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Comment by bruce511 | Hacker News Reader

Thing is though, when done well, plentiful parking is a resource best over-supplied.

Garages that have 20% empty spaces pretty much all the time ,give me the confidence to rely on them. I plan around it being available (and am happy to pay for it). By contrast if it's full 20% of the time then that feeds me with doubt.

I say "done well" because in many cases it's using basement floors and other hidden spaces. Sure the building costs more, but that value is returned in parking fees, and also the improved "dependabilty" of the building.

Of course the sprawling open land approach is terrible, lacks imagination, is ugly, impractical in bad weather, and likely what you thought of reading the headline. So on that I agree.

Parking, like any architectural feature can be done well, or badly.

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> Garages that have 20% empty spaces pretty much all the time ,give me the confidence to rely on them. I plan around it being available (and am happy to pay for it). By contrast if it's full 20% of the time then that feeds me with doubt.

My impression the that people who complain about "too much parking," actually don't want to you have the "confidence to rely on" parking being available. They want to "feed you with doubt" until you get rid of your car.

>> They want to "feed you with doubt" until you get rid of your car.

I guess if I lived in NY or London I might get rid of the car. But to be honest that's never entered my head here. I need the car to get to work. And yeah, there's parking there. But if there was no parking there, I'd still need car for everything else.

I get the point, there are cities where you can work,play, shop, school, all on public transport. Where ironically the streets are full of cars all the time. But alas, I don't live in one of those cities.

You can love your car all you want, but you really shouldn't look at cities with good transit and call it "ironic" that they still have cars. Of course they still have cars: the fact that so many take transit makes traveling by car a better experience than without. If you saw the same city with everyone taking cars it'd be absolutely miserable.

> I guess if I lived in NY or London I might get rid of the car. But to be honest that's never entered my head here. I need the car to get to work. And yeah, there's parking there. But if there was no parking there, I'd still need car for everything else.

Those types seem to want you to endure whatever hardship is necessary to use public transit and/or a bike for everything, or at least loudly head disdain on the suburbs wish you could join them in some car-less urbanist paradise. They're not really interested in you maintaining whatever lifestyle you have that requires a car, because they disdain cars and the lifestyles that need them.

> They're not really interested in you maintaining whatever lifestyle you have that requires a car, because they disdain cars and the lifestyles that need them.

Pretty close to correct! I can entertain a lot of nuance about the current necessity of car use given the century or so we've spent prioritizing it above all other forms of transportation. But I have no respect for a vision of the future that seeks to maintain car dominance, or the will to a lifestyle that depends on a frankly suicidal dependence on fossil fuels in the face of climate change.

Or... maybe it's not about you! Maybe it's about the fact that people in the US and Canada who do want a suburban lifestyle already have a continent full of car-centric developments to choose from, whereas people who would prefer a "car-less urban paradise", if they could find one, generally can't get it; they have to settle for something they are less happy with, because 20th century urban planning re-engineered almost all cities around the automobile.

> Or... maybe it's not about you! Maybe it's about the fact that people in the US and Canada who do want a suburban lifestyle already have a continent full of car-centric developments to choose from, whereas people who would prefer a "car-less urban paradise", if they could find one

Sorry, not really. If they limited themselves to advocating for areas designed so car ownership wasn't so necessary in accordance with local preferences, and were willing to let others live-and-let-live, that would be fine. Unfortunately, that's rarely the case. Those ideas are frequently coupled with dripping disdain for suburbs and anyone who prefers that lifestyle, and/or an attitude that views personal car ownership as some kind of moral affront that in time must snuffed out, etc.

> they disdain cars and the lifestyles that need them.

No, I disdain city planning and architecture that requires nearly everyone to have one.

Right. And these types could be called "cyclo-talibans" as they want to impose their will upon unconsenting car owners.

> I get the point, there are cities where you can work,play, shop, school, all on public transport.

Do any of those cities exist in the US (except for NY)?

Washington, kind of. I rarely drive to work. I see kids going to school on public transport all the time. I don't exactly play: I run, and needn't drive to good running areas; but there are public tennis courts, a public swimming pool, and athletic fields in easy walking distance.

Shopping is tricky. In theory, we could manage our shopping with walking or transport, in practice it's a lot easier to drive.

Chicago

Parking garages are the least bad offenders for excess parking. The issue is how much good land is used for single-story parking lots.

The article should really be named “America has too much free parking”.

Because the way it is right now, is that the only way things work is to build everything where land is cheap enough for free surface parking to make sense, the costs of building an underground/multistory garage are not insignificant. There ends up being an inevitable feedback loop wherein all other modes of transportation aren’t practical and everyone is forced into a car whether they want to be or not.

Or reduce the cost of building parking garages. Parking is a necessary evil to businesses and developers. Someone seeking to develop land into a strip mall or big box store or rental apartments doesn't want to buy and pay tax on ten acres of land, pay to have it street swept every fall and spring, plowed every winter, seal-coated every 5yr, repainted every 10 and re-paved every 20-30.

Parking garages are pre-engineered kit-buildings (like steel warehouses). The fact that you have to grease all the usual state palms, go through the stupid approval processes, etc, etc as if you're developing a standalone dedicated facility to put them up whereas a parking lot is basically a footnote on whatever you're already trying to develop is why you rarely see them.

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