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Comment by nomel | Hacker News Reader

> However, it does mean that parking will become harder

In the city I'm near, using public parking lots means a 20 minute walk to your destination, with a $10 fee from all the time walking (or uber), with private parking costing around $15, and no meters in sight. This creates an isolated area that people never go to for a bite to eat, coffee, window shopping, or anything really, since it's a > $10 fee just to step on the sidewalk. Not surprisingly, there's incredible churn for the businesses down there (pre Coronavirus). The only people they have to service are the other businesses in the area and the few that live there. With coronavirus, it was all wiped out.

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Your city may be similar to mine, insofar as the "residents" of the downtown area are mainly the people who work there and have already paid for parking. Not surprisingly, a lot of the restaurants do most of their business at lunch time. A city where you have to drive a car to a curated pedestrian zone is not walkable by my highfalutin sensibilities. ;-)

I get around town by bike. This is not for the faint of heart in the upper Midwest, but for a person in decent health, the obstacles are primarily psychological.

I also suspect that the cost of parking is a psychological obstacle. It's similar to how people who claim to enjoy live music are offended when asked to pay a $5 cover to see a band.

> Your city may be similar to mine, insofar as the "residents" of the downtown area are mainly the people who work there and have already paid for parking.

If massive parking requirements is the #1 urban planning disaster of the last century, the #2 surely has to be zoning regulations that prevented mixed use areas where people can live/work/play in close proximity. And this was only to… force people to buy cars to get from place to place! Look at any city area that was developed prior to the advent of cars and they are unanimously multi-use dense areas. Cars ruined everything.

You can see this in the south bay in an incredibly acute way.

Where are Google, Microsoft, and a bunch of other enormous campuses located? East of the 101. Where are all of the residential areas? West of the 101. Gazillions of commuters need to cross the 101 to get from their home to their office twice a day. This means that everything is limited by a few small overpasses that are crazy expensive to expand.

What if people could build apartments over there? Too bad. Not zoned for housing.

My town, though much smaller, has its own "101" with similar bottlenecks. But there are now (at least) three bike bridges across it. While not free to build, they're doubtlessly much cheaper, especially since the bikes can use already existing neighborhood streets with minimal impact on the residents. I'm not sure there's a master plan for improving bike routes, but when they have to tear up a road for some reason, they usually design its replacement to accommodate bikes with dedicated lanes, bridges, tunnels, etc.

Bikes are great! 101 has at least one bike bridge. But I'd personally feel really unsafe in the bay area biking. Zero protected lanes. Tons of cars merging through bike lanes to enter turn lanes. Fast-moving roads that also have direct access from driveways.

I grew up on the outskirts of Chicago. Mostly built in the 1920s or 1950s. Everything you need is within a one mile walk, even Home Depot. Cinema closed down but Walmart opened up about two miles away. Plenty of street parking, alley garages, and lots of nice amenities. Only moderate rat load.

I think this is the type of neighborhood people like, when the schools are good, at least.

Lots of neighborhoods used to be like this, though usually not big box stuff. Used to be bodegas, fruit markets, small hardware shops, tailor, dry cleaners, etc.

Until the mid 80s to early 90s there were neighborhood Sears and Wiebolts as well. Wiebolts went under in 1986.

Elderly folks could give up their car and age in place as long as they could get up the porch ramps and such. Didn't need to go to home, and homes need not be far from neighborhoods. Plenty of housing options for all stripes.

Feels like one of those “better is worse” situations. Yes - “most” people prefer the selection/prices if Target over the (relatively) overpriced mom-and-pop store, but downstream effects weren’t clear, undervalued.

The solution to this is plentiful, well-placed municipal parking garages priced cheaper than street parking. Santa Monica does this where they have about 6-7 city-run garages spaced throughout the city with easily visible electronic signage indicating the amount of available spaces. Street parking is much more spare and priced higher. It's an enlightened alternative to tearing down buildings for more single-level lots. See Google Maps satellite view of Spokane, WA for how not to handle city parking - about half of downtown is gray asphalt.

I wouldn’t cite SM as the model of municipal parking. Especially in conjunction with how poorly these support the expo light rail line - it’s not really feasible to drive in and get on the train to go to work for a day.

> Spokane, WA for how not to handle city parking - about half of downtown is gray asphalt.

Downtown Spokane isn't that bad, although it used to be much better. They have parking garages downtown, but those were built during better times (when Spokane also had multi-level car dealerships across the street from the mall), it turns out downtown real estate just isn't that expensive anymore. There is a lot of gray asphalt simply because there isn't much demand for the asphalt to be anything else.

The solution is better rapid mass transit between and within cities!

biking is cool too

Removing parking space and giving it to less wasteful modes of transport is one of the more efficient ways to improve an area.

> This creates an isolated area that people never go to for a bite to eat, coffee, window shopping, or anything really, since it's a > $10 fee just to step on the sidewalk.

I take the bus into downtown Seattle with my son every weekend. He enjoys the center, the monorail, and the market, but I would never do it if I had to drive and find parking.

That sounds strange, it sounds like an area that should’ve been served by foot and public transit traffic.

Yes, there is public transportation, but this is $6 and 20 minutes to the closest light rail stop. I never tried a bus.

My point is that this area is almost only served by foot traffic, but getting your feet on the sidewalk has a pretty significant cost.

I don't think this is odd though, since it's been the experience I've had getting to any downtown area. Visiting downtown San Fransisco costs around $10 to actually get too, after all is said and done, even from within the city, unless you walk/bike/spend 20 minutes.

Lyft Line and Uber Pool were usually $4-5 around San Francisco before COVID and you can use electric bikes through the bike share for $15 for the entire month. Obviously it’s easier if you live near the walkable area, but it doesn’t need to be as expensive as you claim and SF is one of the more expensive cities.

> Lyft Line and Uber Pool were usually $4-5

Two way is $10.

> you can use electric bikes through the bike share for $15 for the entire month

That 20 minutes is back.

Driving a car around SF is generally more than 20 minutes. Most areas downtown can be reached in the same or less time by bike, and it also removes any issues with parking/waiting for a car.

The thing you’re missing is that I spent much less than $100 a month in transit costs when I lived in SF. When you have a car there, you will spend probably $500-$1000 on the car, the insurance, the gas, parking meters, etc. Then you will likely need to pay for a parking spot. In the Mission the going rate before COVID was about $400+ a month. My friends who had cars and didn’t have dedicated parking would also get $75 parking or street cleaning tickets fairly often.

So I literally could take a $5 ride each way every time I didn’t feel like walking and I had a huge cost savings, much less hassle with parking and street cleaning at 6 AM, less environmental impact, no problems drinking and driving, etc. After a while, most people without dedicated parking end up leaving their car in the same spot as long as possible and mostly use it for weekend trips outside the city.

This wouldn't be a bad thing if the public transportation was also effective. It should be hellishly expensive to use a car in a big city. It just shouldn't destroy your ability to get to work if you don't have a car.

In my experience, NYC is the only city in the US that has made this work. The MTA is plagued with cost overruns and other problems, but you really can get places quickly using the subway.

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