The other crazy bit: Shouldn’t all of these “the market will solve everything” people be 100% on board with charging for the space? It’s just the city ensuring the most efficient use of the space using market costs?
Of course, as soon as they have to pay for the resources they’re using they scream bloody murder. The same people are often 100% on board with saying “busses need to be profitable!” … while parking infrastructure needs to be 100% subsidized for their needs.
Conservatives don’t say things because they’re true. They say things because they think it will get them what they want.
Yeah someone on the local paper website was commenting about how we need to stop the train that connects our city to the bay area because it requires tax money to support the lower fare, but we have tons of roads and parking that cost a ton more
When I point this out to car brains, they always look at me as if I had suggested eating their children.
In Belgium, or Brussels at least, you can’t keep a garage empty and park in front. Police can ask you to open it up and if your car can’t fit, you can’t complain if someone else parked in front. It’s legally not your garage with a right of entrance anymore.
In Tokyo AFAIK you can’t get a license plate without proving you do have a parking spot you own.
What’s also interesting to remember is that free subsidizing our cities as parking lots sadly heat up for everyone https://www.lowtraffichackney.org/latest-news/cars-dont-just-cause-climate-change-they-make-our-streets-hotter-today
Cars are useful, but yeah as a city grows more and more of the street needs to be converted to higher density transit (bus, tram, bike, motorcycle). Obviously this includes parking. Its the only way to let people continue to move.
I’d like to see more spaces converted into like “15 minute loading/unloading”. There’s a lot of double parking that’s just people trying to do something quick.
I think it was on coney Island avenue the other day that the whole right lane was taken up by people double parking. That’s absurd. Not sure why so many people needed to drive someplace so close to several subways and bus stops, but there’s a lot of ways to discourage that space.
