No minimum parking requirements? No problem for Fayetteville, Arkansas
sightline.org
sightline.org
Bentonville and Fayetteville have built almost 1000 miles of bike specific, particularly Mountain Biking specific trails, right through town.
This is not the faux "bike friendly" BS crap with "bike lanes" that painted in traffic that everyone ignores... These are not an attempt to squeeze bikes into an automotive infrastructure and all the other crap politicians pull... these are trails through the woods, backyards, down neighborhoods, paralleling sidewalks, etc. This is making Biking a first class citizen.
Very few people are comfortable riding bikes in automovtive traffic. You will eventually get hit by someone posting selfies on instagram or playing their friends in wordle. If cities want actual change, they need dedicated infrastructure for bikes, and these two cities have shown that it absolutely works.
I was a pedestrian cyclist there from 2017-2020 and I frequently was walking or riding in the roads or ditches when the sidewalk ran out. Sure, I could get across town, but when I get there, who knows if there's sidewalks?
If I wanted to go grocery shopping and be on a sidewalk/bike trail, I had to go an extra mile out of my way to go under the overpass and through the community college to get to neighborhood market. That trip was already a mile if I rode along the road, so double the distance. That's not making cycling a first class citizen! That's hiding cyclists from cars who are the real first class citizen. I know, I grew up there.
Fayetteville and Rogers get this right(ish), Bentonville wants to pretend they have it right so talent will move there for Walmart after Walmart spent decades making sure brain drain was inevitable by keeping the area "small town" (they bragged about this during my corporate orientation) and fighting density that could have naturally precipitated good pedestrian and biking infrastructure.
And the separate bike lanes through the woods are not some grand way to make cycling first class they are NECESSARY or the rural drivers who come into the "city" would be playing chicken games and trying to run cyclists off the road. When I grew up this was a common thing to joke about!
Living in Europe this question doesn't compute at all. Such a foreign idea to even contemplate. If it doesn't have a sidewalk, it must be a country road or a highway right? Couldn't happen in a reasonably densely populated area...?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad
USA seems to be unique in the case that they think this design constitutes a finished product.
Edit: the Not Just Bikes youtube channel has great content regarding contemporary urban planning. Here's their video about stroads https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM
That said, the purpose of said sidewalks is to exercise your dog, or let your kids ride their bikes around. They often don't connect up to anything in a useful way (other than nearby parks and maybe elementary schools - but only if they are very close)
What should it connect to? Thanks to zoning there is no Café you can go to or a small supermarket or anything else in the vicinity. Not even public transport which then might bring you elsewhere.
If they could get away with it developers would drop sidewalks completely. It’s only because cities and towns started mandating it that they became fashionable again.
Which was considered fine at the time and depending on where you live is still fine.
Or in many of the places, the sidewalks exist, but are useless because cars are allowed to park on them.
I've never understood how people in wheelchairs are able to get anywhere in most of "civilized" Europe.
There is a little wedge of Washington, DC, bounded by Oregon Avenue, Western Avenue, and Chestnut St, called "Hawthorne". I used to run through and see signs reading "No Sidewalks in Hawthorne", after a while varied by signs says "Yes, Sidewalks in Hawthorne", but probably fewer. I suppose that this is six miles from the White House by air line, probably seven by road.
(And now there are sidewalks in Hawthorne, at least a few.)
When the Feds someday allocate billions to bike infrastructure, they’ll get the sidewalks, etc.
Imo securing rights of way that can be a framework for a future system is key.
Just curios, are you guys Java internally? If you can't answer, no worries.
I’d reckon it’s less than 20%, maybe even as low as 5%. The subway alone has a daily ridership of about 2 million, plus the massive amount of people who just walk or bike to the store, work, etc. I think it seems like more people are using cars than actually are due to their visibility, like you mention—they take up more space, they’re given more space, etc. It’s insane.
https://mashable.com/article/nyc-city-council-lyft-uber-cap-...
Two specific policies, but there’s also just the fact that every bike lane/pedestrian street/bus lane/low speed limit/etc. makes the city less car friendly and at some point that makes a difference.
You will eventually get hit by someone who punishment passes you and is dangerously negligent because they've dehumanized you, and they just don't care if they do violence to you, and its you're fault because you're slow.
Or you will get hit by people who simply don't register bikes and consciously or unconsciously think that bicyclists must yield to cars, sometimes turning left in front of you with no time for you to stop.
Or you will get right hooked by someone who just passed you a second earlier and that is too long for their minds to track the fact that you're still there, or they again think they're entitled to drive however they want and you need to yield to whatever they do.
1. randomly wandering out of the bike lane and into the car lane
2. stopped in the middle of the car lane around a blind curve
3. drafting 3 feet behind the panel truck in front of them at 40 mph
4. riding two or three abreast, with the 2 or 3 well into the car lane
5. continuing to cycle at 25 mph in the right hand bike lane while the traffic is going much slower, and there's a right hand turn coming up (it's difficult to spot these bikers while driving, heck, even cars are hard to see there which is why overtaking on the right is illegal)
None of these incidents were kids on bikes, they were all middle aged adults who really should know better.
I talked to a couple of these cyclists (in their tour de france outfits, naturally) once, and they laughed and said if they get hit by a car it'll be their big payday lawsuit. I replied getting crippled isn't worth a billion dollars.
Ride defensively, folks, regardless of what the law says or who is at fault.
I also never saw any other bicyclists on my commute do anything particularly dangerous or come near to causing collisions. I saw a few of them brake the law, but I saw a lot of cars break the laws as well.
The last time I think I saw a truly dangerous bicyclist was probably 10 years ago when some idiot blew a 4 way hauling ass after coming down a hill and given a minute one way or the other I would have killed him.
I really need to get a dashcam because of all the bad drivers out there though. Just the level of tailgating at highway speeds out there is fucking insanity, with every other driver convinced that their testicles will shrivel up if someone changes lanes in front of them.
As an operator of a motor vehicle, it is my responsibility to not endanger or injure other road users. It drives people nuts usually, but I take it seriously. I stop at stop signs and red lights. I take turns slowly. I don't pass in an un-safe manner. I drive slower. Cyclists riding like idiots doesn't really bother me because it doesn't really HURT me in any way. They aren't the ones driving multi-ton machines.
By all means yes, get a dashcam. The more evidence, the better. While driving, I've had a few cyclists come around around blind corners going the wrong way. Any type of road user can be an idiot. But the main commonality of your list is people clashing with your own personal expectations. Don't assume that evidence of such will exculpate you (eg #2).
Bikers ride like shit all the time. Drivers drive like shit all the time. Hell, pedestrians do stupid shit all the time too. Nobody is in some superior transportation group.
None of them know the actual rules of the road, and all assume they are correct and the ones in the right. You do any one of these things long enough, you'll see the stupid things the others do.
I took a class in performance driving once. The central rule there is to "be predictable", as that's how accidents are avoided at 200 mph when you're 2 feet off of someone else's bumper.
It's a lesson I took to heart in my everyday driving, and I wish that principle was taught regularly to other drivers, and that cyclists would have a clue about it.
It is also worth noting that motorists sometimes create the problems themselves. I try to stick to traffic regulations while on a bike since, as you say, being predictable is important. (In fact, it's something that a lot of cyclists in my neck of the woods preach.) Then you get a driver who tries to wave a cyclist waiting to make a left turn through when they have the right of way. No thank you. I have no plans on being road kill because the motorist is trying to be nice, and the guy behind him decides to pass on the right.
Unfortunately, tonnes of situations like that pop up. Stopping for pedestrians when they have the right of way can be quite scary. I have had pedestrians to the right thing (push the button, wait to cross), I've stopped, and the car behind me decides to race through. They had plenty of time to stop. I know because I always do a shoulder check before stopping for pedestrians. Not doing so can be fatal. I have had motorists get angry at me for stopping for pedestrians in intersections where pedestrians had the right of way under similar circumstances.
I realize that this is by no means a one way relationship. Some cyclists are idiots, either taking to many risks or by being to timid. Both result in unpredictability. I also realize that the behaviour of some motorists and some cyclists may be due to a "bad day". Let's face it, some people have to be on their bikes or in their cars even if they know they are unable to be fully attentive.
I also realize that there are many incentives to behave properly on the roads because bad behaviour can have nasty consequences. Unfortunately, it often feels as though a lot of drivers failed basic physics and don't understand their larger mass and higher speeds gives them a great deal more kinetic energy.
Let's explore the prejudice angle.
Not long ago in Seattle, a truck driver was going down a street under the speed limit, passing a line of cars all parked along the side of the road. As he approached a crosswalk, a cyclist suddenly was in the crosswalk, and the driver was unable to stop in time and smacked him, killing him.
The driver was slapped with a huge lawsuit, on the grounds that the cyclist was in a crosswalk.
Fortunately for the driver, there were many eyewitnesses who attested that the cyclist suddenly turned and angled into the crosswalk at high speed. The view of the approaches to the crosswalk were hidden by the parked cars. The driver was judged not at fault, yet there was still a hew and cry in the paper to hang him.
The driver was pre-judged as guilty, and had to prove his innocence. Without several eyewitnesses testifying in his defense, there's no doubt what the outcome would have been.
Hence I have a dashcam.
> it often feels as though a lot of drivers failed basic physics and don't understand their larger mass and higher speeds gives them a great deal more kinetic energy.
And the cyclists need to understand that cars have larger mass and higher speeds and are less maneuverable and have less 360 visibility, hence should not assume that the drivers can see and avoid the cyclist. For their own safety. I do not understand adults failing to look after themselves.
Like I said, I understand why you have a dashcam. It can be a valuable tool to prove your innocence should the need arise. The thing I take issue with is the presumed guilt of cyclists. Yes, there are times when cyclists are to blame. On the other hand, there are times when motorists are to blame. Those circumstances are common since most cyclists realize that they are the ones who are going to die. A lot of motorists don't seem to have the realization that they are the ones who can take lives. At least in the moment.
Here are some things that I have encountered as a cyclist:
- I have been in a hit-and-run. The impact was hard enough that I chunk of their car was broken off in the accident and loud enough that people could hear the crash in their houses. Witnesses said there was no way the driver could have not noticed they hit someone, yet they left me for dead. That is not how you treat another human being. I don't know who is to blame here since visibility may have been an issue, though I was following traffic laws to the letter, but the police said the driver's behaviour after the fact was likely the product of drunk driving.
- I have been intentionally hit by a driver. At least that is the only way I can explain it since they were stopped behind me at a red light and decided to go straight through me while I was waiting for an opening to make a left turn. Yes, I was signalling. Again, a hit and run. The police did not want to deal with it.
- The right hook is famous amongst cyclists. Believe it or not, these aren't always the result of cyclists passing to the right. I never pass to the right since I realize that many motorists don't signal turns. (I cannot predict what they will do, so I don't know when it is safe to pass.) Then there is the visibility factor that you mentioned. Yet vehicles will pass me and turn across me on a regular basis. I have even had that happen when the vehicle is in another lane.
- I have had vehicles make left turns from behind me because they are impatient and had poor judgment on the speed of oncoming traffic. I have seen several near collisions between two automobiles because of that, and it places me as a cyclist at greater risk.
- Certain groups of people like to distract cyclists. I'm not talking about people honking or screaming expletives here. I'm talking about people screaming absolutely nonsensical things at me in an attempt to pull my attention from the road.
I'm not bringing up these examples to say that motorists are always to blame. I know they aren't. I've certainly had my sloppy days on the road, though, ironically, those seem to be the times when I had the fewest issues. I'm bringing it up because there are plenty of times when large bundles of kinetic energy aren't following the law and are endangering people's lives. I'm not saying this is because your veering cyclist should avoid the blame. Most of the cyclists I know would frown upon such behaviour even if there wasn't an accident. I'm saying it because there are all too many cases where motorists seem to believe they are never to blame, even when they are not paying attention to the rules of the road themselves, or they make a bad judgment call, or even when they are acting in malice. It's like that because they have no skin to loose in the game (or, at least, not as much).
Those are all problems with the road, and not limited to bicycles. Eg. I see cars overtake on the right all the time
Nope. I thought I was pretty clear. There's no sane reason to park in the middle of the road around a blind corner. Or draft. Or wander randomly in and out of the bike lane into traffic.
> I see cars overtake on the right all the time
It's still illegal, and for good reason.
Not in every state, not every context:
https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=46.61.115
For bikes it is even more nuanced (in my state):
It's true that shitty bike lanes on auto-oriented streets are shitty, and that off-street paths are great. But lanes and paths are not the same thing, and neither of them is the reason this policy is working in Fayetteville.
And what's worse, I've had drivers stop to yell at me for riding on the (completely empty) sidewalk when crossing a narrow bridge busy with car traffic. As if hundreds of bikers don't die every year from getting whacked by careless drivers.
Some people are jerks in every situation. I don't believe bicyclists stand out as victims, except the expectation that they ride in traffic and the consequences of colliding with a car.
It's not clear to me why there should be any right for bicyclists to be allowed on the road.
It's conceivable a bicyclist can get away without paying any tax whatsoever on the road, especially if their income is small. Free rider, welfare queens of the road.
>Roads are for people to walk on, historically, and it's adding cars that made them dangerous
In urban areas that's actually typically what the sidewalk for, and it's often illegal to walk on the road.
But this is why I'm against public roads, there are all sorts of bad problems associated with this being a public good.
Historically, streets were for walking. Walking in cities predates cars in cities by thousands of years.
>Historically, streets were for walking. Walking in cities predates cars in cities by thousands of years.
Historically, thousands of years ago, women commonly died in childbirth, a large fraction of children died before reaching age 5, and the only way for the greatest portion of the population to survive was manual labor in agriculture or some sort of subsistence existence. Most roads at least in US were not built thousands of years ago, a overwhelming portion of the total road area in America was designed with motor vehicle transportation in mind.
To suggest American roads are built as places for walking, for the vast portion of mileage, is just laughable at face and you only have to witness them to see this. And, in many cases, illegal.
Privatize the roads, IMO, and let the market decide how to efficiently allocate costs. It would be the fastest way to move towards more efficient systems in urban areas, such as much more bicyclists rather than wasteful cars. Bicyclists would pay their share, but see that it is very low. Car drivers may just see how wasteful it is to drive everywhere, when the cost is in front of them. It could lead to a rejuvenation and revival of the age of the urban bicyclist -- and just maybe a safer and cleaner world for everyone.
I would be in favor of moving to a per mile, per pound (scaled by actual wear estimates) axle weight tax system for all vehicles including bicycles. Based on the data though, it could get very expensive for some cars and would likely be nothing but an administrative burden for bicycles.
[1] https://taxfoundation.org/states-road-funding-2019/ [2] https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...
As the dude I overhead in some backcountry bar in the middle of nowhere put it: the government should pay for two things - clean water, smooth roads, and that's it.
They enhance the use of parks, they don't make parks more noxious, they increase property values, they keep the city valuable.
E-bikes are going to magnify the value of cities with good biking infrastructure. All of a sudden car trips become bike trips, and there are no concerns about hills or headwinds or towing a burly of stuff: the electric motor handles some or all of the required needed power. Need to haul ten bags of groceries and a kiddo up the big hill on the Mississippi? the electric motor will get you there.
It hopefully will reduce the amount of surface area dedicated to cars, and switch those over to more parks and more recreation.
Weather down there seems even more conducive.
My dad can bike from their house to downtown in 15 minutes (more like 30 as getting older). It's amazing. Completely protected separate bike lane going through old rail corridor. I can bike to whole foods from there too without having to go on a busy street.
They are expanding light rail there too but seems like similar to most cities it isn't great yet. Hopefully we'll see more density around the stops. My city Denver feels the same it's not actually used as much as it could be.
Cyclists still just rode on the roads.
Interesting how successful the car manufacturer lobby was in the US, transforming whole cities and life styles of ordinary Americans for generations.
Similar dynamics still go on. Where I live Portland is overwhelmingly the major metro area, but the Oregon DOT is run out of the state capital, Salem, a much smaller and much more suburban community a bit south of the metro area. Despite supposedly being qualified professionals, it's clear ODOT sees things entirely in a car centric way. The only projects they're excited about pushing forward are freeway expansions. Portland is rather emphatic on NOT wanting that, but rather a multi-modal transit network that actually works with the density we have. In recent years ODOT has gotten so tired of the popular backlash on their projects in Portland that they've started playing deceptive games around the public notification process to try to sneak stuff through without pushback.
This whole nation just somehow lost its mind over the ideal of a car centric suburban lifestyle. And yes, some of that was straight up racially motivated, in the trend of white flight. But there were lots of things that fed into it imo. And to be fair, there are plenty of people who do like a suburban lifestyle where they live on a culdesac and have to drive to a strip mall for routine errands. But if you look at the overall migration pattern, all the growth is happening in the 20 or so major metro areas, and in particular in the ones that offer the combination of high income jobs and a more urban lifestyle. Yet somehow all these DoT's across the nation are still acting like the dream of the 1950s is their only priority.
Unless you have some kind of information to explain it, my bet is the Oregon DOT only provides grants for some related projects that the city of portland executes.
Your argument is being made in isolation of political-economic reality, at least as it currently exists in the united states. Tax receipts that could be used for roads (aka not property taxes which currently fund schools) flow out and up from city residents, primarily to the federal government, then to states, and lastly to municipalities. Cities don’t have the same ability to set tax rates as the nation or a state for the simple reason that it’s far more feasible for someone to change cites vs states, to say nothing of county.
Federal dollars are given to states, which are combined with state taxes to build highways, freeways, and other high speed high volume roadway. This constitutes the majority of all road spending, and cites simply have to integrate with that.
1. The I84/I5 interchange. ODOT wants to upgrade it. There has had to be an extreme amount of community push-back to get the proposal even half way integrated with the city itself. As it stands now, it includes partial capping and better bike and transit options above ground. However, it still expands car capacity.
2. The I5 bridge across the Columbia River. It needs to be replaced for seismic and age reasons. The community wants there to be expanded infrastructure for non-cars across one of only two bridges across the Columbia near the city. The other bridge was built recently(ish) and doesn’t have any meaningful non-car transit options. The community wants, at a bare minimum, there to be light rail going from Portland to Vancouver, WA included in a bridge project. So far, that hasn’t quiet materialized.
3. There are many roads in Portland still “owned” by the state. 82nd Ave used to be a good example, though it was transferred to the city last year. These roads have notoriously poor maintenance and high traffic deaths since they really aren’t well-designed for urban areas. (Too fast, too wide, too many access points to be a proper highway, etc.)
4. When the initial freeways were built in Portland, the original plan was for there to be several more highways than there are today. You can see many locations in the existing infra where a highway was meant to connect in but was never built. The Mt. Hood freeway is an example. It took very significant community pushback to get those projects cancelled.
Here’s my take on this, as a Portland resident. The state of Oregon is willing to spend billions of dollars upgrading transportation infrastructure in the Portland area. Why the fuck does 99% of that have to go to highways? Why can’t, say, 50% of it go to vastly expanding bike infrastructure to reduce the cost of road maintenance? That still leaves 50% of, again, billions of dollars of projects to car projects. I’m not even talking 50% of the state transportation budget, I’m talking 60% of the money they would already be spending in our community.
We basically just want more efficient transit methods to get more funding. It’s ok (to me) if the I84/I5 interchange gets improved. It currently sucks and doesn’t feel safe. But I’m not in favor of doing that project without first spending a lot of money or more effective and efficient transportation options. If there’s billions of dollars to be spent on infra, it should absolutely be going to bikes and transit first.
It doesn’t really matter who has jurisdiction, to people who live here
In your second example the community wants to force a light rail project into a bridge project, which sounds like the community had no idea what anything costs and is just repeating something theyve been told is good. There are also rules about funding diversions to exactly stop municipalities from taking money from other levels of government and spending it on things outside of those programs. The community may decide it wants a lot of things - light rail is a whole different proposition than a bridge project.
Portland's transport org doesn't spend billions of dollars and they do have leverage to spend tens of millions on bike projects if they were actually a priority to the city.
But the majority of funding comes from gas taxes and car registration, and bikes aren't paying it, and represent a tiny fraction of the people and goods moved each day.
Even if it is common sense, it is new and rare, which is newsworthy.
[1] https://pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/12/16/americans-a...
Where someone lives is a compromise. Everyone wants the best of ALL words: the dense urban area with a subway entrance on the same street, plenty of shopping and other entertainment. They also want a ski lift up a mountain, finish your day ski day in your own backyard, and a tropical beach in the front yard, among the other benefits of rural living. That is physically impossible no matter how much money you have, so you make the best of what you can get even though it cannot be perfect.
With the current situation of the US subrubs are the best compromise, but as things change different compromises become better. Right now dense areas are a lot more expensive for a lot less space, and often that space comes with the problems of living in a very old building.
Note that change will not happen overnight. Even if 30000 square foot apartments (intentionally be absurdly large to make the point) in neighborhoods with good schools was free it would take a lot of time for people to move even though the rent savings would allow for more than enough other lifestyle changes as to make it a better compromise for most people.
Yup, it's generally just a balancing of priorities and trade offs. For me, having to drive everywhere I need to go would make me really sad, so I chose an urban environment, in a neighborhood where there's a good mix of residential and commercial, that is decently well-connected to public transit. But that means I have to deal with more noise, crime, and homelessness, and don't get to have a yard, despite higher living costs.
But that's my trade off, and others don't prioritize the same things I do.
60% of Americans prefer living a a community with larger houses and having to drive miles to get to school, stores, and restaurants versus having smaller houses and businesses within walking distance. Urban residents are divided almost evenly and 49% of them would prefer to drive miles to get to businesses if it meant that they could live in a large house. [1] I suspect the discrepancy with the previous survey is because both scenarios had the participants living in houses and if they were asked to pick a walkable apartment community or the car-dependent house community the number of people who would pick the denser community would be lower. The data is clear, more people prefer the suburban and rural car dependent lifestyles than the walkable urban lifestyle. Making arguments that people just don't know what they want is incredibly condescending and controlling.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/26/more-americ...
Suburbs existed before the car. See "Streetcar suburbs" on youtube.
Going from $3 train tickets to over $30 tickets hurts a lot more than going from a 50 cents a gallon gas tax to a 60 cent one. In my particular case, moving to a user-pays system would mean that I would save $500 a year in car registration taxes that are used exclusively to fund the transit system, which would more than cover a fair increase in the gas tax.
The cost operating costs for a train can be much less (a train can be fully automated which really brings costs down), or much more (if you run drivers and conductors). However as until the train is full requiring that you buy more the costs do not change at all.
Roads have similar concerns - the cost to build and maintain a road is mostly fixed, but it scales to much slower. A full bus every 5 minutes has far more people than the same road with the maximum number of moving cars, so you need to build more roads faster, thus the capital costs of roads is much higher.
Also, most buses don't have 5 minute headways, so if you're going to assume that you may as well assume that every car contains 4 people. Additionally, a 100 person articulated bus coming every 5 minutes is equivalent to 20 single occupancy cars per minute (or 1 car every 3 seconds), which is typical for a busy street. You need really short headways to match a car lane, shorter headways to beat it, and even shorter headways to justify making the lane exclusive to buses.
I did not say people are stupid. More like people are creatures of habit and often fail to realize how a change they could make would cascade into making things better. That is they are more likely to be pessimistic and see the downsides.
People know what they want when given the existing choices. Frankly the existing choices for dense city living suck for most people (bad schools and they can't afford as much space are big ones), so it is no surprise that people choose suburbs: it is the best choice. The real question is can we reform the dense urban areas so that people will decide they want it over suburbs?
There are advantages to density, and advantages to rural living, but yiur cannot have both at the same time.
Even if the responses were the same ignoring prices, I would probably put more weight on the market prices (i.e what people actually do and the resources they devote to it). Why do urban areas cost more and have a lot of people if people don't actually want it?
I've been to Bentonville (~2016) quite a bit for work, always said I'd go to Fayetteville next time. Bentonville wasn't anything worth writing about for how I want to live but I can see it being an attractive place for quite a lot of people, I was kind of surprised by how underpopulated it seemed. I guess not a lot of jobs outside of the obvious few. Crystal Bridges was a great museum, the Ozarks are lovely. In general I felt a lot more positive visiting that area than I was expecting to.
https://www.youtube.com/notjustbikes
https://www.youtube.com/c/OhTheUrbanity
https://www.youtube.com/c/CityBeautiful
If you want to go deep on parking policy, here's a talk by Donald Shoup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0gokb4rPik
Even Downtown Brooklyn, one of the best connected areas by public transit in NYC, has minimum parking requirements to this day. Manhattan used to as well: they were only lifted in the 80s as a response to federal regulation requiring cities to have better air quality. (Manhattan went even further and added parking maximums, which is very rare.)
In NYC, this is one reason (among others) landlords often don't demolish old buildings to replace them with newer ones: old ones were grandfathered and predated parking minimums. Demolishing and replacing them means you have to build parking. In many places, old buildings are already at the max height allowed by zoning, so demolishing a building means replacing residential square footage with parking. You'd actually be removing housing from a city in a housing crisis if you followed regulations!
https://www.strongtowns.org/parking
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/11/25/parking-minim...
Some more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-26/to-save-t...
It's very clear to me after reading these that government enforced parking minimums and free parking should go.
Henry Grabar is working on what will hopefully be a more popular-press approach: https://twitter.com/henrygrabar/status/1156649614596038656
One of the lasting impacts of our lives is the places we build. Make America Walkable Again.
Usual pattern here if driving to restaurant is spending a long time looking for a park then a long walk. It's good to get the exercise afterwards
I live in Alexandria, a famous historical neighborhood in the Washington DC metro area. Alexandria proper has about 160K people, in a metropolis of 6-7 million, and Alexandria attracts a large number of outside visitors from around the region because of its notoriety.
I think that eliminating parking requirements for businesses is an interesting idea worth consideration. But I wonder how far this can really be taken in my city. We already have high and problematic overflow of visitor parking into residential neighborhoods. I wonder if Fayetteville can pull this off primarily because of its size.
The problematic thinking is that the cars need to be here in the first place. If it is easy to get to the residential neighborhoods by walking, biking or public transit then most of these cars don't need to exist.
Of course it isn't easy. It takes a long time to shift habit, culture and perception. But the upsides are great. It is easier and faster to get around, less people getting hit by cars, less noise. Plus there are other benefits like I can go out and drink without worrying how I can get home or who is the DD.
And yes, to be fair, habit and culture and perception play into this too. Cities build this infrastructure when people demand it and can convincingly argue that it will get used. Potential bus stops are more useful when there isn't a parking lot separating the bus route and the store people want to get to. Useful sidewalks are a natural consequence of commercial districts designed to be accessed by foot/bike/transit instead of by car, and so forth. But it does take both of these.
But also, that's one of many reasons that bike infrastructure isn't enough to displace car infrastructure on its own. Good public transit helps, apart from being a viable year-round transit option in its own right, helps here because it allows people to decide that they can bike on days with good weather, knowing they have fallback options the rest of the time, whatever their own comfort level with with weather may be. And frankly taxis/ride-hailing services can also solve the problem of getting people from place to place without requiring a huge amount of parking spaces.
It can and should be taken to 100%. Even Los Angeles and Dallas – much bigger cities than Alexandria – are studying eliminating parking minimums.
Practically, eliminating parking minimums does not mean there will be no parking built: developers will still include enough parking that makes sense (and sometimes that's – gasp – none!) for a project, because in real life a large apartment buildings with absolutely no parking makes just as little sense as an apartment building with twice the number of parking spaces as tenants, especially in an urban area where car ownership is certainly not 100% (or in some neighborhoods, much less than 50%). This is something that almost every other major city in the world figured out long ago.
Philosophically, parking minimums are only something Americans think is necessary because it's been that way for so long. Why don't we have bike rack minimums? Parking maximums?
Anecdotally, my single family home in Los Angeles technically has a parking minimum of 8(!) cars, due to weirdness with the zoning laws. I live right near transit and don't even have one car. I'd love to replace part of my driveway with a deck and expanded backyard, still leave a few spots for guests, and it would effect literally no one, but doing so would mean my home is no longer up to code.
Well... LA is huge but Dallas is not that much bigger than DC.
DFW metro area is about 7-8M people as of 2022. That puts its the fourth largest metro area in the country, behind only NYC, Los Angeles, and Chicago (which it will also soon pass, if migration trends continue), respectively.
I think by all metrics Dallas is much bigger than DC. Though if you’ve only ever lived on the coasts, that may surprise you.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_are...
I understand that everything is bigger in Texas. But everyone seems to want to restrict DC to the diamond, which is like restricting New York to Manhattan. DC is much larger than many people realize. Regardless, my point is: from the perspective of the impact on population size, Dallas and DC are roughly equivalent environments.
Now, will that mean less people in the area? Maybe, or maybe they will use alternative transportation.
Increased parking does not increase demand, it satisfies more of the demand that has always been there.
Parking inducing demand is pretty well accepted in the urban planning community: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-12/study-the...
Ticket sales don't tell you how many people didn't go to Disneyland because the tickets cost too much.
Not to say this can't be done elsewhere but this seems like a place that was going to be popular / this was going to work regardless.
The whole US was once walkable, then we massively subsidized driving for 2 generations, and now they are not walkable.
I lived in an apartment complex where the parking minimum requirements were...bent... by the developer and it was by far the worst place I ever lived. Basically, what happened was the complex was under development, and the soil couldn't support a parking lot where one was planned due to drainage. So parking was added to another section of the development, around 1.0mi or so down the road. Meaning one complex had 4 spots per unit, with the other had like 0.5 spots per unit, but it worked out to 2.25 or something spots per unit on average. (I know this because I was friends with the complex manager, and she gave me the details)
The end result was people would park on sidewalks, in the middle of the road, in front of garages, double park, etc. It was a nightmare of epic proportions. People blocked in by assholes would blare their horns at 6AM. Others would intentionally "move" cars out of the way, which led to fights. There was a shooting. The fire marshal stepped in and started fining the complex, but they couldn't get people to stop, short of evictions.
The people who paid ridiculous amounts of money for their town homes next door were so pissed off about people parking in their private community that the cops were constantly harassing people for trespassing. I faced this myself just by going for a walk.
Why didn't people just get cars towed? Because tow trucks won't come out on someone's word. You actually have to go and tell the main office, then they have to call the tow company. But the thing is, the tow company doesn't tell you that, they just say they are "on their way," so you wait an hour or two for them to tow the car blocking you in and they never come.
So yeah, minimum parking is bad. But no minimum parking when everyone ones a car is worse. You need space for cars somewhere.
I say this as a person who absolutely loves walkable cities, and lives in a decently walkable one myself. We need to get rid of parking minimums, but we need to be smart about it. Maybe have the developers build parking in lots in designated areas on the perimeter of the development (kind of like those outdoor malls have)?
Which city was this, if you don't mind saying? About how many units in your building? Was there any attempt by the city to manage the curbsides with permits etc? I'd think that'd be part of the solution in this case.
SW Ohio - outer suburbs, so township level governance, not town/village/city. Around 800 I think. No, there aren't actually any public streets suitable for parking. The complex was on a private drive right off of a minor highway and it connected to another private subdivision. So the only viable street parking was in a private, gated subdivision (the gate didn't stop people).
From a fewer-cars-need-to-be-built perspective, it's an improvement. From a traffic/GHG emissions/more-roads-need-to-be-built perspective, it's a regression.
(Pickup/dropoff might be annoying with no parking lane, but honestly, they use the bike lane for that more often than the parking lane.)
"And that’s kind of the point. Business owners shouldn’t have to be experts in parking regulations to decide if a site will work for them."
If that's the point, it's a shit point. What other regulations shouldn't they be forced to read or think about?
The point of this urban design trend is to not think of these regions as destinations, but rather as places you live in and so can avoid the car trips in the first place. If you can walk there, why is parking relevant?
Is it friendly towards the people who live in suburban housing developments who need a car to get anywhere? No. But those people chose to live in a place where you need a car to get everywhere, so they shouldn't be surprised their lifestyle isn't accommodated in districts that have made a conscious decision to be less car-centric.
"But only the rich people can afford to live in the cute small downtown!" Great... that's telling you something about the market desirability of small, dense walkable regions. Why don't we get rid of more zoning codes and build more places that the market demands?
For the most part this story is overblown. Few cities have parking minimums in their cores these days. And you'll find few that support parking minimums there.