Not to mention subsidised parking spaces. Free and even paid street parking is highly subsidised by the city and by other tax payers. There's also the environmental cost of not having that land be a park or nature and instead have it contribute to being an urban heat island with all its asphalt.
Not writing an academic paper about it doesn't make it right either. This is the problem, when it's just hearsay, the rest of us have nothing to judge its accuracy with.
When looking at something as complex as people's behaviour, then it's worth allowing for seasonal variations in public transport use (e.g. when it's raining people may decide to get the bus rather than walk). Could it be related to the length of their journeys and/or their net worth? (There's a strong correlation between health and wealth). How does it compare to a similar section of the population that drive or cycle instead?
in Paris (and pretty sure that applies to pretty much any big western city, new york for instance is worse in a few of the criterias ill reference) subway increase stress, frequent delays(if you have 2-3 train as part of your commute you will experience it daily), pollution down under is high, virus/covid transmission is high, pickpockets are everywhere if not worse, bedbug, pee smell, junkies. Id take a car any day.
So I live in NYC, and constant honking and worrying about being run over by cars when I'm trying to cross the street contribute way more to my stress than the state of the subway in NYC. Driving, or being around vehicles driving, is incredibly stressful.
Also, I was in Paris last year and I found your subway system more pleasant than ours. Methinks you doth complain too much.
I lived years in NYC and in Paris, it might be more pleasant on the touristic places and crime is definitrly less violent. for everything else it stays true and id take crossing the street and honking anyday versus having to deal with public transportation with all the drug addicts and violence that is in NYC subway. hell I was commuting walking 40 min morning 40 min night not to deal with subway
This is much less of a problem in large Asian cities. They're only really stressful in rush hour crowds. But in places like NY the public seems much less interested in the initial policing, maintenance, and cultural attitude shifts that would be required to make it happen. Like, you could still have the artists, street performers, and other so-called charming quirks while still making sure the problematic passengers get the help they need. What's it going to take? You could even do a trial period, like one year of safe, clean metros and see if people want to go back to the way things are now.
Post Szasz and Reagan we’ve had the policy of deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill. Thus you have a lot of people with schizophrenia who have no insight into their condition who are very hard to manage. Even in a town where services are relatively available there are many people who take years to accept a diagnosis which can get them on disability and receiving permanent help.
Probably the best we can do for these people is get them stabilized on an antipsychotic drug and then get them in the clinic every few months for a depot injection but even that is pretty hard.
This dates back to at least JFK and probably farther back. The institutions of the 1950s were terrible for the mentally ill - putting them on the streets is a better answer than the abuse a lot of them suffered. Of course the Kennedy's had enough to treat their mentally ill family members to better institutions than the government mandated ones.
If a reformed institution could treat the mentally ill better than the the streets is an open question - in theory it can, but human nature is all too often to abuse in that way and so you should question if any reform can stick. If you say yes then it is on you to verify. If you say no - we need a better answer than the street (I can't think of any - or at least not any that I don't have other objections to)
The Paris metro is amongst the most frequented in the world and operates near peak capacity. You absolutely can’t compare it to anything in Germany. Germany doesn’t really have a city which can be compared to Paris. Berlin has the most populated urban area and it has less than half the population of the Paris one. The only similar city in Europe is London.
Plus there is no bed bugs and pickpockets are an oddity outside of the most touristy stations.
Anyway, considering how awful it is to drive and park in Paris, you would have to be crazy to use a car instead of taking the train which is why nearly everyone does. Plus, with the mandatory employer subvention, it’s incredibly cheap at 44€ a month. The only credible alternative is biking which is indeed more and more popular.
pickpockets an oddity? brother I took all the suburban trains you can think of, the paris subway on a regular basis ive seen people injecting their arms on the wagon, antisemitic attacks, stabbings, punching, people shit on the floor, drunks and pickpockets are a daily thing in paris in EVERY public transportation. some bus lines in non-touristic areas are even so infamous that everyday legions of comments tell stories of how people got robbed their phones or wallets. ill take a car any day and guess what? that is what every rich person including the city mayor will do once they ban outsiders from having car in the name of greenwashing. they will ban cars in paris for middle class and then have people that drive ubers coming from poor suburbs and exploit them to drive around while us commoners have to live through the criminal hell that is paris public transportation.
First, please, be respectful. You are not my brother, nor my friend.
Second, why are you blathering so much non sense. I have been taking the Paris metro daily for the past decade, commuting on the B, then the 6 first, then the 8 as I moved. I regularly go around including on some of the allegedly poor lines and cross Gare du Nord quite often. Stabbings never happen. An attack would be a newspaper worthy thing. People don’t take shit in the metro. What kind of non sense is that. And pickpockets are limited to the touristy parts because well there is not much to pickpocket in the other parts.
At first, I thought you were some kind of Russian chill spreading misinformation but then it finally hit me that you are probably using your car all the time and trying to justify your prejudice.
everything I wrote I’ve seen it with my own eyes. saying brother to you is much more respectful than you calling me a russian troll. I am a second generation immigrant born in one of the worst suburb of Paris and everything I described I have seen it with my own eyes. also I don’t own a car. I just traveled and lived in many places (in US and asia) and can totally say the Paris subway is a horrible experience. people like you that have a strong political bias that make them bend the facts and reality are also the reason things won’t ever get better. Saying “pickpockets are only in touristy areas” just like if there was some magic line they wouldnt cross is the proof that you have gone away from facts and common sense. If I am telling you I know personally multiple bus lines being pickpocket-ridden where mostly parisian take the bus it is a fact and a reality. Your own experience of commuting might be different than mine good on you for enjoying it but maybe be tolerant enough to accept my own experience.
> strong political bias that make them bend the facts
I have a strong political bias because I feel the need to intervene when someone spread utter lies about stabbings in the Paris metro. Sure, I’m the one having issues here.
The issue is not accepting your experience. You are talking non sense about factual things.
Parisians mostly don’t take the bus by the way. The buses are awful and have been running like shit for the past two years as drivers are not being hired in preparation of the privatisation. Are you sure you actually know what you are talking about?
so now you half agree with me saying bus are awful. I just have now to convince you on trains, the other public transportation :)
many parisians take the bus to go through paths that are not covered well by subway especially true for horizontal paths for instance in left bank. ive seen a few stabbings myself taking rer and subway. i was even there when a random guy was stabbing people a few years back in st denis for no reason. I saw young people take out knives to fight after an argument, I ve seen people holding knives to threaten others. why do you think even the SNCF when they moved their office to saint denis wanted to have a specific arrival gate for their employees-only before backtracking when someone smarter than the average told them it would send the wrong message? have you came out next to barbes? have you seen that people got murdered just in front of gare du nord for no reason? have you been to north east stations where a horde (the right word) of junkies are crawling in the station and are all dangerous?
> so now you half agree with me saying bus are awful
They are awful because they are never on time. Your post is pure delusion. I feel insulted by you even implying I could half agree.
> why do you think even the SNCF when they moved their office to saint denis wanted to have a specific arrival gate for their employees-only before backtracking when someone smarter than the average told them it would send the wrong message?
You are unlucky. I was working as a contractor for SNCF at the time of the move so I 100% know that what you are saying is pure bullshit. There never was a plan for a separate gare. The part of Saint Denis where SNCF is is perfectly safe anyway. I find it hilarious that you think it's even possible to open a new gare for a specific use case on the RER D, one of the busiest line in one of the busiest metro network.
not a separate gare they wanted to have a specific arrival bridge to go to the office.
about the perfectly safe I guess your colleagues disagreed and I also disagreed for having spent 20 year in st denis projects. but I guess im a russian troll :
https://www.lemonde.fr/banlieues/article/2013/01/24/la-sncf-...
Living since almost 15 years near Paris, in a few different places, regularly taking line B, C, D, M6, M7, M13, M1, some buses, as part of my regular commute, and have never encountered the shit you are talking about. I do know that some places are more problematic than others, by example M6 drivers regularly warn of pickpockets on saturdays (it's a touristic line, the only one I regularly take that have such announcements), sure not everything is perfect, but you are either biased (where did you live when you were in Paris?) or actually purposely actively trying to spread fud to insist like you are.
could you draw the magic wall that blocks pickpockets from stealing non touristic areas? i wanna make sure im not in one.
you can go tonight around 8pm to porte de la villette and come back here tell me you felt safe.
its very hard to understand paris subway is a living hell if you did not travel to better subways cities. seoul, tokyo, hong kong, taipei are what a subway should be. anything less is hell
It has secretly become unrealistic to have cars in a city, we still do it but more out of tradition. You wouldn't build parks (tho that would be nice) 1 parked car, the road next to it and the second side walk take about as much space as an apartment and we stack those one on top of the other.
Something like this is quite hilarious if you think about it.
You don't have to build it like that. Where I live now, the parking lot is effectively the basement under the apartment buildings and playground. You'd barely interact with it unless you're driving.
Housing is getting so expensive that people share tiny apartments while still able to afford two cars. With that ratio you need 10 floors of parking for 10 floors of housing.
I always thought it funny how popular elevators are for vertical travel. A monorail station in the basement or even a ski lift seems a lot less space consuming.
If it means you can get a home 120m2 (1300 sq ft) in stead of 60m2 (650 sq ft) it seems worth considering.
Absolutely. Next time you see a free parking spot mentally calculate the rent of ~10m² on that part of the city to understand how much of a subsidy that is. Then multiply by 50 parking spots in a street. Then think how many thousands there are all over the city...
do you have free parking? cities are making money out of parking spots. a lot of money. so much than one would say they have an incentive to reduce parking space to increase price and reduce expenses
Cities and councils should not be making decisions based on how to raise revenue.
They should be making decisions based on how to improve quality of life for residents.
Parking should exist where public transport is not a viable option. Ideally the work to make public transport an option should be prioritised over the work to making parking exist.
Cities and councils can make money from public transport too, it'll work out OK revenue-wise, and quality of life improvements can be considerable.
Practically in a city like Ithaca NY there are stores like Wal-Mart that have oceans of free parking about a mile from the Ithaca Commons which is a pedestrian mall surrounded by parking meters and concrete corkscrews that cost about $1 an hour. Years ago local shops could stamp your parking ticket and give you a few hour for buying something but the city decided it couldn’t afford it.
That $1 isn’t much, but many believe the Commons can’t compete on that basis and shoppers will avoid the Commons and go to stores on the commercial strip instead, it doesn’t help that the Commons doesn’t have a diversity of shopping, instead it has some gift stores, a legal cannabis dispensary that is just about to reopen after being closed for some reason, numerous head shops, a bookstore, and numerous CBD stores that I think sell real weed in a back room.
I don't think it's fair to consider Wal-Mart's parking free from a societal perspective. Presumably they pay for it and absorb the cost into your grocery bill.
> Cities and councils should not be making decisions based on how to raise revenue.
... although if they were, the price of parking would be way higher. The optimal price for parking is a time-and-day-dependent price set high enough that around 10% of spots everywhere in the city are free at any given time, so that people who need parking can generally find it conveniently nearby to where they're going.
> set high enough that around 10% of spots everywhere in the city are free at any given time, so that people who need parking can generally find it conveniently nearby to where they're going
OTOH, if there is always that much space available (and presumably there didn't used to be before the price hikes) then it is evidence that a lot of people have chosen to go elsewhere because parking became too expensive.
Can the ___location compete with that "elsewhere"? If it is a unique ___location with unique reasons to visit, probably yes. But if it is the typical old downtown with stores competing with the strip mall with similar stores but free parking, probably not.
I've seen the depressing cycle of multiple vibrant downtown cores become abandoned after parking meters came in. I very much prefer a strong active downtown core even if finding parking is a pain, to one that is mostly all boarded up and abandoned but there's plenty of paid parking.
There's not that much free space available. It's a maximum of 10%. Almost everyone who was ever going to be able to go here is able to do so, they're just paying more for the privilege and they aren't wasting as much time driving around creating traffic trying to find parking.
Let's say there are 500 parking spots. With free parking and a vibrant area, all spots are taken and there are N people circling around looking for parking. Not sure what N is but let's say 50 (seems reasonable).
If after the price increase there are 10% (50) parking spots open, that means at least a 100 people went elsewhere (20%). That's a pretty significant drop in business to the local stores.
And speculation aside, I've seen this happen in two downtowns I frequented. Parking meters were installed, people went elsewhere, the vibrant downtown died and was boarded up and abandoned. And it's not just a transfer of business to a different ___location, but a loss of cultural significance. Because the old downtown had artists and musicians who no longer have a place at the strip mall. The stores moved, but the culture was lost.
parking costs over 200euros a day in Paris. the city also is on the board of private parking companies…. conflict of interest is high, corruption is also knocking at the door. greenwashing is the new criminal activity for suits
what is the relation. no one ever talked about more cars. I a merely asking why the mayor office is at the board of private parking companies getting paid for that while at the same time removing public parking space.
You have a fundamentally different model of the social contract to me. We're unlikely to ever agree. However...
I believe that relying on individual purchasing power ("utility"), to improve the average quality of life is an experiment (often referred to as "Reganism" or "Thatcherism"), that after 40+ years of trialling has shown to be net negative to social mobility, overall net happiness and other factors important to me as a UK middle-class (this isn't the same as what middle-class means in the US), citizen with a significantly-above median income for my age, social background and other predictive factors, as compared to natural experiments in free market economies where such trials did not take place (most of Northern Europe), in the same time frame.
The core problem with free markets being used as a mechanism to settle all societies ills is that theory ignores natural monopolies. You can't have a car parking space and a children's park in the same place: you must make a choice. And if you choose based on economic utility, the outcome with the direct revenue will allow a realised "win" over that which has indirect or non-utility rewards such as "happy, well-adjusted, children who have learned to be nice to each other".
If you believe in the right wing view of economics without taking into account the lack of natural monopolies, you and I are unfortunately going to be so far apart from being able to find common ground we might just be wasting each others' time.
If you do understand the nature of a natural monopoly from a land use to utility company infrastructure, then you'll realise that when you follow the thread that car parking at market prices denies other monopoly uses of that land, that residents can't influence that through purchasing decisions, and that cities and councils would be failing in their duty to provide an equitable and comfortable city/town in which to exist by making decisions about monopoly situations purely based on revenue potential.
You can visit your local park hopefully you live in an area with one. You can invest time using transit to get to another park. Traveling during rush hour would be difficult. Traveling with many children or younger children adds a difficulty. Being disabled or older or worse disabled with children more difficult. For the young, childless, plenty of time on their hands or live next to a park of course walking a few steps is a no brainer.
But it's like buying a gym membership across town with the idea that you would walk everyday. You aren't going once winter hits.
Not American but have been young and took transit and walked everywhere but also seen seniors in wheelchairs who stopped going to the park after they stopped allowing cars to park.
What percentage of people driving around in their 3-ton trucks are disabled? This is an argument for fewer cars, not more: so that people who truly need it can use it more efficiently.
Disabled etc spots are different imo. But most sane places have a mixture of parks/shops/other facilities within the bounds of a small neighbourhood that are easily walkable for most.
What social contract? That's a convenient fiction, but no one ever agreed to any social contract anywhere.
My adopted home of Singapore goes a lot harder on private initiative than Thatcher and Reagan ever dreamed off. And thanks to that, and some other factors, they went from third world to first world (or arguably zeroth world) in less than a generation.
> The core problem with free markets being used as a mechanism to settle all societies ills is that theory ignores natural monopolies. You can't have a car parking space and a children's park in the same place: you must make a choice.
Revenue means people are willing to pay for something, something they value. So it's not the be-and-end-all for how to run your city, but it's better than many other ways political decisions are made. (And better than whatever political decision procedure leads to mandatory minimum parking requirements, IMHO.)
The fact that you didn't explicitly opt-in to it before you were born does not mean there is no implicit social contract between you and your fellow citizens.
Without trying to ridicule you, asking “what social contract?” In this kind of discussion is like a first year university student asking “what’s a fraction?” in first year maths classes.
An entire section of philosophy is built on this question alone, and why there is such a thing as a social contract.
> What social contract? That's a convenient fiction, but no one ever agreed to any social contract anywhere. My adopted home of Singapore goes a lot harder on private initiative than Thatcher and Reagan ever dreamed off.
Do you chew gum when you are at home in Singapore? No, you don't, because it's illegal. Did you agree to that, were even you given a choice? No, of course not.
Singapore is more authoritarian than most liberal democracies. That means you do as your told. That's the social contract. If you disagree with the people in power to loudly, you got to rot in jail. https://www.smh.com.au/world/lee-kuan-yew-a-towering-figure-...
As it happens, Singapore got lucky. The people in charge are good at running a country efficiently. In particular, they didn't line their own pockets too aggressively - certainly not in a way that was out of line with liberal democracies. The Singapore it's an outlier compared to other authoritarian countries. Generally, once politicians eliminate the competition, they use their control to milk the economy for all they are worth.
> Do you chew gum when you are at home in Singapore? No, you don't, because it's illegal. Did you agree to that, were even you given a choice? No, of course not.
It's more like a license than a contract.
> Singapore is more authoritarian than most liberal democracies.
The Singaporean government is a smaller part of life than in most other places. Much less red tape to fill out before you are allowed to do anything and regulations are simpler.
Yes, there are some weird regulations about how you can say things. But they affect the form more than the substance. You are pretty much allowed to say whatever you want, just not however you want it.
Yes, Singapore got lucky in that they had (and have) a hardworking population, and competent leadership.
Why do you insist that Singapore is authoritarian? We have free and fair elections, that are regularly observed to be so by international organisations.
Well I'm not going back to Singapore until they treat gay men like myself better. I've been there; Singapore is a private money pit/playground for Western and Asian high business, much like Dubai.
When have you last been? They have recently improved the de jure treatment of gay people. (The de facto treatment hasn't changed.)
I agree that the laws about homosexuality are weird, but they are also democratic: it's broadly in line with what the population wants as far as I can tell.
That's not what democratic means. If the people did not vote on them, it's not democratic, even if it appears as though they would hypothetically vote for it.
Huh? The people voted for the government that implemented the policy. Just like with every policy in any representative democracy anywhere around the world.
public transportation is not a viable option in the west. too much crime too many lenient judge. in asia it is top notch. because people are educated and this just works. once we fix this you can take our cars.
This is a really good comment thread and got me thinking.
However here in the UK I'm not sure your point about virtual subsidy quite computes. Most of the free to use parking in valuable areas is street parking outside homes. Seeing as housing costs are just a big sponge that absorbs any surplus productivity, I suspect if people had to rent or buy those parking spaces to use them then you would see a corresponding drop in house prices/rents.
