Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ryandrake 19 days ago
You said it's not to make driving worse, but then listed multiple examples of making driving worse:

- reallocating road funds (away from driving and toward busses/rail/bikes)

- tax car infrastructure appropriately, presumably higher

- reduce parking minimums

Not that I'm against these, but they will surely make driving worse.
2 comments
simondotau 18 days ago
That is wrong on multiple dimensions.

What makes driving worse is the presence of more cars. This can be partially mitigated by piling money into road infrastructure, but infrastructure is a band-aid on a problem created by more people choosing to drive.

What makes driving better is the presence of fewer cars. There's really only one way to reduce the number of cars on the road: build good alternatives to driving. If you love driving, you should be the strongest champion of public transport investment.

link
queenkjuul 18 days ago
They keep driving how it is, and make other things better relatively. Reducing parking minimums doesn't remove existing parking, it prevents building more. Building bike lanes doesn't usually mean reducing car capacity. Adding more lanes to already huge highways doesn't actually improve driving, so redirecting that money to rail does not make driving worse, in fact it stands to make it better by getting more people off the road
link
alistairSH 18 days ago
Removing parking minimums doesn't even prevent more parking - it only lets the market balance supply/demand for parking. The current system in most of the US requires worst-case/max-demand parking lots, so the only time a shopping center's lot is full is a few peak hours on the weekend and Christmas season. The rest of the year, it's mostly empty.

Here's a good summary of one case of a small town dealing with absurd parking regulations... https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017-11-22-how-parking-m...

And just to add my own recent anecdote... we visited southern Italy (Puglia) last month. Most of the towns have zero traffic* zones (ZTL zones) in the historic centers. In all of them, there were either ample metered street spots just outside the ZTL or small pay lots a short walk away. As far as I could tell, as a tourist, it worked well - the downtowns were vibrant with lots of foot traffic.

* ZTLs allow local traffic and handicapped transport within certain guidelines.

link