> If a builder chooses to add parking and they’re located 0.5 miles within a transit corridor, they are limited to one space for every two homes.
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 think the idea is that if you want to build a building with 3+ spaces per unit, you should be doing it further away from transit. Let buildings with a higher ratio of housing density to parking be closer.
Yes, because you don't need a car if you live in a well designed city.
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.
The Bay Area is far from a well designed city with fairly limited public transportation. Yes there is public transportation but it’s relatively limited compared to the places you may want to go.
Berkeley is 10 sq miles. That does not really say much to me. Yes it’s great but it’s also tiny. Yes, the Bay Area is composed of multiple counties and municipalities but I think it’s a better comparison when talking about transit.
I lived without a car in SF for years. You can certainly get by, especially with e.g. getaround. But there are many valid uses for having a car in the city, even if you live by transit. The primary one is that not everyone’s work will be transit accessible.
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.
There’s a very real possibility it’s a tragedy of the commons. Each individual wants to be near public transit, but they also want a car to supplement weekend trips and such. But once everyone gets a car, ridership falls and the public transit disappears.
Only if people actually use those cars for trips they could use public transit for. If there's no convenient parking at their destination, they'll leave the car at home.
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.
contra this - I tried this for a while and while getting around much of SF is fine, leaving the city basically became too much work to be worth it. there are also certain neighborhoods (especially in the northwest and southeast) that basically become inaccessible
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
People like to do more things than take the train back and forth. I’ve spent a lot of time in the UK and I’ve had to use a car to go to most places outside of commuting to and within the city. In the USA there’s even more to do and see that requires a car.
If a developer is replacing a 2 story, 20 unit building with 20 parking spots with a new 5 story, 50 unit building, they shouldn’t be able to have more than 25 parking spots, as that is already a net increase from the status quo and will thereby increase traffic and congestion (the street isn’t getting wider…). The logical fallacy here is that it assumes those 25 units without a spot won’t just street park.
Which I would agree with but they Bay Area is in deadlock when it comes to roads and public transportation.
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.
The Bay Area has and continues to spend a lot of money on roads and public transportation. You can argue its not enough, but improvements absolutely have been made recently, and a lot more is in progress.
I am not saying projects have not been completed or that money has not been spent. My view is it is far too difficult in the Bay Area to make significant progress because it’s too easy to derail projects. I look at how many years we keep pushing out the Silicon Valley Bart extension. How long the Richmond district bus lane. There is change happening but it’s far too slow.
Too many cars will just add to congestion and make the surrounding spaces less desirable. You could address this with a congestion charge, but that has problems of its own. Limits to parking in some key spots around transit can then be a workable alternative.
Just because I have a car doesn’t mean I intend to drive it in the city. There’s a whole world out there and a lot to do that requires a car. So if I live by a train that’s good for commuting to the city I’m now stuck only doing that? What about the many things I do that have nothing to do with that?
> 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.
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.
>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.
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.
you really think so? i get the free market angle, but what about the local optimum risk? People want parking because they need parking. and they need parking because they need cars because everything's unwalkable because there's too much parking...
I am sure we all have different views here but parking maximums seems to discriminate the most towards low income folks as you would classify them. Those who are not working normal 9-5 or have employment that does not follow the Bart stops.
If there is concern about underutilizing land, pass a land value tax and the market will figure out what's the best way to improve the value of the property itself beyond the windfall from the unimproved land going up in value due to surrounding economic activity.
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.
While that is true in the abstract, it will take long to adjust.
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.
Car-centricity is definitely a problem. In addition to what you point out, I'd love to see a move away from any kind of parking mandate and removal of street parking. If there is demand for parking, let someone build a parking structure which is more space efficient and honestly less frustrating as a driver as well.
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
The people with the most money pay the highest tax for the privilege of using the most expensive and most valuable land. If they're any good at it, they'll make a profit on it, the way it should be.
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.
You think it’s weird that these types of people want to force others to be reliant on the state? That individual liberties are cast aside to empower the state even more?
I hate this and think it’s ideas like this that are dangerous. Thinking like this is discriminating against lower socioeconomic status individuals. This works well for the commuter going to downtown SF for their 9-5; taking weekend trips with a zip car. What about people who don’t work 9-5, or have a job that is not an easy bart hop away. Ideas like this are just has bad as the authors interpretation of past laws.
Just adding to my opinion. I might be totally wrong but it always felt to me that the Bay Area suffers from the problem of doing things that feel good but don’t improve outcomes for people. Regional transit in the Bay Area is pretty miserable unless your destination is near a BART line. Don’t get me wrong, it can work but it’s fairly limiting. For those with higher disposable income it’s no issue at all. Take Bart and grab a Lyft or take a Lyft from the start. For those with Les disposable income it can be incredibly difficult, take Bart then a bus transfer, perhaps some final walking. It can be a nontrivial ordeal.
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.
> For those with higher disposable income it’s no issue at all.
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.
You are right and I was ignoring that angle entirely. The last mile is still an issue for Bart. I was mostly fine taking Bart as a young male but I don’t think it’s as great for women and I would never take my daughter on it as it stands today.
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.
I never said otherwise. Parking maximums does not make transit more accessible. You will have the same problem in the Bay Area that has persisted for decades, different opinions from different cities and the inability to build any kind of new regional transit.
My point is that rules like this impact the lower socioeconomic individuals.
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.