Comments on: Nimble Cities, Week One: Putting Parking Under Scrutiny

By: townmouse

townmouse — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 09:42:01 +0000

It happens in the UK too. I was amazed to discover that a local proposed ‘eco’ housing development was being planned on the basis of 1.5 cars per household (roughly - I think the parking is actually predicated on the number of bedrooms per house). Truly eco-friendly housing projects that actually want to limit space for cars have to fight very hard to be allowed to do so. Insane.

By: George

George — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:45:26 +0000

On one of our favorite bicycling routes is a small country resturant/takeout. A few years ago the county goverment put a limit of 8 on the number of chairs in the stores dining room. This was done because the store had only 8 parking spaces and a neighbor complained about cars parking on the side of the road.

We kid the owner that being bicyclist the rule should not apply to us and that an extra chair per bicyclist eating would make sense.

The bicycle stand is on the lawn so as not to reduce the parking/chair count by one.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:12:55 +0000

I first ran into the parking requirement when I asked the local REI why they didn’t have a bicycle rack. Turns out, they were down to the minimum number of required parking spaces and couldn’t turn even ONE of them over to a bicycle rack.

They came up with a decent solution: posting a sign welcoming cyclists to lock up their bicycles on the loading dock, but the whole situation is rather ridiculous.

By: Brent

Brent — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 00:18:36 +0000

My brother, a contractor, tells me a curious fact about California building code: parking spaces are dimensioned carefully, with minimum size requirements and location. Bedrooms, by contrast, have no size requirements, but they must have a window. In a sense, the car has become the minimum unit size in California cities.