[sustran] Re: Yet more on vs off street parking

[Todd Edelman]

Hi,

I am not against strategies to increase the cost of parking in order to
decrease the amount of parking and driving. My goal might be carfree but I
realise that people have to see something before they believe so a street
with less cars and less throughputting might encourage people to think
beyond that. I think that a desire for (intentional) carfree most often
does not come out of nowhere.

If we step back a bit conceptually, however, we will see that it is all
about access to people in places. These people might be your friends, your
family or people to buy stuff from or sell stuff to. The people might be a
lack of people (e.g. a quiet park in winter).

So isnt a better question for cities "How do we increase access
(sustainably and with all costs internalised)?". This means the design and
rules for the street, and network of streets, and what lies on them and in
between them. Being totally objective, a car could be considered, but it
seems like it might lose every time, at least as the final step to the
entrance of the home, business, park, neighborhood, city itself, etc.

And in addition to the financial criteria, in presentations to city
officials, etc we should consider re-defining streets not as
transportation corridors, but as places in between buildings where the
residents of those people can interact with one another, and where people
can visit from nearby streets and vice-versa and so on. Any use which
makes this difficult, such as motorised transport, including public
transport and even bicycles, should be de-priortised and only let in if it
does not significantly alter the atmosphere. There have to be compromises:
A good example is 1 - Pedestrians can go everywhere, 2 - Bicycles can go
some places, 3 - Public transport is on main corridors, underground or on
viaducts (which themselves dont have to  be ugly, as they could be placed
behind commercial buildings on main corridors, even serving a cargo use.
Or in an enclosed tube to minimize noise, but still allow sunlight, which
most people want).

I define most streets with parking spaces and streets which connect them,
etc etc as really a giant, global monofunctional parking lot, NOT as a
street, not as a place for life in between buildings. This global parking
lot has bypasses in the form of highways, intercity trains, airplanes, and
ships sometimes.

I think that if what is commonly called a "street" is instead looked at
the way I do, it will open up a world of opportunities for realisation of
creative ideas.

I also know that here in car-crazy Prague, and in many other cities,
commercial space on the pedestrian zones commands the highest rents.
Access for people coming to shop (or for their purchases to go with them)
can be provided by all sorts of methods. There could be final delivery by
small, quiet, soft non-polluting vehicles to a space in front of apartment
buildings which contains a large sub-divided container with a total volume
- and I trying to make a point here - of what would be the cargo space of
all of the vehicles owned by people in the building (if they actually
owned them). So imagine a building of 16 families, who would normally have
16 cars, and in front of that imagine this container about the size of 16
boots (trunks) of all those cars. The container is sub-divided into
cubicles accessed via a SmartCard. This would probably be 10% of the space
needed for all those cars, keeping in mind the space cars need to
maneuver. (A thought: sliding doors on all cars could probably reduce by
half the space they need in between them, but this is only useful if the
total amount of space used is decreased, so more cars dont fill up the
"freed" space.)

So, take that 10% and consider how many people will actually need to use a
cubicle in that container at the same time, and you could probably cut
this in half. There is no "dead" storage space needed, either on the
street or in the form of boots of cars.

Sure, this is not just a matter of going to www.logistics.com and ordering
a ready-to-go system. BUT - hopefully - we are all going to be on this
planet for a VERY long time so we need to think of sustainable solutions
even as we manage as best we can our very flawed ones.

- T

------------------------------------------------------

Todd Edelman
International Coordinator
On the Train Towards the Future!

Green Idea Factory
Laubova 5
CZ-13000 Praha 3

++420 605 915 970

edelman at greenidea.info
http://www.worldcarfree.net/onthetrain

Green Idea Factory,
a member of World Carfree Network