Parking structures are insanely expensive. Like, each parking spot in a parking structure costs like 30X what it costs to build a surface parking spot. It’s a crapload of concrete, and with climate change, concrete ain’t getting cheaper (concrete is extremely carbon-intensive, it releases CO2 intrinsically, not just from power-generation).
edit, since I’m getting downvotes and I assume this post is being read as an endorsement of city-destroying surface parking: The correct solution is just to not do parking at all except for extreme needs and focus on human-scale transportation.
Human-scale transportation
Trebuchets, got it.
But about 2 meters.
That’s about 1.5 Ben Shapiro’s, for the Americans.
Parking in general is expensive, along with all of the rest of car infrastructure.
Yes, but concrete parking structures are an order of magnitude moreso. Assuming $50k per parking spot and a 25-year mortgage, each spot will incur $328.58 in monthly mortgage costs. Assuming full occupancy every workday and zero on weekends (21 workdays per month) that means the daily parking fee should be $16 just to break even. This is a thumbnail sketch of course, but it shows the kind of costs we’re talking about.
Then youve got maintenance, insurance, security, employees…
Upfront, yes. But you’re not counting the energy that everyone uses and will forever have to use to roam around a city that is way larger than it needs to be. Not to mention the obvious wasted land.
I mean, yes.
To be fair, this is kind of a special case- it’s an area where it’s cheaper per square foot to build lots than buildings - but this is also a leftover of the 1960s-1980s. This aren’t done this way as much anymore, at least not in dense areas. You’ll never see this in New York City or in DC for example.
So much of America is so low density that it’s just a different set of issues than in other parts of the world. I went to visit family in West Virginia this weekend and it was literally 2 hours of driving through mountains and woods with no houses or towns in sight- no lots, no decks, no trains, you’re in the middle of nowhere.
You’ll never see this in New York City or in DC for example.
There are surface lots in Manhattan, though they are being developed into multistory buildings and no new surface lots are being constructed.
Some of the remaining surface lots probably continue to operate as placeholders for “future tall building site”, while rights/price/building codes are being hashed out. In the meantime, you can charge a lot of money for a parking spot in Manhattan.
So … exactly what you all want?
We all get it, this is FuckCars, but you can’t reasonable expect people to have discussions without talking about reality as it is right now. Knowing how much a parking garage costs/is worth on the market is great knowledge when arguing against building more car infrastructure.
Are you stupid? That picture is from the 70s. Here is an updated shot from the same general area: https://imgur.io/tWzvSWq
Also, those parking lots are likely place holders for building lots.
We do?
Major cities are packed with parking decks, but decks are expensive, so they’ll only be built if land values are high. For most of America’s history it was simply cheaper to build out than up in most places.
It may be ugly, inconvenient, and environmentally problematic, but it shouldn’t be confusing.
Edit: it occurs to me that more parking, decks or otherwise, would actually be good for cars which seems antithetical to the point of this community… so I’m unsure what point is even trying to be made aside from calling America stupid
It would actually be bad for the cars, they would spend less time out in the sun causing them to develop a vitamin D deficiency, then they’d die from having weak bones.
But having parking garages wouldn’t reduce the number of cars as you say, but could potentially free up some land for useful things, which could make the cities more walkable at the very least
Pretty ironic to have obvious grammatical errors in a post calling an entire country stupid
The meme format is meant to be ironic, with an opinion full of holes and cadence similar to Lrrr from Futurama. Though that typo looks like an overzealous autoconnect.
I see what you did there.
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Because if they did, it would be quicker to walk straight to the destination than to and from the parking spaces.
Car infrastructure generally ends up justifying itself.
It’s an issue of cost and density.
This is like saying “why don’t people build apartments in the suburbs”
… why don’t they? Europe goes from skyscrapers to block of flats to apartments in the suburbs and very few houses on the very outskirts. The US seems to go skyscraper - single family house
Because the entire US has a “missing middle” and a suburb problem brought on by big corporations. You get into you car, burn gas for 20 minutes to go to their 1 super mega everything mall. They also banned the idea of having local store in a “residential area” to force you to go to the everything store.
that explains why suburbs are bad, not why apartments wouldn’t work there
Not sure where you got “appartments wouldn’t work there”.
The entire video is about the missing middle, the midrises /appartments missing between the suburbs and the city. As pointed out in the video, the missing middle comes from the fact it’s illegal to build midrises in most “residential areas”
I see plenty of apartments in the suburbs. It all has to do with zoning laws.
Why dont they lol
The real reason? Bad, old parking regulations: https://youtu.be/OUNXFHpUhu8?si=sv3Rdh15Q0k5UHKU
No really. It’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever learned about my country.
That talks about parking minimums. It doesn’t discuss surface lots vs parking structures, which is what the post is talking about.
(We call them parkades in Canada, it’s a good name which y’all should use.)
The parking minimums lead to big lots. And not just outside of downtown areas. Structures are more expensive to build per parking space, unless land value is crazy high. So when a developer is required to build a certain number of spots, they’ll buy the land they need to build the lot with the least amount spent upfront and on maintenance.
But Cletus can’t fit his 10-foot-tall, 8-foot-wide, cyclist-crushing, peelout-producing penis replacement in a normal parking garage! Who will think about poor Cletus?
Trucks fit in parking garages. If you’re going to project at least be educated and accurate.
Dude just admit that you have a truck instead of an identity.
I wish I had my truck. It’ll be a year until I can afford it!
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Cities don’t tax only based on the potential for what land could be doing, but instead include taxes on improvements to the land as well. As a result, there’s incentive to sprawl rather than pressure to densify.
Hmmm so you’re saying we need height and depth tax incentives?
Yes that’s part of it. Another part is encouraging more permissive, inclusive, mixed use zoning to better reflect the potential optimal use of the land, and switching from property taxes to land value taxes to apply pressure to reach that ideal.
The way to achieve this is with a land value tax. Undeveloped land and developed land are taxed the same, so the owner is incentivised to maximize the development to make as much money as possible to offset the LVT.
I used to work for a precast concrete company that alnost exclusively built parking garages. We made several of them each year.
A parking garage can cost tens of millions of dollars once its all built. A paved parking lot is cheaper, so normally that’s what you see.
Like in Tokyo? That would allow cities to be denser and thus reduce the need of cars. Seems very unamerican.
Is this a joke? Parking garages are heavily used here.
I know a lot of folks on cummunities like this who do not like parking infrastructure of any kind. Personally I like efficient garages like this and lots of incentive to keep the cars parked. Also laws to allow condo owners and such to put in a storage pod in the space.
Any parking is too much parking imo. If people know that they are going to get easy parking where they go they are incentiviced to use the car instead of using other more efficient transport methods.
Travel time and overall comfort/joy are also big factors in travel habits. Unless in a specifically car free area it seems unreasonable to have 0 parking available. A significant reduction in parking could make parking still far from easy while promoting other methods of travel if they are actually funded and exist in the area.
I would love to see a car free area of my citiy. The downtown has this great area blocked off by a river on two sides, a lake on one, and an expressway on another. I wish they would close it to any traffic except busses and retail delivery.
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