This seems weird. I’m all in favor of getting rid of legislated parking minimums, but it seems to me that, if a developer thinks that adding parking is more economical, they should be allowed to do so.
I live in a UK city and I've read the plans for the building I live in, it was submitted twice before it was accepted. Nobody had a problem with the interiors, they're nice which is why I bought one. But the original plan was rejected in the 1980s for lack of parking -everybody needs two cars right?. The same plan (with internal upgrades, nobody wants 1980s bathrooms in a 21st century home) was submitted twenty years later and now it had too much parking. So they removed some spaces and it got the OK. Today it is 0.8 spaces per unit.
Mandated minimums for parking are stupid, but so are mandated maximums. This is one of those cases where the invisible hand will approximate an alright solution (and I say that as someone who finds market efficiency arguments generally uncompelling). Even along transit lines, some developers may choose to add extra parking as a unique value proposition to those who need it.
getaround is quite expensive tbh, it was much better to just have a relationship with an existing car rental that you could just muni to and pick up - difference between ~$40 and ~$100
Here in Tokyo, lots of people have cars that just stay parked at home most of the time, only used for weekend trips. They don't use them for normal stuff because 1) public transit is generally convenient and 2) there's no convenient (or affordable) parking in most parts of the city.
The key to all of this is parking. Parking takes of a LOT of space in a city. Here, there's no requirements about parking: you can build as much or as little as you like. Land is highly valuable, so land owners generally only allocate as much land to parking as makes sense to them economically. So apartments don't have that much (and those spaces cost a lot), and most businesses don't have any. There are some privately-owned parking lots/garages, but they cost a small fortune, and might not be that close to your destination anyway. If you want to buy a building in a dense area, tear it down, and build a parking, lot, you're free to do so, but it would usually be a stupid way to spend your money, so it doesn't happen.
What if I have kids? There’s a million reasons your solution is awful.
Rent a car. Millions of people do it just fine
> What if I don’t want to ride a bike
Deal with it
> the weather is bad
Deal with it
> What if I have kids
Kids ride bikes just fine.
I don’t think people with infants and toddlers expect them to ride a bike. Taking kids around to their clubs and sports, etc isn’t practical.
I’m happy almost no one thinks like you do. You sound miserable. I hope you recover.
Obviously, you've never been to Japan. I see infants and toddlers on (their parents') bikes all the time. Parents regularly carry 2 kids on a bike with them.
Tons of parents around here use cargo bikes - my son went to daycare ~5 miles away on the back of mine and still hops on the back for longer trips in grade school. With e-assist it’s faster than driving, way less stressful and expensive, and the difference is that kids love getting on bikes in a way that they don’t riding in cars because they can see so much more of the world.
You cannot build better roads because cars are bad, so rush hour is just a polluting nightmare. You cannot have better public transportation because there will be at least one person that going to block it for any number of reasons.
When it comes to housing the US seems to suffer some kind of disability that makes it impossible to not be tempted to steer towards a planned economy.
Isn't that exactly the whole point of capitalism?
If people with money want strawberries, they buy more strawberries. Price of strawberries goes up. Farmers who could choose to grow strawberries or some other thing decide that they want to grow strawberries because the price is high. More strawberries are grown.
The people who have the money to buy the strawberries indirectly caused more strawberries to be created.
So yeah, the people with the money decide what gets created. This is a good thing.
Rather the inverse; they have more money because they haven't spent it on things yet.
Although it's not a good general metaphor because strawberries are a consumption good and not used for your income like a car is.
modern city planners have realized that car centric cities does not scale. ie. if you want to city that scales to Tokyo levels it needs mostly to rely on transit schemes.
The US has an (alas, quite new) history of overindexing on cars. moves like this will drive the development faster than the market alone.
however, parallel to this, tax for roads in cities should be increased and passed on to car owners. (in Denmark we pay 150% tax on cars. and that is on top of the 25% VAT we already pay) - right now car owners are being handed prime land almost for free in the US.
I think the problem goes further though, but maybe once the fears of "congestion" are gone the fear of shadows and "becoming Manhattan" won't need able to hold us back
My point is that rules like this impact the lower socioeconomic individuals.
It feels good to say cars are bad and implement parking maximums, but similar to the Neighborhood preservation rules in Berkeley, it’s really negatively impacting those without wealth.
Not for those with small children. Unless you have a private chauffeur, transporting a family to somewhere without parking that is poorly served by transit is a pain. And if you’re going somewhere where traffic patterns make light rail favorable but you need last-mile transportation that isn’t well-served by transit, I guess you need two chauffeurs so that you send one ahead to meet you at the fair end of the train?
My theory has always been that, if policy makers want people to use cars less, they should make the alternatives better instead of making cars worse.
I also agree on your theory. We should not be making cars worse but the alternative better. That should happen first. We can implement parking maximums but that is not going to fix the roadblocks on getting better public transit.