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Interesting counterpoint to the conventional wisdom. Park-and-rides allow people who live in car-centric places to take transit to work. But one person has been thinking it over and finds they aren't such a great idea. In short he says park-and-rides are bad for mobility and urbanism, provide poor or limited access for what they cost.
There are a portion of the population that one simply has to call "haters". Some folks hate bicycles. Some folks hate trains. It is pretty clear from that article, despite what tortured argument attempted, that the author hates cars, people that drive them, the parts of town that make it easy to own / use them and pretty much everything that has come before in American urban design...
Not real helpful to spend time reading / listening to haters.
If the goal is to help people reduce the amount of time spent in traffic , improve overall circulation and encourage use of mass transit it is probably wise to provide facilities that accomplish those goals. If your goal is to impose the maximum pain uponn your hatred of cars then perhaps if makes sense to follow the author's thinking...
I think the biggest issue with Park & Rides is that they give the benefit of reduced traffic on highways, without any of the other benefits of transit. Because people are still getting into a car at the end of the day, rather than walking or biking through their neighborhood, they're still likely to conform their demand for an urban environment to more suburban standards, rather than wanting density, local retail, mixed use areas, and pedestrian-friendly areas.
Park and Rides can be used as a transitional tool. Not everything (TOD, bus connectivity, bike lanes, etc.) can be built at once. The parking structure/lot can be torn down or re-designed later on when the need arises.
Park and Rides also serve people who can't walk, bike, or take the bus to the stations in the first place because they live much farther out. And just because a park and ride lot exists, that doesn't automatically mean everyone uses it. There will always be nearby locals accessing the station without driving. TOD can still be built to cater to these locals, future residents, and disembarked passengers from other areas.
It seems that the author believes that the main purpose of mass transit is to encourage urban living, as opposed to serving the greatest amount of people in the most economic way. I'm not really sure why it matters that a park and ride can facilitate suburban living. If a park and ride route will generate more income through fares than an urban route, then it seems like common sense to build the park and ride route.
The writer of the article just doesn't like cars. One of the comments he wrote below reads:
"John, if we didn’t build highways, everyone would live in the city, and transit would be private, just like how things used to work."
I'm cool with urbanists and I like most of their plans to improve American cities, but he seems to be one of those "cars are evil and they have ruined America types" that only wants to punish those that took advantage of the lower crime rates and better schooling by moving to the low-density suburbs.
Where I used to live the park and ride would fill up very quickly at around 6 in the morning. If you started work later say 8 or 9am it didn't do you any good because there would be no open parking spaces left. You'd have to get there really early or forget it. Replacing park and rides with TOD around transit stations could make it accessible to more people but there's not much chance of that happening in the suburbs. If you took out the park and rides they would just replace it with strip malls or SFHs. Which isn't any better. I'd be surprised if they even knew what TOD was. So it has a realistic chance of happening only in urban areas for the most part.
I think the biggest issue with Park & Rides is that they give the benefit of reduced traffic on highways, without any of the other benefits of transit. Because people are still getting into a car at the end of the day, rather than walking or biking through their neighborhood, they're still likely to conform their demand for an urban environment to more suburban standards, rather than wanting density, local retail, mixed use areas, and pedestrian-friendly areas.
There is no reason why one cannot bike or walk to the Park and Ride, or even take another bus to it.
Park and rides certainly conflict with the desire for Manhattan and above level densities where it's practical for transit to take you the "long haul" and the "feeders" are shoe leather. As we've been through ad nauseum, not everyone really cares to live like that, and to people like the author of this article, the solution is to make it difficult to live any other way.
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