxes parking spaces pretty heavily. So 70 minutes in a garage (you're gonna have to walk back and forth to the garage), I'm still only paying for half to 2/3rds of that lunch even if we eat someplace decent.
Personally I think we're just about right. Parking is tough but not quite impossible. But I'm also not averse to reducing car traffic in the core. Going east-west has always been impossible anyway. But I don't go downtown as much anymore except by bus because my SO -hates- the traffic and parking situation.
The bus situation is getting worse because the city loses something like $1 on every bus trip, so they cut routes during the last job crunch instead of expanding them, leading to very crowded buses. If you aren't travelling during rush hour there may not be any buses near your house at all.
Still twiddling my thumbs for the rail expansions to land. I'll be close to retirement (I think that's the first time I've typed those words and a little shiver went down my spine) by the ETA for my neighborhood, and I probably won't still be here by then anyway.
I was just thinking something like Mod Pizza :). Most restaurants downtown are too overpriced for me. I do really like El Borracho, but that's $25/hr parking. Capitol Hill has really good Sushi, Tacos, & Ramen which is where I usually go for restaurants. Parking up there is much cheaper too.
I bus from North to downtown for work every week day and over the past 3-4 months my bus is packed so much that it's people almost involuntarily molesting each other, packed in like sardines. I see the double decker Sound Transit busses going way over their maximum limit of passengers. I would really like to see Seattle & surrounding areas put in a much larger effort for Transit since we already have so many people, and we keep gaining thousands more every year.
I am about to move south near the light rail, so that will be quite nice. It looks like Northgate station is coming together quite nicely and I see them starting demolition of buildings for the light rail in Lynnwood as of a few weeks ago. I hope a lot of the north light rail is completed early.
> it’s more lucrative to operate a parking structure than a housing unit. This is great for landowners who are looking to make a big return on their investments, but it makes real estate markets inhospitable to new home buyers and renters.
This is why public transportation is so important. The private car is a local maximum. Once everybody has one it is very expensive to create a cheap and efficient massive public transportation network. But if you have an efficient massive public transportation network, it is cheaper, healthier, and convenient than private cars.
That is why Uber can operate at a loss. If New York, for example, losses its massive public transportation to cheaper at-a-loss car transportation they can raise prices afterwards without fear of massive public transport competition again, as it requires to jump over the local maximum to the optimal.