Should America actively work to reduce the amount of parking lots it has?
The states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin together have 1,260 square kilometers of paved parking lots, or 5% of urban land use. That's about 2.5 parking spaces per car, but that's not even counting street parking, private parkings, and parking structures. If you add all of this together, you get about 3 to 3.5 parkings per car and a higher percentage of urban land use.
The problem is that for the longest time, nobody really had a plan. Most cities have no idea how many parkings they have (the city of San Francisco is one of the first to start counting its parkings), so they are very hard to intelligently manage, and it's difficult to jsutify removing a few to add a bike lane or a bus lane, even if these would bring more benefits to the locals.
Ample parking spaces may seem like a good thing until you consider the negative effects of all that pavement...
On Friday 5/21/10 - 9:55:39 PM lsu90 wrote: Try getting your news from a source that isn't so blatantly biased. I tire of seeing all of your treehugger articles.
This.
Also: I've never heard anyone in a city complain of too much parking.
On Friday 5/21/10 - 9:55:39 PM lsu90 wrote: Try getting your news from a source that isn't so blatantly biased. I tire of seeing all of your treehugger articles.
On Friday 5/21/10 - 11:11:23 PM anidiot wrote: This. Also: I've never heard anyone in a city complain of too much parking.
Thirded. I LOL'd at the name of that site. pff, treehugger.
Also what anidiot said. SF started counting its parking? Well how much does it have? Not enough, that's how much.
Are there some places that parking spaces aren't needed anymore? Sure, old abandoned stores that have been empty for years. Get rid of them. Plant some trees.
However, there are plenty of places where finding a place to park is damn near impossible.
I don't think a car to space comparsion works. For instance, an office that is open 9-5 is going to need quite a few spaces even if these places remain empty all night. A person who works at this office also needs a space at their apartment, even if they are gone during the day. Just because the mall lot is empty Tuesday at 11:30 p.m., doesn't mean their are too many spaces on Saturday afternoon. Etc.
if someone buys the space, they can use the lot for something different.
I don't think we should pave any MORE, but there's nothing anyone can "actively" do to "fix" this "problem."
On Friday 5/21/10 - 11:37:14 PM Koto wrote: No, not if the parking lots are actually needed. How about we focus on reducing the amount of CARS in America, hmm?
But then if you reduced parking, wouldn't people then get the gist that it's going to be damn hard to find somewhere to park, and would then not drive their cars but take public transport or some other transport instead?
On Friday 5/21/10 - 11:37:14 PM Koto wrote: No, not if the parking lots are actually needed. How about we focus on reducing the amount of CARS in America, hmm?
On Saturday 5/22/10 - 11:21:00 PM SoapySun wrote: But then if you reduced parking, wouldn't people then get the gist that it's going to be damn hard to find somewhere to park, and would then not drive their cars but take public transport or some other transport instead?
No, that's basically the opposite of what works. People will just get annoyed with you and elect someone who changes it back.
People in general don't like 'nanny' states, that want to tell you how to live your life.
Yeah, I think so. And the number of standing, multilevel garages. They're taking up all of Berkeley, California these days. I can't even see the skyline anymore.
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