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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 8th, 2023

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  • You’re probably at the edge of the bus line. There’s a usually very empty bus every 30 minutes just a block away from me. I took that bus a few times and realized that my neighborhood is the turn around for it. Most of the folk on it have gotten off by the time it loops through.

    This situation of empty busses at houses makes sense too. Why would a bus be full at the edge of town? It needs passengers first and they won’t accumulate until the bus is near populated spots like downtown. And why would a city pay for empty busses when they could route them in better areas?




  • I too live in a state that’s eliminating stagnating regulation, which in turn is causing my town and neighboring towns to catch up with extreme housing demands. I imagine we both will experience an awkward phase as some lots get updated buildings next to lots that haven’t seen construction in 60+ years.

    I view my recent experience as long needed development. There’s no way a developer would plunge that much money into a building if they didn’t believe they could sell the apartments/condos. I’d watch to see how fast they sell out, if they haven’t already. Consider investing in nearby development if the complex sells quick. Maybe also consider moving further down the train line if you’re looking for a less dense neighborhood.


  • That’s a fair position to take, and thank you for debating. Have an upvote!

    I don’t think park-and-ride should be made artificially cheap or free because that causes demand to drive to the town edges. Regional transit is needed and is already competing with subsidized highways. We don’t need more subsidies that induce even more regional car demand!

    Besides, even with charging for the lost costs, park-and-ride is going to be cheaper over inner-city parking. Let me clarify my point of the cost of a garage: the cost of building a garage includes materials, maintenance, enforcement, and land value. City edge land is cheap to the point that park-and-ride probably won’t be built as a garage but as a lot. Engineered buildings are expensive and usually only make sense when the land value is very high. I suspect it’s only a million or two to build a paved, ~200 spot park-and-ride, which would place daily spot pricing on the order of $1.50 to $2.50 a day. That’s pretty cheap compared to privately owned garaged parking in major cities (> $25 a day).

    My pricing beef orbits around how often city garages are heavily subsidized. I’ll make a real-life example from a nearby city of 64,000 people. They built a garage adjacent to their downtown for $12 million. Amortizing that over 15 years and the number of spaces puts the minimum revenue per spot at $8.98 per day. What is the city’s going rate for parking? $40 per month for a permit and $1.25 an hour with 9 hours of enforcement. Only the hourly rate at 100% occupancy, which this lot is not generating, meets just the construction costs, let alone figuring out discount rate and property taxes.

    And speaking of taxes, I expect publicly built parking lots and garages to also pay for their taxable rate, even if it’s just an accounting trick by the city to price their lots. Running local property taxes as a land value tax would go a long way towards properly pricing the value of public garages. LVT would also discourage parking in the city center, where land is expensive, in favor of parking on the city edge, where land is cheap. Just another trick which drives down park-and-ride pricing and discourages city-center parking.


  • There are good parking garages and bad parking garages. What makes a good parking garage? I’d say good garages must be:

    • Located away from attractions and venues. The garage should not operate as a way to funnel cars into a popular area but rather as a way to store cars for those unfortunate enough to be unable to arrive by alternative means.
    • Located close to public transit. The garage should operate as a gateway into a local community, hence should have access to bike paths, trains and trams, buses, etc to carry their passengers into a community.
    • Be priced to cover the garage cost. Garages are expensive and the hourly/daily fees with average occupancy should pay for the garage in 10 to 15 years.
    • A tool to remove on-street parking and minimum parking requirements.

    Bad garages are ones that break the good rules. They are:

    • Are free or too cheap to pay off their construction cost and land value in a reasonable time period.
    • Located inside downtown areas.
    • A method to increase the capacity of car storage in downtowns.

    It’s also possible for a good garage to become a bad one. Say a small town installs a parking lot on the edge of town, but then the town grows. That lot should be removed due to the increased land value it occupies. The new medium sized town can consider adding a parking lot or garage again, but certainly not in their popular, profitable, and active downtown.





  • A friend of mine explained why it’s important to his kids: they can’t chat with a group of their friends.

    Why? Because parents don’t want to install WhatsApp or other group chats due to legitimate concerns about scammers, pedophiles, and other child predators. SMS chat fills that gap, but it breaks horribly for groups bigger than 10 people. Hence if some kid is on Android, they break their chat. Given the penetration of Apple devices, it’s the kids with Android who are considered at-fault. “Just get an iPhone!”

    Welcome to anticompetitive practices targeted at your children.