<html> <head> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=us-ascii"> <meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 10 (filtered)"> <style>  </style> </head> <body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple> <div class=Section1> As Todd and Todd and Walter and Anzir and others of you make very clearly (and with a tip of the hat of course to Donald Shoup), we, that is the world sustainable transportation policy mafia, have our arms pretty thoroughly around the parking – or at least the paid vs. free – conundrum.  And if we are not able to get that message across in every city with at least a modicum of good sense somewhere in its gut, this has to be because we are not yet perhaps quite good enough as communicators and/or leaders. (But the wide-shared knowledge is that important first step in the right direction.)   As a generalist on the topic, I tend to maintain a rather primitive model or mindset when it comes to WHERE you park, which I have by all appearances thus far not been able to make my point clear enough for getting at least a modicum of buy-in from some of you.  So, and since I really do believe that this is an important point from the policy and practice perspective, let me see if I can give this one last whack.     <ol start=1 type=1> <li class=MsoNormal>A car, a biggish vehicle that is normally used by people to make their trips that is just standing there on the street doing nothing is an expensive and in fact pretty anti-social proposition (bearing in mind that in most of our cities (where we have egregiously overbuilt our car-caring infrastructures) we need that space for other more important parts of our active everyday lives. . . call it better public spaces.) </li> <li class=MsoNormal>That said, there will until such time that a totally transformed transportation paradigm comes on line, there will still be a legitimate call for a certain amount of “dead vehicle storage” in our cities. </li> <li class=MsoNormal>It will be useful and appropriate that some of this be handily located where people can see them and pick them up.  The example of “use-efficient” and “space-efficient” city transport comes to mind, for example shared cars, quick-turn-around shared transit vehicles, and bikes. </li> <li class=MsoNormal>Now as we are seeing, parking is not only, potentially, a superb tool for transport policy and system (and space) rationalization, but it is also an absolutely vital transition tool. The trick here is not to try to “solve” the global problem with an optimal long term parking policy (attractive as that might be in theory) , but rather in this imperfect and resistant world to see how we can use it to edge bit by painful bit toward a more rational set of transportation arrangements in our cities. We thus need to think of it not as a hammer., but more like an escalator. </li> <li class=MsoNormal>Bringing us to WHERE we put all those cars. </li> <ol start=1 type=a> <li class=MsoNormal>Well in the near term, we probably have to start on the street where the bulk of them are in most cases. </li> <li class=MsoNormal>For example, is our goal to get the acceptable a maximum of cars out of the targeted parts of the city – for all the many reasons that we will have in each case? Which argues for overall reduction in all types of parking.</li> <li class=MsoNormal>Or is it just to get them off the street, which may be kind of nice in a number of respects as several or you have pointed out -- but which at the end of the day still leaves us with the fundamental strategic problems pretty much intact. </li> <li class=MsoNormal>Let’s imagine that the technology is there and that the price is right so that we can all get around  in clean cars.  That’s just great, but it still leaves at least 90% of our fundamental sustainability problems untouched. </li> </ol> <li class=MsoNormal>If you have looked into it at all you have seen that the whole process of underground parking is petty weird, with in many places a hard edge of if not outright criminality and anti-social deal-doing, at the very least a certain amount of under the table political and financial maneuvering which, like the successfully buried cars, prefers to stay out of the harsh light of day. </li> <li class=MsoNormal>Not only that, what I observe is that once a given city or place has put their problem neatly underground, this serves to legitimize the presence of extensive parking in central areas, which has to be the wrong way to go. </li> <li class=MsoNormal>All of this leaves us still facing the challenge that Eric Brun has put before us: “getting rid of all on-street parking would mean . . . flight of businesses to the suburbs”  Hmm. Yes, no doubt if it were to be done brutally. But the issue is after all one of activity and access, is it not? And there is more to activity and access than parking.</li> </ol>   Which I guess is why we are all here.   Eric Britton   PS. By the way, I for one – and of course I am not alone in this – want all that shamefully wasteful parking space both for public spaces but also for reserved street space for “space efficient transportation” (and here the long list follows.)  That indeed is the core of the proposed Kyoto 20/20 approach.             </div> </body> </html>