Comment by mgleason_3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mgleason_3 | Hacker News Reader

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Sheesh, these “conversations”. Just “eliminating” parking at new developments does not eliminate the _need_ for parking. People still have to get to work, school, the grocery store.

We had that happen near us 30 years ago by a developer who used a similar argument. A golf course was developed into 13,000 apartments with virtually no parking.

Overnight, the surrounding neighborhood’s streets were changed. Once they had been calm quiet places with plenty of parking. Now they are loud, crowded with double-parked cars blocking the street, blocked driveways, yelling and fist-fights. They’ve tried many thing to “fix” the problem. But 30 years later, the problems only gotten worse. It still sucks. Of course the neighbors will oppose it - label it NIMBYism or whatever you like.

But, we do have a problem and it would be great to actually change the status-qo. So, here’s a proposal:

*New buildings may be constructed without parking but _only_ if both of the following conditions are met:

1. The occupants are not allowed to own or operate motorized transportation of any type. This is enforced by the local police and the fines are huge.

2. 20% of the sales price of the new development is used to build mass transit.

I agree with the idea of impact fees being used to fund public transit but your first suggestion sounds very confrontational for a few reasons:

First, why are only the people who "got there first" allowed to use the public streets for storing privately owned items?

Second, why not require that people who do have parking are only allowed to own as many motorized vehicles as can fit in their parking and cannot use the public right of way to store their private possessions, with huge fines?

It seems like we need more carrot and less stick.

> why not require that people who do have parking are only allowed to own as many motorized vehicles as can fit in their parking and cannot use the public right of way to store their private possessions, with huge fines?

> It seems like we need more carrot and less stick.

I feel like that suggestion is precisely more stick and less carrot. More carrot and less stick would indeed be to put some of the money toward public transit, or to build parking spaces for smaller vehicles (e.g. bikes/scooters, motorized or otherwise).

Tokyo manages this problem before it ever becomes a problem: you can't register your car to a Tokyo address unless you can prove you have a parking spot. It could be a spot in your front yard (in this case probably the entire yard) or a rented space in a parking garage. If you can't afford a parking spot at market rate, then you can't afford a car.

More than that, registration is actually a national requirement for full sized cars (kei's don't need a registered spot). And the country as a whole generally does not have street parking. Conjoined, means that illegal/congested streets from parking isn't an issue

One way or another, prior development had to provide adequate parking. Conversely, cars cause a lot of problems - pollution, gridlock, greenhouse gas emissions. And I can understand a developer who is committed to changing the world we live in by not allowing parking on their new development. That's awesome!

So, the suggestion is not confrontational. It's going with the dream that the developer is suggesting. We'll never get there if the people who believe in the dream don't commit to it. People have to get around somehow. And if they aren't allowed motor vehicles, then they will push their politicians to invest in public transit.

I think what you're intuitively feeling is that developers don't actually have that vision. Instead, they want to freeload on parking that was provided by others and make life worse for everyone. A few weeks ago, there was an article in HN that suggested Los Angeles could solve their homeless problem by converting every parking spot into housing, which might be true. The idea seemed to be taken seriously with lots of comments supporting it. Yet, that would truly be confrontational and unbelievably disruptive. And kinda dumb since anyone with a map can see that Los Angeles is bordered by hundreds of square miles of open land to the north and west. Plus there's Griffith park, the stadiums, unused warehouses and on and on. So, one has to wonder - was the story truly written by someone who cares about the homeless? Or, was it a developer wanting to increase their profit margin?

If the vision is to get to something like this wonderful "nooks and Crannies" story, then the challenge is getting from the current situation to that vision. I'd love to see that vision come true. Unfortunately, I can't see is a humane way of changing many (most?) existing neighborhoods.

But, what could work would be to change zoning in large undeveloped areas to allow for much higher density housing, walkability, and to link them together via public transit.

So, eliminate on street parking.

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