They make it more difficult to visit multiple stops in one trip. Instead of parking downtown, going to an appointment and grabbing lunch I have to move my car in between those trips, generating more emissions and waste.
Sounds like they could make them much smaller
> They make it more difficult to visit multiple stops in one trip. Instead of parking downtown, going to an appointment and grabbing lunch I have to move my car in between those trips, generating more emissions and waste.
A general, private garage is an existing possible solution to this problem.
You're not really adressing the point of what they were saying. If they were smaller and utilised more efficiently, there would be at least some days where you shop up and its full, so you go somewhere else. Walmart want your money, so they're incentivised to have more parking lots than they'll ever need. Pushing everything into private lots only will exacerbate this problem
This is usually regulated by zoning laws, and Walmart (et al) have no say in the matter.
I don't see a meaningful distinction between a consolidated parking lot and one that's distributed along the side of the road when it comes to tree and grass cover. For dense urban situations car parking buildings allow more than either surface lots or surface street parking.
Parking lots are mostly used only half of the day and empty otherwise, because typically people drive their car around in a few different parking lots. Streets are useful all day long.
I'm unconvinced removing street parking would allow for smaller streets because that space is also used for bus stops and snow management in winter. Chance are street parking don't take place in itself but merely maximize usage of space that would be used up by the streets anyway.
I don't think we need private parking buildings to park our private cars when not in use, ie, most of the time. We need fewer, always in use, public cars to drive on our already public roads.
someone in the chain just needs to bite the short term bullet to start a cascade of events that will make american cities more liveable
...and housing is too expensive because cities strongly resist increasing density. We have indeed found ourselves in a cycle of dysfunction.
My neighborhood has less off-street parking than newer ones. Which means all the extra parking goes on the street. The streets are narrow, parking makes them safer by forcing cars to share a single lane. There is no conflict with bikes because the cars are going slowly. There are other neighborhood nearby that have too much street parking and should probably charge more for parking passes.