Comments

1
IT'S MY GOOSHWRANGLERS RIGHT TO PARK MY CAR ON PUBLIC PROPERTY FOR AS LONG AS I WANT WITHOUT HAVING TO PAY ANY EXTRA FEES OR TAXES FOR THAT RIGHT. ANYTHING LESS, IS CLEARLY SOCIALIST-FASCISM.
2
"But we're supposed to be building for the future..."

Fair point. But, why does this version of the future only include walking, transit, and bikes, and doesn't include advancing technology in clean energy and electric cars?

What if in 30 years Oregon burns no coal and all our electricity comes from hydro, wind, wave, etc. And what if plug-in cars become the norm?

Furthermore, what if driver-less car technology (already road-legal in California) becomes more and more common, which would allow cars to safely park and drive very closely to each other, reducing congestion?

I really don't think cars are going away forever, and I have enough faith that investments in clean energy and clean tech will definitely change the paradigm of car usage - not away from it per se (though that will likely happen too), but in terms of less reliance on fossil fuels.
4
And why does this version of the future not include hover-crafts?
5
Admittedly, it is crap that developers can offload the issue on to neighbors so they have to pay market rate parking in a residential neighborhood. To be honest, people who buy/rent parking-less condos/apartments shouldn't be given permits and will have to fight for public parking at market rates.

It would be more fair than basically taxing neighbors to subsidize apartment developments.
6
I'm all for persuading the public to own fewer cars and to rely on them less, but I've seen the downside of these practices firsthand too. Up until recently, I owned a business on lower east burnside. When the business opened, the parking situation was reasonable. Then when the city redesigned the roads for the couplet, we lost a lot of parking. I'm "for" promoting bike usage and bioswales, but ultimately, what happened to my business was that bike corrals and curb extensions took away a lot of places that potential customers could park. Add to that a new 70+ unit apartment complex without parking, and the street parking situation has become a nightmare. Your stats about there still being "plenty of parking" were not based on that area, there's no doubt. Before I sold the business, on the days I would have to drive to work (with inventory, etc... that I couldn't easily do on my bike), I'd often have to circle the neighborhood for over half an hour to find a space that would allow parking for the length of my shift at work. I'm stoked on the idea of having a city 30 years from now where the public has altered their practices to make situations like this work for everyone, but in the meantime, these policies are hurting the local economy.
7
Totally agreed with Strunk. You need to bust out some LINKS for the 3rd paragraph, cause I think you're standing on ice.

Look into transportation policy predictors Mirk. Randy O'Toole is a good starting point, I think he even wrote a book on what transportation in the future looks like. If you don't want to read it, watch his lectures on Youtube at Cato.

To sum it up: Mass transit is dying. Own up to the fact that this country is at WAR with welfare systems, and policy makers consider mass transit a form of welfare.

The rail systems and bus systems will deal with major budget cuts and service cuts until everything collapses: the city will inevitably privatize the whole problem by selling it in chunks to corporations, probably to pay off our massive debt. This will happen nation-wide. Every city in the nation is cutting transportation services. This won't stop, and when public transportation gets really horrible most people will cheer the privatization.

These cuts will give major rise to the affordable car-sharing programs that we already see developing. Portland isn't the only city doing this. In the future, I think young people and poor people will rent cars as they need them, and ownership of private vehicles will be too expensive for most people. In either case, when renting cars is cheap and easy, that's what is going to take over. Combine this theory with the driver-less car technology. Imagine a taxi with no driver, how much would the taxi ride really be..? .60 cents a mile, maybe?

Cars are not going away, people will always want one near by. If we're designing for the future, then we should probably talk a lot more about the future we are "collectively" envisioning.

I think you could chalk up these developers to pushing the "green agenda" for profit. A building with no parking spaces saves them shit loads of money. That's why they're pushing this, and they will use bunk research studies to justify it. I just beg everyone to look at the economics of the situation before jumping on the ship that somehow no parking spots will save the Earth.
8
fidelity_axiom:

You're quoting Randal O'Toole? Anyone with any knowledge about urban transportation knows he's entirely biased. In fact, I'm totally blown away that you'd even recommend him as an authority. He might be on to something with driverless cars, but most of his reports are cherry-picked data that supports suburban dwelling drivers.

Yes, cars play a role in cities as well as car sharing being something to pursue, I agree. But you're forgetting with all of these people sharing cars, you need to store the cars somewhere. Even in podunk Portland, parking is terribly difficult at times. I avoid this problem by walking, taking transit, or biking. Do you really think car sharing in NYC is going to replace the subway?

I don't see too many people in upper Manhattan hopping in their cars to see the game at Madison Square Garden.

Even if "public" transportation someday were privatized, it would still employ the same transportation technologies of buses, bus rapid transit, light rail, heavy rail, commuter rail, etc. (i.e., all very "public" means of transportation).
9
@Jeff Kish: You say, "In the meantime, these policies are hurting the local economy." How so? There's a handful fewer parking spaces to make room for bike parking, but don't you think those of us who lock our bikes to those things spend money too? There have been several stories in recent years about how bike-friendly infrastructure boosts the local economy. One recent article: http://www.treehugger.com/bikes/there-bicycle-economy-two-cities-find.html

@ fidelity axiom: "Mass transit is dying."
Pure hyperbole. Whenever anything suffers setbacks, people will say that thing is "dying" or "dead." One of the best ways to reinvigorate mass transit is to give people more reasons to use it instead of driving. The only effective way to get people to drive less is to limit parking. Not even the much higher gas prices have put much of a dent in Americans' insatiable desire to drive everywhere. Limiting the free car storage all over the place is one of the few ways to break that habit.
10
I think it's a bit of a stretch to assume that all free parking is bad. Remember, free on street bike parking is around, and that's not coming into question by anyone yet. We need to be equitable about this.

The issue with parking(less) apartments have people living in them who are STORING their vehicles overnight.

There's no reason why free parking cannot occur in most neighborhoods, but having a one, two hour maximum at tops.

For storage of these vehicles, the owners could pay for a parking pass on-street monthly, as this article mentions.

That, in my opinion, would be a great compromise.

And yes, many businesses need cars for their customers. A city needs to take into account all forms of transportation and how they have an effect on residents and businesses.
11
$2.50 for bus/max tickets but no change to parking meter rates downtown? I mean, if a person parks for less than an hour and a half ($2.40, or $1.60/hr x 1.5), it's cheaper than taking the bus! And just how did the ticket increase NOT target poor people?
12
bikefor1: You fail to add the cost of gas, maintenance of vehicle, insurance on vehicle, oh and I forgot cost of tags, license plates, registration of vehicle, etc. So, in the long run, it is *NOT* cheaper to drive.
13
Portland is trying to redo itself into an 1905 era city - where anyone who lives in the city can go anywhere they want in the city but forget about going anywhere outside of it. Trying to pack in density where 2 to 5 thousand people live per square mile, everything is brought into the city to support them and ensure that only the rich can afford to live and commute into the city or even go anywhere on their own.
In the long term they are going to make owning any vehicle so expensive that the truely rich will be the only ones who can afford to own a car. There will be no place to park it and if you want to park in front of your house you have to pay for it.
Look to London - only the well heeled can afford to drive to work there - everyone else is forced to spend an hour 1 to 3 hours commuting to work now in really packed tube stations.
14
Spot on Tom. There's actually a name for what you're describing. It's called Agenda 21:

http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_age…

http://occupycorporatism.com/eco-fascists-…
15
One way to temporarily stave off the effect these no-parking apartment buildings is to prohibit anyone who lives there from owning a car, at least until they can show that they have access to an off-street parking space.
16
On-street is where the bike infrastructure is supposed to go. Forcing people who own cars to park on the street is only going to make is harder to remove on-street parking in the future as we expand bicycling infrastructure.
17
No one here has any idea what they're talking about.
18
@Tom Philo: There is already a disparity in wealth in large global cities between those who drive themselves and those who get around in other ways. The car-dominated infrastructure that Americans take for granted gives the largest amounts of public space over to those who choose to pay the high costs of routine car use as their main means of transportation, even though someone on a $100 bicycle should be seen as equally important as someone in a $30,000 car. As cheap conventional oil declines and continues to be replaced by expensive unconventional sources of fuel, the price of gas will continue to rise and that disparity will hit new crisis levels. Making people reliant on their own 2-ton metal box for everyday transportation is unsustainable, and we need to keep building up alternative transportation and energy infrastructure with the cheap fossil fuels we have left, rather than encouraging people to use them in incredibly inefficient ways when in most trips they're not carrying anything they couldn't bring onto a bus or train.

@Spindles: I think you may need to get your bullshit detector checked. That "OccupyCorporatism" site boasts that they're "exposing the hidden agenda of the Zionist goal of One World Government" and they throw around words like "ecofascist" and "ecoterrorist" and chide "the believers in man-made climate change." So light rail expansion is part of this Zionist-UN conspiracy? Got it.
19
Jesus Christ, Portland isn't London, and won't ever be. Here's how this will go down: They will build these condos. SOME people will OCCASIONALLY have to park a block or two from their house/building when they can't find parking.

boo FUCKING hoo. NEXT.
20
"But we're supposed to be building for the future—hopefully, these apartments will fit right in to Portland in 30 years"

If you think those apartments are going to be around in 30 years, you haven't been paying any attention to the quality of current construction.
21
A+ trolling, Sarah!
22
The bottom line is that most of Portland doesn't have a parking problem right now, and the city is intentionally trying to create one. It is a very strange community where we pay taxes to a local government so that they can make the city more expensive and inconvenient.

As others are pointing out, cars are a great advancement in terms of personal freedom and time saving. They were a revolutionary technology compared to what came before (rails, horses, etc.) We are not going to go back. We just aren't. There will always be lots and lots of people using cars. Our hope is that these become clean cars using less and better sources of energy, but they will still be here.

And another crucial point: the people owning these cars in Portland are not retrograde, Limbaugh-listening barbarians from the exurbs. They are Portlanders. They are us. If fact, something like 85% of households own cars. Most people you know. So lets stop talking in the abstract about these horrible car owner/users because they are us, and we need accomodation for the cars that the vast majority of us CHOOSE to own, despite our blue politics and green rhetoric.

Mirk: "Though car ownership is much lower... among residents of these buildings." The report actually clearly states that it is not. 72% still own cars.

Also Mirk: "unfrequent" = infrequent
23
"No one here has any idea what they're talking about."

All I know is my car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
24
The truth: owning your own car is a wealthy country luxury. It's not normal, and it's not a right.

Everything else makes sense: Car sharing, transit, biking and walking.
25
The city planners are acting in a most un-democratic way.

We need to get 20k signatures and put the density rules to a vote.
26
Just so I'm clear on this, people who live in housing with no off-street parking are complaining about more housing being built with no off-street parking, right?
27
Agreed with Blabby.

@WS - where did I quote O'Toole? Do you know what the word "Quote" means?

I think car sharing in NYC will replace the taxi services. Portland is not Manhattan or Tokyo.

@"Pay your way" - I fundamentally disagree with you that we - or anyone - should be making lifestyle decisions for other people. By “insatiable desire” I think you mean “freedom to.” Just own up to the concept that you’re wanting to force other people to do what you think is a good decision: now apply that to veganism, fitness classes, and military service. Don’t support anti-freedom.

Please wait...

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