Where parking is for free and demand is high, it takes time to find a spot. Some would like to pay to save time.
Take for example those residential areas next to a metro stop where commuters park. The inhabitants wait for commuters to come out of work to leave.
Those spots have value. Now let the commuter go to an app where s/he indicates what time the spot becomes available. On the app and the site inhabitants can pay a market price for the reservation. The commuter waits for the inhabitant to show up. A magnetic sticker on the back of the car helps find the car. The phones of the two start showing each other's location 10 minutes beforehand.-- rrr, Mar 22 2024 Parking issue in Amsterdam that inspired https://archive.is/03Q93mirror of article in Amsterdam newspaper [rrr, Mar 22 2024] https://www.justpark.com [xenzag, Mar 23 2024] Not bad. After I sell my space in someone else's parking lot I'll sell space on your couch. Then perhaps a bridge belonging to a government.-- Voice, Mar 22 2024 It is already possible to buy parking spots in some cities. A single parking spot was going for 25k a decade or more ago.
Now in Sicily, seemingly impoverished people just stand in the parking spot until someone pays them enough to move.-- 4and20, Mar 22 2024 [boo] Very Einsteiny. Time and space converge on the asphalt.-- minoradjustments, Mar 22 2024 I am very much against this idea. Parking difficulties are one of the prices you should pay for not using public transport. Obviously, for some, the car is a requirement not a luxury so some spaces must be available, but for most people that is not the case. Hence, as a public transport nazi, I feel that my opposition to any idea that makes car ownership less stressful is obligatory.-- DrBob, Mar 22 2024 I agree with [DrBob], it seems very odd that people think they can, to the inconvenience of all, store their bulky private property on public land. However, this idea already sounds like there would be an enormous amount of planning and admin to get right, and several things that could easily go wrong and mean that you couldn't rely on having a parking place, so maybe [DrBob]'s requirement for parking to be difficult is met?-- hippo, Mar 22 2024 Ooh yes. I am also very much a fan of red tape. So a torturous & long winded process to govern this idea would be splendid. Making it not legally impossible but almost practically so. Only those with the patience of a saint need apply. Well done hippo!-- DrBob, Mar 23 2024 100% baked in UK anyway. Look up www.justpark.com-- xenzag, Mar 23 2024 Oh, I can only imagine the fights that would invariably break out over this. You see, all I would have to do is login to see when you're planning to make the spot available, and as long as I show up with my hazards flashing *before* whoever actually paid you for the spot, I still get in first. There's no way, you see, that this would be legally enforceable in any civilized country, so calling the police would do neither you nor the person who paid you for the spot any good whatsoever.
Parking wars are something of a hobby and passion of mine. [+]-- 21 Quest, Mar 26 2024 //it seems very odd that people think they can, to the inconvenience of all, store their bulky private property on public land.//
There's an awful lot wrong with the current system, many of them surprisingly more extant in the US than back in the UK for example. Solving it is also trickier in the US and I think gets to the absolute fundamentals of life on the North American continent. Most european towns, villages have a rough layout and scale that developed before motorized transport. So in theory at least, it works without cars. In America the density is lower and the distances proportionally greater, then there is the environment. The car as a little bubble of comfortable environment has made huge swathes of the continent habitable. Honestly how many people would choose to live in Dallas, Houston, Phoenix or Anchorage without a heated & air conditioned glazed mobile shelter? I walk to work in Philadelphia and honestly I'm lucky I get to wear whatever I want because otherwise even this city is brutally uncomfortable for 3 months a year.
There's things that can be done. Pre car train suburbs exist e.g. the whole "main line" area and property values in those regions increases proportionately with convenience of access to transport. So all you have to do is build a train line and you immediately create tremendous value. All a competent governing body (ha!) would have to do is couple the expense of train line construction to the value it generates, i.e. buy the land (quietly) first. There's plenty of land and trains can be fast. The problems are principally fierce unions, incompetence, fundamental short sightedness and societal stubbornness.
It'd also help if local government wasn't so obviously in hock to property developers who spend their entire time removing 20 houses and putting in 100 miserable rabbit-hutch apartments built from off-the-shelf plans. The only purpose of which is to extract rent from people between graduating college and the obvious decision to leave.
It'd help if the road system had any traffic management sophistication developed in the last 80 years AT ALL. Traffic lights that still operate on whirring mechanical timers that make you stop, wasting time, fuel, life, brakes etc. despite the complete lack of crossing traffic. How about a major highway ruining ALL of the premium Delaware riverfront? Wait, why ruin just one, when you can do exactly the same on the other river? Why is parking a car on the street $34 for an entire year? Start by multiplying that by 12, and maybe the Range Rover with the collapsed air suspension at the end of my road will find the motivation to move the damned thing more than once a year to the clearly bribable inspection garage. /rant.-- bs0u0155, Mar 26 2024 Public transport sucks, especially in the summer months when the unbathed masses who are most likely to use public transport start sweating profusely. I know, because I went without a car for 3 years and relied extensively on public buses. Never again.-- 21 Quest, Mar 26 2024 //Public transport sucks,//
It had a chance, maybe. But it's success is downstream of a cohesive society with a level of buy-in from individuals, e.g. Japan. Things have been moving in the opposite direction for decades at this point.-- bs0u0155, Mar 26 2024 Strange how people's objections to using public transport kind of vanish once they arrive at an international airport.-- pocmloc, Mar 27 2024 Ha! - yes, very true, [pocmloc].I find that in this kind of debate, car travel is often framed as the 'norm' and public transport, cycling, walking, etc. are 'alternative' methods of transport. This way of framing debate is weird and is used to justify the anger exhibited by some car driving advocates at anything at all that impinges on the supremacy of cars such as bike lanes or bus lanes. Places in which car travel is unusual - and not the easiest way of getting around (like Copenhagen, where most journeys of any kind are made by bicycle) - work extremely well, and demonstrate how mistaken this notion is of cars being the rightful owner of public space.-- hippo, Mar 27 2024 //Strange how people's objections to using public transport kind of vanish once they arrive at an international airport.//
Completely different.-- 21 Quest, Mar 27 2024 //people's objections to using public transport kind of vanish once they arrive at an international airport//
Airports mitigate all the problems with, for example, bus travel. They effectively operate as mini police states, entry to airside needs at least state-issued id and a financial transaction from a bank account, you and your baggage is x-rayed and subject to search. Staff are vetted to even higher standards, every sq ft is cctv monitored and the presence of armed police is... heavy. Do anything criminal and the chances of consequences are almost 100%. While I'm a long way from advocating for society-wide police states, the way airports operate means I've never been threatened.
//Places in which car travel is unusual - and not the easiest way of getting around (like Copenhagen, where most journeys of any kind are made by bicycle) - work extremely well,//
All very well in an environment where elevation and temperature are practically constant. It doesn't work in Chicago because it's too cold for 3 months and too hot for 3 more months. When the weather is eliminated, the environment still has a say... biking around San Francisco is... challenging. Like I said, large parts of the North American continent are only inhabitable because of sheltered environments, both stationary and mobile, for months at a time.-- bs0u0155, Mar 27 2024 //the way airports operate means I've never been threatened// Not sure that that's anything to do with airports, per se. Obviously mileage varies depending on local circumstances but I've been using public transport for 50 years & can only recall two 'uncomfortable' incidents. One, on the late bus after pub closing time, where two guys (who turned out to be brothers) were beating the tar out of each other ,& I needed to move a bit in order to avoid getting embroiled & another where a friend was being harassed & I needed to move a bit in order to insert myself into the situation. And that's it. In fifty years. Most journeys are fairly relaxed &, on occasions, chatty.-- DrBob, Mar 27 2024 //Places in which car travel is unusual - and not the easiest way of getting around (like Copenhagen// Dublin will be another city that has gone down this road by 2027 which will mark the year of completion of 400 kilometers of high quality fully segregated, dedicated cycle lanes. These are the cities of the future - ie healthy great places to work and live that are not dictated to and dominated by private cars.-- xenzag, Mar 27 2024 random, halfbakery