Here's a study you may not have really considered, and that's the cost of parking. The study looks at 5 different cities in the US. Enjoy

www.citylab.com

PS: If I posted this article by mistake and it shouldn't be here, you have my apology. Feel free to delete it.

 

Its an interesting problem. People want their crowded communities, but they also want to drive to and from them. Hense the giant parking lot that is the modern city. Older cities usually lack this same ease of car use at the benefit of the crowded community.

i was watching a neat vox video recently about this:
https://youtu.be/Akm7ik-H_7U

 

If I lived in a big city, I probably would avoid owning a car. I'd get around with Uber/Lyft or public transportation to avoid the cost/hassle of owning a car in a city. If the need arises for a car, there are ZIP cars or similar.

 

I blame ever growing vehicles to a certain extent.

With something like a Fit, even with two feet on both side of the car when street parked, it takes up about 18 feet.

With an Accord, that grows to 20 feet.

With an F150 crew cab + SHORT bed, that grows to 24 feet.

Let's assume an average city block is 330' by 660' (the standard size for a block in Milwaukee), you could fit 110 cars around a city block there (assuming no hydrants/driveways/etc., I know it is a flawed number), with an F150 you could fit 82 cars.

That disparity grows even further with the feeling of many owners of larger vehicles that they need a bigger cushion than two feet between cars offers.

Bigger cars are bad, reason 239,847,294,872,498,237,423,984,723,948,274,923,87 4,923,874,293,847,239,487,234.

 

Interesting. I just watched a Vox video on Youtube on the same subject.
There, they pointed out that it's not so much the number of cars per se that causes the imbalance between demand and supply for parking, but rather archaic/arbitrary government/municipal zoning/parking requirements.
Tweaking those (and introducing things like variable pricing for metered parking) would allow for every street to have 2 or 3 open spots at any given time (from an Econ 101 perspective, balancing demand and supply using prices that reflect what we'd truly be willing to pay).

 

if only every city had a decent means of public transportation. when I was in japan, I was able to get around with no car for 2 full weeks. their trains/subs/bus systems were that damn good. here in so cal, its pretty much own a car ... or youre screwed

(ymmv)

 

yep. as long as the government subsidizes parking (think free onstreet parking for residents, which is a treasured thing here in Boston), you end up with too much demand vs the available supply. although i personally benefited from free parking for many years, i think the rational thing to do is to eliminate parking where the strip could be used for something else, because it's a hell of a lot of real estate if you add it all up, and actively meter the parking where it can't. sure, not everyone will be able to "find parking", because not everyone can afford the meter, but heck that's true today too you know?

not everyone agrees with me. some people think free parking is a human right.

in many cities (not really cities so much as "ten square miles of suburbs"), the problem is "solved" by requiring new construction to have parking. of course what that means is in these suburbs the only place to park is where you live, work, or places where you can be parted from your money.

 

This sounds like my parking guru Shoup talking! In the link from the article I posted, it reads in part;

Through real-world case studies and research projects, Shoup makes three central recommendations for cities: eliminate planning codes that require developers to build off-street parking, charge the correct prices for on-street parking throughout the day, and spend parking meter revenue to make visible improvements on metered streets.

Also I just ran across an article on a car that was just approved for Euro streets. Seems like a sensible vehicle for 98% of the cities in the world.

 

I managed to get around just fine without a car in Long Beach, CA for over 9 years. The secret in LA area for me was to live close to a subway station (1/2 mi). I just happened to live close to the busiest line in LA County. Bicycle and subways got me to many, many places just fine! And yes Japan has a VERY GOOD system. I hope to visit it some day.

 

that microcar is cool, but could only be legal in the US as one of those low-speed-roads-only golf cart thingies that certain states allow. I forget what they are called. They are legal, I don't know if you register them or not, and you can get insurance for them. Only good up to 25 or 35 miles an hour because, as you can imagine, they don't pass US crash tests which are some of the most stringent in the world. Ever wonder why you can't see out of your car? Yeah, it's because Americans can't manage to drive without drinking or using opioids or texting and then rolling the car, so the only feasible end goal is get you into something with the rear visibility of a TIE fighter.

Similar thing with trains. Euro trains are far more efficient because they're lighter, more like a high speed subway car; US passenger trains are much, much safer due to their required freight-train construction.

 

 

My bet is there's not much difference between which is safer, Euro or US trains. If I had to bet, I'd be betting on Euro trains being safer. I'd even bet that US trains are more dangerous than Asian trains! I'll have to round up a study on trains around the world.

Yeah that car a little more than what the US is used to (golf carts). I'm thinking that somewhere in the company's plans they are looking at the US. Would be interesting to see what happens with them.

Their website has some good videos on the car, if you haven't seen it yet. The - Micro

 

Yeah it's not bad nowadays as someone with a large collection of cars out on the street, aren't really paying for the privilege of parking. I have no problem if the rules were changed to reflect this inequality.

From the article;

Parking also sucks up a lot of resources in the five cities. Measured in terms of replacement, it costs more than $35 billion in Seattle, $20 billion in New York, $17.5 billion in Philadelphia, $6 billion in Des Moines, and $711 million in Jackson.These figures are more staggering when tallied in per-household terms. Parking eats up almost $200,000 per household in Jackson, more than $100,000 in Seattle, and over $75,000 in Des Moines. It is a bit less in Philadelphia and New York: roughly $30,000 in Philly, and a meager $6,570 in New York.

 

The problem with this study is that it includes (I think) all on-street "parking spaces" as parking space. That's a little misleading, for less-dense cities like Lynn, MA (where I live). There's a lot of side-of-the-street where it's legal to park, but where no one actually parks, because there's no reason to. If you really had 50 parking spaces for each household, that's mind-boggling -- but how much of that is on-street "parking" that's not really used? Or in a place like Providence, RI (where I used to live), where overnight parking is banned? So you've got all this "on-street parking" that's useless for residents, because they have to get their cars off the street at night? (Sounds weird, I know -- city-wide, you cannot park overnight on the street, anywhere in Providence, although in the past 2-3 years they've relaxed that a little with resident permits.) Is that really "parking," or not?

Urb

 

Cars on a whole are still much, much smaller than they were in the 60's and 70's, though.

 

True, but there's so many more of them. Look at the population in 1970 versus today.

 

In a perpetually backwards state like America, yes.