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Yes, of course there are still cars when there isn't off street parking and the street would become congested. For example, looking at apartment ads in my town they mention "off street parking" or "on street parking", it's assumed that people might take the apartment without off street parking with a car.
As I said, my taste would have a congested street than one of the apartment buildings with off street parking. I'm fine with that Brooklyn street for example. In Boston, some of the brick row houses fill the back with off street parking rather than a backyard. I'd rather have some greenery in the back.
More like it is assumed they won't take an apartment with no parking at all and thus they mention that on-street parking is available(as sometimes it is not legal to park on the street near the building.). If you have an alley you can have both green space and an Garage. Off street would be preferred but depends on how congested the street is and where the apartment is located as well as how much it costs.
For example, EVA might be used in the field of hydrology to estimate the probability of an unusually large flooding event, such as the 100-year flood.
Extremes from what? If you're talking about residential parking for typical places the US in general, NYC isn't the best example. But I wasn't making a broad statement on the US as a whole, and I'll repeat over and over again this forum isn't limited to the US anyway. If I wanted to talk about residential parking in dense urban places, NYC might make sense as an example.
The authors just don't like to look at cars, and they prefer housing designed without the expectation that the owners will have a car. Well, cars aren't going to go away, and complaining about the way they look isn't going to make them go away. It's certainly not true that requiring one parking stall per unit limits developers to one specific design; it's probably true that developers maximizing usable space per unit land area, with a requirement of one parking stall per unit as one of the constraints, tends to lead to a few specific designs.
The authors just don't like to look at cars, and they prefer housing designed without the expectation that the owners will have a car. Well, cars aren't going to go away, and complaining about the way they look isn't going to make them go away. It's certainly not true that requiring one parking stall per unit limits developers to one specific design; it's probably true that developers maximizing usable space per unit land area, with a requirement of one parking stall per unit as one of the constraints, tends to lead to a few specific designs.
Especially since the majority of people don't want to park in some common garage like in the cottages example. I mean, there's clearly some people that don't mind but it isn't something I'd be very interested in especially in a SFH suburban area. I use my garage for a lot. It's got two motorcycles that I wouldn't like in shared garage, an expensive road bike, tools, camping gear. It's not just a place for a car.
It's also a place to WORK on cars. I don't really do any of my own car work, but I do do my own motorcycle work. Even in my not that hoity-toity neighborhood, it's against the HOA rules to work on your car. It is in most neighborhoods with HOAs or in most apartment complexes. You might be able to get away with changing your oil, but I've pulled engines out in my garage. You definitely would not get away with that on the street here.
The only standards I have heard of for transit are minimum standards for farebox recovery, and standards for ridership. Routes get cancelled frequently.
RTD eyeing big cuts to trim 2009 budget : TheRocky.com: Denver News, Business, Homes, Jobs, Cars, & Information
**RTD makes route and schedule changes three times a year. . . . The package hits the town of Parker hard by eliminating the only frequent in-town services, the Route 410 from The Pinery to Lincoln Station and the on-demand Parker call-n-Ride bus. The 410 has 42 daily trips. . . . The town will have service only from the Route 153, the Chambers Road bus, which goes to or from Parker 15 times a day, and the Route P commuter bus to Denver, with seven morning and seven afternoon trips.**
Depends on the type of bus (and the required service levels). Bus service does get cut. Subway service rarely does. If you are picking a place to live by transit you need to do a little research, to figure out how "permanent" that transit option is. Here is a short hierarchy:
1. Trains/Subways: these rarely get cut significantly. And cities don't close the stations very often, unless there is some really really huge issue. On the scheme of things, this is pretty permanent
2. Light rail: cities rarely rip up light rail tracks once they have been laid, and most of the time they do keep this running all day, even when the frequency is reduced
3. BRT: this works a bit like light rail, and has permanent infrastructure. The service frequency could be reduced, but it has a lower likelihood of being dismantled.
4. Trunk bus lines: these are the backbone of the bus service, and run the most frequently in the system. Typically better than 15 minute frequency for most of the day. These lines also have the longest running hours in the system. These routes do not get cut, although the frequency at the edges may change. You don't want to live at either end, unless it is a very "permanent destination" with lots of demand all times of day, but in the middle you are safe. It might end an hour earlier in times of service cuts but it will run often.
If you live along one of these types of routes, you can be pretty sure that your transit service will be permanent, unless something completely catastrophic happens.
Now the bus lines mentioned in your article, are the ancillary ones that do not provide core service. These are really risky to build your transit-oriented life around. They frequently will be re-routed or cut.
The best way to go, when picking a transit friendly area, is to find the bus stop and look how many buses stop there. If you see several, you are generally in good shape, but you'll want to skim the schedules for each and make sure they are trunk or core bus lines. But if you pick a place because you see one bus stop, with one line number, then that is risky.
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Well, there ya go! The solution to all the health problems of the US is . . . biking! May you never have a blood pressure or cholesterol problem. Heredity plays a big role in cholesterol levels. Go ahead and keep making fun of people. You may have a "free-floating hostility" problem, which can contribute to heart disease.
I know your comment is a little facetious, but honestly, it actually is a decent solution to many of our current problems:
1. blood pressure does go down with regular moderate activity/exercise, (diabetes risk too)
2. cars emit the most "greenhouse gases" when they are started, traveling short distances, and stop frequently
3. most of our car trips are less than 3 miles away, for most of us (a totally modest bike distance for even newbies)
4. heart disease risk decreases with regular activity
5. stress is reduced with regular activity
6. if we eliminate/reduce short car trips there is less road congestion
7. less short trip car traffic improves air quality (lowers asthma risk too!)
8. bike lanes slow down car traffic, which reduces accidents for all the road users (cars, bikes, and pedestrians)
Here is a study from western europe, I have seen several on the improved health outcomes and the reduced cost of health service as biking increased: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/461679_1
So is biking for everyone? No. Can we move the needle on health outcomes (obesity, traffic, air quality related) by encouraging more biking? Absolutely.
A city could spend let's say $40M and have a pretty complete bike network (that is about what Portland and Minneapolis spent). And a city like San Francisco spends over $100M annually on health care costs from traffic accidents. Slower roads reduce accidents by 50%. So it would be fair to assume that the costs of accidents would reduce too. Let's say only by 1/3. The bike lanes would be paid for with the reduction in costs related to traffic accidents in 1.5 years, and that would be sufficient infrastructure for 10 years at least.
And you'd get the side benefits of reducing the impact of the "obesity related health problems."
I have to point out this is incorrect. The increasing forces being exerted on an automobile in an incident is THE leading cause for new regs. It's a matter of physics. Bigger cars generate more force, thus causing more damage. A baseball-sized ball of styrofoam isn't going to hurt much if it hits you; a volumetrically equivalent ball of granite will do some damage.
Side note, people operate based upon context. A person in a "safe" cage is going to act different than a person, on average, open to the environment. There are some theories out there that suggest, and have had some luck providing evidence, that additional safety features lead to more incidents, because, purportedly, people drive with less care in that context. For example, air bags save lives, but not as many as they could because people drive faster knowing they are "safer."
Groceries is a common meme among car-evangelists. If you have kids (plural), or only do big shopping trips, yeah, a bike won't work. But, if you live in a bicycle-friendly area, you may find it more convenient to do more, smaller ad-hoc trips. If you try to apply a WalMart mindset to bikes, of course they don't make sense; square peg, round hole. That doesn't mean bikes aren't viable, just not viable in that context.
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Originally Posted by chirack
Snow, rain, temperature(too hot/ too cold) and time constants tend to push people away from the bike.
9.6 miles an hour is pretty slow by automobile standards for parents time gets more important and thus the faster method of travel along with the fewer trips gets preferred. Less child care hassle(baby sitting or repeated tending to small kids in the store).
Mother can immediately depart from work and not get tied up with waiting on the bus, or transferring. This means both the distance away from home that she can work as well as the time frame where she can be at work have expanded vs. public transit or the bike. She can take that job 9.6 miles away with better hours or benefits and be home in 30 mins because she isn't riding an bike. She can depart at 4:00 and get there by 4:30. Hence why the automobile has become dominate. Now I expect in some sci fi world in the future where people can beam like star trek the distance could increase even more.
It depends. I am going to use an example from my neighborhood. Let's just say going to Whole Foods. I am picking WF because it is a mile away, and there is a middle school across the street. It is a straight shot from my home, but there are quite a few traffic lights. I bike there, take the bus past there or walk. But I'll just pretend that is the destination for this example.
When I ride my bike, I end up keep pace with the car traffic the entire way. We all get tripped up by the traffic lights. When we get to the intersection with the Whole Foods, I can off-board, use the crosswalk and park my bike in the front of the store. For the drivers, they have to loop around another 2 traffic lights to get to the parking lot. It is a busy store, so getting a spot easily takes 5 - 7 minutes. So the bike wins. The walk works out to being about 7 minutes longer than driving or biking. As for the bus? It only runs every 30 minutes, but if you time it appropriately, it takes a minute or two longer than bike or car. The stop is also across the street.
Now on the way home, the car wins by a few minutes, only because it is uphill, on a one way street with few traffic lights. So cars exceed the speed limit of 30 quite often, going 45. The bus ride and the car work out to be about the same. The walk is pretty speedy, because you can take the street that is less steep to walk home.
But when you compare all the modes, the difference is only 5 minutes between driving vs. transit/biking. Walking adds about 10 minutes to the drive time (when you factor in time to park and traffic lights). Avoiding the whole foods parking lot? Priceless.
So although you thing traveling at 10mph on the bike is really slow, but depending on traffic, congestion and the timing of the traffic lights, driving might not actually be faster at all. It takes 20-25 minutes for me to cross the 10 mile bridge to work during traffic times. When I started biking downtown I quickly found out it really didn't take much longer than driving. For most of the route I ended up at the same traffic light as the cars that passed me in the bike lane! It only added 5-10 minutes to my travel time, and saved parking headaches.
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Originally Posted by nybbler
What the anti-car crowd is suggesting is redesigning urban environments so keeping (if you live there) and driving (if you don't) a car is impractical. And some of them add on top of that destroying any suburban environments where this isn't the case. Get rid of parking (both on-street and off-street) for homes and businesses, reduce speed limits to walking speed, narrow and/or close roads to automobiles, implement high auto tolls and taxes -- these are some of the suggestions we've seen. Sometimes this is couched as making the urban environment better with the disruption to auto travel being a side effect, and other times it's frankly presented as a way to prevent car use.
That's not it at all. The thing is, in many places, due to traffic and congestion, the car has already turned into a crappy option. So we need to retrofit so there are alternatives. (See Silicon Valley)
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Originally Posted by Katiana
I never knew what the term "dingbat" meant until I saw that blog, and I had never seen the term before until recently on this forum. We don't have those out here. However, I don't get the beef. My own house has a similar garage over a bedroom. The cars are tucked away that way w/o taking up even more space for a garage!
We have loads of dingbats in Oakland, is is very California. The real problem with them is that they are very very risky in earthquakes due to the soft story design of the first floor. In the 1989 earthquake, most of the housing lost in the Marina district was dingbat style, and that was where most of the building loss occurred. Some of these have been retrofitted and many haven't. When the big quake hits on the Hayward fault, much of the entire east bay is at a severe risk of loss of housing units.
The authors just don't like to look at cars, and they prefer housing designed without the expectation that the owners will have a car. Well, cars aren't going to go away, and complaining about the way they look isn't going to make them go away.
If it's looking at cars, a street full of attached garages would mean looking at fewer cars than a row house street (for example the Brooklyn one in the link) where the street is full of street parked cars. Using up extra space for car storage can be unattractive. I live next to two small apartment buildings with parking lots in the back, I would rather not looked at them from window, would have been fine with having a more congested street. In that case, I think those buildings were above any minimum parking regulations, though I have seen some local construction that was rather ugly trying to fit with the rules.
Of course complaint about the way they look isn't going to make them go away, why would it?
If it's looking at cars, a street full of attached garages would mean looking at fewer cars than a row house street (for example the Brooklyn one in the link) where the street is full of street parked cars.
I guess to be precise, they don't like to look at cars nor be reminded of their existence. Note they don't show the street parking in Brooklyn. They're blaming parking minimums, but to really solve their problem would require that people give up the convenience of their cars, either by parking far away or by giving up the car entirely. Most people in most places would pick convenient parking over a prettier building.
It depends. I am going to use an example from my neighborhood. Let's just say going to Whole Foods. I am picking WF because it is a mile away, and there is a middle school across the street. It is a straight shot from my home, but there are quite a few traffic lights. I bike there, take the bus past there or walk. But I'll just pretend that is the destination for this example.
When I ride my bike, I end up keep pace with the car traffic the entire way. We all get tripped up by the traffic lights. When we get to the intersection with the Whole Foods, I can off-board, use the crosswalk and park my bike in the front of the store. For the drivers, they have to loop around another 2 traffic lights to get to the parking lot. It is a busy store, so getting a spot easily takes 5 - 7 minutes. So the bike wins. The walk works out to being about 7 minutes longer than driving or biking. As for the bus? It only runs every 30 minutes, but if you time it appropriately, it takes a minute or two longer than bike or car. The stop is also across the street.
Now on the way home, the car wins by a few minutes, only because it is uphill, on a one way street with few traffic lights. So cars exceed the speed limit of 30 quite often, going 45. The bus ride and the car work out to be about the same. The walk is pretty speedy, because you can take the street that is less steep to walk home.
But when you compare all the modes, the difference is only 5 minutes between driving vs. transit/biking. Walking adds about 10 minutes to the drive time (when you factor in time to park and traffic lights). Avoiding the whole foods parking lot? Priceless.
In contrast, it takes me about the same amount of time to drive to a grocery store that isn't overpriced where parking isn't an issue. Avoiding hassle? Priceless. It probably does take me a few minutes longer to bike to the grocery store that's closer than it does you since there aren't really that many lights to get stuck at even though it's half again as far. That's store, however, is in between the price of Whole Foods and Winco where I shop so it still ends up being much cheaper to drive the extra 6 miles to Winco and back than bicycle to the closer store. It costs less than a dollar in gas, even assuming I'm starting with a cold engine and getting more like 45 rather than 50 or 60 mpg.
I'm not opposed to more urban areas, but personally it's too much headache. The bicycle works well in the newer areas and roads that have been redesigned, but there's a lot of roads here where bicycling doesn't really work. I can get to the farmers market by bicycle easily. It takes longer than driving but if I'm not trying to run there and back quickly, it only takes about 10 minutes more time (5 each way) to bike.
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