Toban Black

Michael Glotz-Richter (in this post) -
“Studies have shown that, on average, most cars are parked for 23 hours a day. Do we really want to use so much valuable space for storing vehicles?”

The start of that post conveys how parked cars are like elephants in our rooms (so to speak); that is, the post elaborates on how we refuse to acknowledge and re-assess how much space we are devoting to automobile parking.

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Matthew Blackett on the Spacing Toronto blog -
“42 Folding Bikes vs. One Car”
( “Sometimes it takes a visual illustration to make the strongest argument.” …)

(Here is a larger version of the second image shown there.)

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John Bennett (in this post) -

“Instead of making more room on the street for idle cars, we should be making room for more people. We should [claim] space to stroll, shop, sit and socialize.”

“Our unrelenting fixation on cheap and easy driving has blinded us from recognizing this simple fact: More than five decades spent adding capacity is proof that increasing the parking supply will not solve the problem. We have to decrease demand.”

“Unfortunately we’ve come to regard suburban retail [complexes], with their acres of parking lots, as the norm. As a result, we insist that a convenient parking place should be waiting for us at the end of every car trip. How much longer will we try to satisfy such an unrealistic expectation? How much are we willing to sacrifice to perpetuate this fantasy? When will we realize how much we’ve already lost in this foolish pursuit?”

(As I occasionally do, I have replaced a couple of the words there with slightly different ones that fit better with my own point of view.)

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Stuart Donavan and David Seymour (in this article) -

“Today, 90% of private vehicle trips in North America end in a ‘free’ parking space. But that valuable urban land the space uses isn’t free.”

“The effect of minimum-parking regulations varies depending upon income. A low-income earner is likely to spend a larger portion of their money on basic goods and services that build in the cost of parking. Supermarkets, for example, recoup the cost of parking in their grocery prices. Low-income earners are more likely to carpool, use public transit, walk or cycle, so they are less likely to benefit from the parking they are forced to subsidize.”

“The most insidious characteristic is the way the rules mold the urban landscape into a gigantic parking lot.”

(The rest of that article is worthwhile — though I don’t agree with all of the framing of the issues.)

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Tom Vanderbilt (in this article) -

“When we talk about transportation, we tend to talk about things in motion. What is often left unremarked upon, in conversations about crowded highways, is something without which those crowds would not exist: parking.”

“Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking, has estimated that 99 percent of car trips in the United States terminate in a free parking space, which means the nation’s drivers don’t have much incentive to think about parking—or not driving. In many American places, there are more parking spaces than people.

If car parking is often overshadowed in traffic talk, bicycle parking is even more obscure. For many people in the United States it might be hard to imagine what there is to talk about. Why don’t you just stick it in the garage? Or: Isn’t that what street signs and trees are for?”

Yet, “parking helps make commuters —- a lesson long ago learned with cars. Studies in New York found that a surprisingly large percentage of vehicles coming into lower Manhattan were government employees or others who had an assured parking spot.”

“On the flip side, people would be much less likely to drive into Manhattan if they knew their expensive car was likely to be stolen, vandalized, or taken away by police. And yet this is what was being asked of bicycle commuters, save those lucky few who work in a handful of buildings that provide indoor bicycle parking. Surveys have shown that the leading deterrent to potential bicycle commuters is lack of a safe, secure parking spot on the other end.”

(Then the author focuses on details about bike parking arrangements — in Portland, and elsewhere.)