MIT urban planner rethinks parking lots | Hacker News Reader

MIT urban planner rethinks parking lots

web.mit.edu

44 pointsepenn44 comments

With self-driving cars, a lot of parking lot hassles should (might?) go away.

A self-driving car can drop you off at the door, and then go park itself wherever the best location for cars is in the area, and probably have no problem reserving/finding a space mediated by various parking lot controllers, and finally, since the car is both unloaded and computer controlled, be able to park in a much smaller location.

The parking location doesn't have to be close and it doesn't even have to be a permanent parking location.

Hell, a self-driving car could in fact go back home if home was reasonably close enough.

Or head over to the airport and make you a few bucks as a taxi.

How would you get your car back if it went and parked itself?

smart phone.

I wish I had wrote: "There will be an app for that". I'm 99% sure someone from HN will program it.

'You must use an Android phone to connect to the GoogleSmartCar'

I can't wait for vendor lock in to control what car and what phone I can buy in tandem!

Clearly my car needs a RESTful web services front-end!

You will have to root your car to do that.

Its a joke but I'm trying to root my Fiat500 right now in order to rid myself of the awful microsoft "Blue&Me" and get it to do something useful.

My car has usb ports. I should have root.

What happens when your phone battery dies?

I think the existence of parking lots is a symptom of bad urban planning. I haven't owned a car for 3 years because I choose where I live carefully. I don't regret not owning a car for a second. Parking is ridiculously expensive (the last time I paid for parking I paid 26USD for 4 hours).

What would be better than better parking would be cities redesigned for pedestrian traffic and cheap, efficient public transport.

Q: How do you know someone doesn't own a car?

A: Don't worry, he'll tell you.

Q: How do you know someone knows the "How do you know someone doesn't own a car/tv etc." joke?

A: They tell you.

Including me!

I own a car and love driving. I grew up in Northern Virginia, then I lived in Atlanta for 8 years. In both places, having a car is pretty much a necessity. After living in Chicago for a few years, however, I'm convinced I'll never again live somewhere that I need a car to go about my day. Pretty much everything that's wrong with the country, from crime to environmental destruction to oil dependence is partially the result of the car.

I grew up in rural Australia. Owning a car was required if you wanted to hold down a job or have a social life. I've lived in cities as close as possible to where I work for the last few years and I'd never look back (from living close to work, shops, nightlife). Walking is now where I do a lot of my thinking and where most of my good ideas come from. I've had good ideas while driving but it was usually just aggravating.

It isn't possible for everyone but the less time you spend in moving metal boxes each day the better your life will be.

Traffic engineers and planners have been wrestling with this problem for decades, but there are no easy solutions. Take for example:

For one thing, planners might simply plant trees throughout parking lots

I've seen trees planted and traffic islands erected to break up the lot, but then a drunk driver takes out the tree, or a snow plow takes out the island and it's just cheaper to pave over the hole rather than planting another tree.

Not to sound like the tone-deaf transit advocate that I am, but "rethink parking lots" really means "rethinking the automobile" (either through expanded transit, or something like self-driving cars that can drop you off and then leave, although that's a solution that's 20-years away minimum).

Trees on parking lots are nothing new. They're loved by drivers all over the world, especially when they're in bloom and you've parked under one for half a day ;-)

Specially loved are trees which spray/release resin.

In Australia, where temperatures inside a car that is parked in direct sunlight in summer can reach 70 degrees celsius, and are enough to kill pets and children left in the car, melt plastic etc, trees actually ARE fairly well-regarded by drivers.

I have seen a great parking lot lately: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3NZ6J8Fg6c

Interesting. I wonder how much power it takes to operate a machine like this.

My first thought were the Japanese parking towers: http://youtu.be/QFHVukDUI2U

Very interesting. I wonder how much power it takes to operate something like this.

One feature of parking capacity often ignored is perceived convenience.

For a business such as a CVS or Walgreens drug store, more than the minimum parking will be provided to avoid giving the appearance of a full parking lot to passing motorists because a parking lot which appears to be near capacity causes people to anticipate long lines at the checkout and thus reconsider stopping to shop.

The malls do the same thing to a certain extent (remote satellite lots and transport at peak times would probably be significantly cheaper than utilizing prime real-estate for parking).

Not mentioned in the article, but a now common feature of multi-level parking lots in LA tell drivers how many parking spots are open on every floor. I'd like to see the concept extended to indicate where on each floor the open spots are available. This can be done with switching on a colorful light above open spaces or by having an open spot counter in the entrance of each lane.

Parking space finder; a startup idea.

These lights exist in several malls in Australia (and I'd be surprised if they weren't elsewhere). http://www.roadtraffic-technology.com/projects/siemensparkin... goes one step further though.

There are systems that do this; I've seen a few carkparks where each spot has a red/green light on the roof in front of it so you can tell at a glance where a free spot is. Every point where you have to choose which way ("Up to the next level or check this one?") will give the number of free spots for either choice on a little LED sign.

Westfields Bondi Junction went as far as having an iPhone app where you could put in your car's license plate and it would tell you which spot it was parked in; that caused some privacy concerns and I don't know if it's still available but the technology exists, and presumably the cost is offset by the extra metrics you get by tracking every single vehicle that uses your shopping center.

When I was in Grenoble, France (back in 1999!!), they had a system where on the Autoroute, and in key locations within the city, you would see signs that showed the available parking spots in the government-run garages.

This had two benefits: 1) you could tell if you were going to get a spot in/near centre-ville or wherever you were going. 2) you could tell if it was likely you would find any spots - if all the garages nearby were at/near capacity, you probably wouldn't find parking on the street either - be prepared to park further away and walk.

This was possible because of government control of parking and signs - the city itself (not to mention the residents) benefited from lowered gas usage, less congestion and less frustration. Thus it is economics/government as much as technology.

When I lived in Strasbourg I noticed the same thing. I lived just outside the Grand Île on a major road and was very surprised to see those when I got there.

Coming from Houston I wasn't used to something like parking being so well organized. ;)

In a slight counterpoint to there being "too much parking", every low rise (3 story) apartment and condo complex around me in the suburbs is built with too few spots, meaning they spill far out into adjoining neighborhoods. Then, thinking about it a little deeper, we do need at least 3x as many spots as cars (one at home at night, one at work during the day, one to get groceries or go out to dinner in the evening....)

Parking above and below buildings is better, but until the cost of land rises high enough, it doesn't happen. When the cost does right high enough, it does happen...

There is certainly room for improvement, and collocating housing, office, and retail so the same space can be used across more of the 24 hr day makes sense, but also increases of coming home or to work and not finding anywhere to park- something that has happened to me several times...

>...Then, thinking about it a little deeper, we do need at least 3x as many spots as cars (one at home at night, one at work during the day, one to get groceries or go out to dinner in the evening....)

But you're not parked at those other places 24hrs/day. So really, it doesn't need to be 3x. It's greater than 1x (closer to 2x) but should not be near 3x. People don't all decide at a given time "Let's all go to the mall" or "Let's all go to the grocery store." A small percentage of people at any given time decide to do one of these things. On a given day, if I stay home from work, I will see cars streetside. So even home plus work does not equal 2x.

BTW, in the article I don't know if they meant "parking stalls in lots" or "parking spaces". The latter to me, would include more inventory.

While re-imagining parking lots is certainly a worthwhile exercise, I am reminded by a recent and very intriguing HN comment (sorry couldn't find it) that compared our avg utilization of automobiles (low) to the avg utilization of airplanes (high) and suggested that we must re-imagine how we use cars.

Specifically, why do we buy cars only to have them sit around unused most of the time (in front of our house, in a parking lot, etc)?

Exactly the kind of thing ZipCar helps with. That's the real game changer. Self-driving cars might be cool but unless they are shared, they won't fundamentally reshape our experience.

We buy cars for the same reason rich people buy planes and don't use them. You don't pay to have the car, you pay to have the car on constant standby, ready for your use the moment you want it.

If you solve the standby problem with ubiquitously, instantly available zip cars without turning it into the fiasco that is trying to broad a commercial flight, or find a cab in the city, you win.

The statement "We all use parking lots, and we all kind of hate them," and the supposed "centrality of parking lots in our lives" struck me as odd. Like a lot of people I don't drive to work. I could go for weeks without parking in a parking lot. Their centrality is highly suspect.

Poor writing. The subject is introduced as a professor or landscape architecture and urban design but then referred to many times (inc. in the title) as an urban planner. That's like calling a graphic designer a software engineer.

Not really. Though urban planners can be engaged in writing recommendations regarding conditional use applications for the city council, they can also be engaged in the same sorts of creative tasks as landscape architects or people who call themselves urban designers (my mentor in grad school, the late David Crane, always referred to himself as an architect and planner - his firm designed Sadat City and he cut his teeth with Ed Logue following a stint as a research assistant on Image of the City).

Anyway, his PHD is in Environmental Planning & Urban Design.

http://web.mit.edu/ebj/www/cv.html

Ok. Its fine to me if he is all of these things (more people should be), but it is still poor journalism to conflate them. If it causes uncertainty for someone like me (who is in the field and knows the relationship between these titles), imagine how confusing it can be for those outside the field to understand what kind of background this guy might have.

In the US, only one, Landscape Architect, is a title reflecting specific credentials; and not all US jurisdictions recognize landscape architecture as a learned profession.

Conversly, anyone can put their self forth as an urban designer (or planner). Again, however, that is not the case here.

This much is true. Anyone can put themselves forth as a graphic designer or software engineer too however, and you don't see them conflating the two...

I think building parks on top of parking lots would be a good idea - http://www.aaronloringdavis.com/2008/10/parking-garage-green...

I was hoping this would address the core issue whether it's worthwhile to build a good parking lot as opposed to a parking lot being a good thing to do with urban land until a better opportunity arises.

Better, deeper article on the subject: http://www.lamag.com/features/Story.aspx?ID=1568281

I wonder how optimal parking lot design itself is. I have wanted to try to build a solver for a while.

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