Posts Tagged ‘The Problem with Parking Ordinances’
Learning from Glenwood Park
I recently found a great mini-documentary concerning Atlanta and an emerging New Urban neighborhood within the city. Notice the posted clip (read the complete article to see the video). This is a perfect example of a developer who understands the difference between the front and the back of a property – and correctly oriented the building to the street. Unfortunately, in Houston most buildings present their rear end to the public, and hide their face in the back yard.
Free-Market Parking
Today I want to take a look at the free-enterprise approach to parking in more detail. Let’s look at why the free-enterprise system makes sense in the first place, then we’ll try to understand why free-market parking solutions would work in Houston. The common-sense argument against parking regulations First, remember that the traffic patterns flowing to [...]
The Pseudo-Science of Parking Ratios
Continuing in our series on the problems with parking ordinances, today I want to look at fundamental problem with parking ratio requirements. Tomorrow I’ll follow up with a local example of the consequences of these poor policies. Because he explains these things better than I ever could hope to, I’m going to quote heavily from [...]
The Economics of Parking
A few days ago, Wendy Siegle asked me a question about the current situation with Houston’s parking ordinance. The gist of her questions was this: What is the real issue with parking in Houston? She observed that the perceived problems seem to be confined to Central Houston, and that different people want different things to [...]
Parking Ordinance Meeting No. 1
This post will be the beginning of a series regarding parking ordinances in general, and the review of its existing ordinances that the City of Houston is currently conducting. I’ll try to provide some reporting and feedback on the meetings I’m able to attend, as well as some background and commentary on the way these [...]
Houston and the Free Market
Tory Gattis had a great post on Monday in which he reviewed some news from late ’08. Two major highlights: 1. A comprehensive study by the Brookings Institution found that congestion pricing of freeways “would reduce housing costs and sprawl. It eliminates the subsidy for living farther out, which drives up demand and density in [...]
The value of transit
Today I wanted to take a few minutes to talk through the effect that transit has on cities, and to illustrate one of the least appreciated aspects of the car-only infrastructure system. When land prices are high, there are only two ways to develop that land profitably: you can either charge extremely high rent/sale price, [...]
West Gray Streetcar
Christof just finished a three part series on streetcars for Houston, which you can find here: part 1, part 2, part 3. It was a great read, and I highly recommend it. Kuffner then chimed in with his own iteration, which struck me as a great corridor, but really long for a streetcar. That would [...]
A better parking solution
What could be better than a big stack of Ferraris? How about being able to park loads of them in a tiny urban space? Roller coaster extraordinary Stan Checketts is now building automated parking and self-storage systems targeted at urban developers who are ever so crunched to find space for their cars. His company, Boomerang [...]