Back...But Not With My Own Words

Truthfully, I'm a little spent from having written about 5,000 words for the Dallas Morning News, 3,000 for a Magazine column, and another 6,000 for the parking paper in the past 2-3 weeks that I need a bit of a break (and those are all outside of my day job!). So don't mind me if I take the time to quote a passage from Tom Vanderbilt's excellent book on driving, cars, and us, Traffic: Why We Drive and What It Says About Us:

"When the city of Copenhagen was looking to reduce the number of cars entering the central city in favor of bicycles and other modes of transportation, it had a very crafty strategy, according to Steffen Rasmussen of the city's Traffic and Planning Office: Get rid of parking, but without anyone noticing. From 1994 to 2005, Copenhagen cut parking spaces in the city center from 14,000 to 11,500, replacing the spaces with things like parks and bicycle lanes.

As I stated in the parking paper, parking itself is merely a substitution for mobility. If other, perhaps safer, faster, or more enjoyable means of transportation are provided including proximity, then choice will allow a reduction of congestion.

An underpriced commodity, such as parking does two things: 1) it means there is too much parking making for an unpleasant human experience. If I am to invent a word it is anthropofugal. It flings people away. No one wants to be near a parking lot, particularly in Dallas summer heat. They also feel unsafe which is why Baylor floodlights the bejesus out of their surface lots. And 2) it encourages more driving, when we are trying to encourage more DART ridership and implement a new Bike Plan.

Copenhagen understood that parking itself was a resource and that its cheap, easy, or free supply created negative externalities such as increased car congestion, obesity, pollution, and increased citizen expenditures for gas, cars, maintenance, etc. They reduced the supply of parking to increase its value more appropriate to the costs it imposes upon the City.

Over that same time, not accidentally bicycle traffic rose by some 40 percent - a third of people commuting to work now go by bike...

People adapt. Copenhagen was smart. They didn't talk about what they are doing because they learned from earlier battles to remove car traffic from streets. People fret change. Businesses flipped out that they planned on removing traffic from their streets. Now central Copenhagen is as lively and safe a business district as their is in the world.

That number of bicycle commuters is estimated to be pushing 60% of commuters now.

Thirsty Thursday Links O' the Day

Before I go get my Southern Fried everything buffet on...even the buffet counter...fry it up! Drop that bad boy into sweet, scalding lard. What fair witches, dosth say you be on thine menu this day:

Fillet of a fenny snake,

Never had that before.

In the caldron boil and bake;

Is that the Soup du jour?

Eye of newt, and toe of frog,

Hmmm, think I'll pass on that.

Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,

Best not be my dog.

Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,

Is that this year's fair winner?

Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing

Maybe deep-fried butter doesn't sound so bad after all.

Onto the links...woo boy! Interesting stuff today. For me, anyway:

Banks, once everybody's favorite dinner guest, no longer wipes his feet, belches loudly, and asks for ketchup for his Sweet Potato Gratin. Oh, and they're a barrier to walkable development, so says the Salt Lake Tribune. One reason I'll never go to Salt Lake City. The other? 3% beer. Fo' Sho:

The reason: Lenders operate from a tried-and-true principle that maintains more parking means less risk and a higher return on their investment. But ditching cars is the whole point of urban developers looking to create 24-hour live, work and play environments that hug light-rail hubs.

Lenders preventing better returns and economic development. Oh, institutions. Try to change them and face the angry smiting by heavenly lightning bolt. Remember, it's not the people inside, it is the machinary itself.

NRDC on how to keep/make Smart Growth affordable:

Smart growth is currently constrained not so much by the market as by policy distortions and conservative lending and building practices.

Benfield quoting Tod Litman here, but nonetheless a pimp slap at the banks mentioned above:

older urban neighborhoods and new transit-oriented communities, are often unaffordable. Inadequate supply drives up prices. The rational response is to significantly increase the supply of smart growth housing to bring smart growth benefits within the budget of more consumers, particularly economically and physically disadvantaged households."

both the housing industry and municipal planners created a self-perpetuating cycle of automobile dependence that has yet to be broken, even though conditions and
perceptions have changed.

Lastly, Don Shoup has successfully convinced the City of Santa Monica to give Supply and Demand a try w/ regards to parking:

Ideally, Shoup contends, a city would charge enough so that 85% of all parking spaces were occupied at any one time. If too many spaces are vacant, the price is too high. If no spaces are available, the price is too low.

Of course, a City has to have on-street parking in the first place. Ahem, rather than say... valet stands. For those suggesting we need parking (whether convenient, cheap, ubiquitous or anything of the sort that downtown already has), see this post on the vicious cycle that is parking:

A 2003 study... [showed] ...the smaller parking supply is a key element, as it allows for the existence of a much more coherent urban place than would have otherwise been possible.

And lastly, author David Owen of Green Metropolis writes in the WSJ, that traffic is a good thing. I couldn't have said it any better. But, I did say it: here and here.

**Side note: I'm using IE right now. So please accept my humblest apologies for the poor formatting. I'm hopelessly battling inferiority.