Hoboken, New Jersey, recently marked seven consecutive years without a traffic death. Officials there credit their decision to take away some street parking, a change that increases visibility for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians.
I can absolutely see how removing street parking increases visibility and decreases accidents. Too many times I have to pull out into a road almost blind because my line of sight to traffic is blocked by an enormous SUV / pickup until I am partly in the intersection.
I hate having giant trucks or vans parked so close to an intersection. I would love a bylaw restricting large vehicles from parking within 15m of an intersection or crosswalk.
i wish they’d do that here. they used to have ‘compact car only’ parking closest to the intersections so you could see better. but as suv and pickups became the ‘norm’, they took those restrictions out. giagantus automobilus now blocks the view at every corner downtown. trying to cross the street on foot (which i have to do 6-8 times a day) or trying to turn onto the main street thru town in your car is scary af.
Well then, by all means get rid of city parking minimums so that more people have to park on the street!
People can park their private vehicle in a private garage, they have no right to expect the government to give them parking.
I think you misunderstood “parking minimums”. It has nothing to do with the government giving you free parking.
You see, many cities in the US used to require that if you put up a building, you had to provide a certain number of parking spaces as part of its construction. (The spaces don’t have to be free.) That way people living or shopping at that building would have a place to put their car.
Urbanists have fallen for developer lobbyists who want to get rid of parking spaces so that they have more space to rent and can make more money. In turn, some cities have decided to do away with “parking minimum” regulations. And as a result, more people will have to park on the street because there is no longer a mandate to provide parking as part of a development. This means less space for sidewalks and bike lanes.
Urbanists believe that Americans will magically get rid of their cars and take public transportation, walk, or bike everywhere. Nevermind that public transport is a joke in most places in the US and climate change means it’s 105 degrees outside. They also believe that increasing rental space by getting rid of parking will drive down rental prices. We’ll see.
So we’ve gone from one extreme (massive empty parking lots) to another (nowhere to park but the street).
Personally I don’t mind parking lots or garages if they are done correctly. But there’s no mandate to plant a tree every five spaces, or put vines on the sides of parking garages, or simply lower the minimum number of spaces to something reasonable. Instead, we’re just going to sacrifice our potential green space entirely to more rental space.
You’ve accidentally hit the nail on the head.
Public transport needs to be invested in to make it a viable alternative.
The regulations for parking lots and garages need to be added.
Saying it’s bad now so we should change nothing is not the attitude.
Or increase public transit so that people don’t need to drive?
I’ve used the best public transit in the US, I have zero faith that would work out well
we need a massive design overhall as well and nonidea how’d we do that in an existing city
Stockholm tunneled under their 500-year-old city for a subway system. 500 years is older than America.
It could go very well.
This is a very misleading statistic, traffic deaths are down because none is taking their car there because there is no parking. It’s not because banning parking stops cars from hitting people.
Either way getting rid of the parking caused it then.
it literally means exactly that
