I have taken some criticism on my blog where I said that those in the ‘parking reform’ business were actually trying to do away with cars. This is from the Parking Reform Network website (Emphasis mine)
A repeal of costly parking mandates is critical for building sustainable cities with abundant and affordable housing. But we cant achieve transportation, equity, and climate goals without better curbside policies and transportation demand management (TDM).
Performance-based on-street prices and flexible commuter benefits are essential strategies to reduce car trips. Cities must be convinced to spend parking revenues in ways that reduce car dependency, rather than on traffic inducing parking garages. The curb lane might be better used as a bus lane, bike lane, or streaterie. Instead of spending tens of millions of dollars on park-and-ride garages, transit agencies should build housing.
These policies deserve a focus and coordination that no other organization has a mission to provide. The Parking Reform Network needs your support to fill this void in the advocacy ecosystem.
There is no mystery here. This organization tells it like it is. They want to reduce car usage, car trips, build sustainable cities with abundant and affordable housing. I note they are concerned with ‘climate goals.’
Why not tell it like it is. Tony Jordan’s group is most likely ‘all in’ on 15 minute cities. They would certainly meet all the goals in their credo above.
I’m intrigued that they are opposed to park and ride garages. It would seem that these facilities are critical to move people away from driving to work and taking rapid transit. Does the Parking Reform Network really believe that transit agencies should become government housing agencies? It would seem that where the government has built housing, they have become slums. But what do I know?
Note above when they talk of the “curb lane” they are referring to the lane where cars are parked. Take it away and replace it with bus and bike lanes. I haven’t been able to see a place where those lanes are used to any extent at all. I would be pleased if someone could take a picture of bikes in a bike lane (no not on Saturday morning).
New York City is a good example of the need for parking garages. There are millions of on street spaces that are taken by residents because there is no off street parking for their cars. If there were convenient facilities so these cars could be garaged, at a cost, the curb lanes would be opened up and the cruising for spaces would be eliminated. It would seem that PRN wants to have it both ways, unless we do away with cars altogether.
Wow!
JVH
2 Responses
Exactly!!! Thank you JVH. New York City is a ghost town because of this war on cars. Why on earth do people think that id want to drive into the Manhattan and spend money now that the parking is expensive and half the street is now either bike or bus lanes. Its TERRIBLE. Id rather just stay at home especially when the city is becoming a crowded slum where everything MUST be 15 minutes from you. Id like to see the city try to survive when all the commuters and shoppers stop driving into the city. They will go bankrupt, drop DEAD NYC!!
So the Parking Reform Network says: “Cities must be convinced to spend parking revenues in ways that reduce car dependency, rather than on traffic inducing parking garages. “
Followed to its utopian conclusion, parking revenues happily will be reduced to $0 when people no longer have cars. I wonder then what the city fathers will do – or tax – to replace one of their top operating revenue streams from car-generated meter, ticket and parking tax revenues, not counting the $300k/space in economic activity as estimated by Dave Feehan.
Will they charge more for public transit, that will hurt lower income folks more, or raise business and property taxes? Doesn’t seem too equitable to me, unless they charge higher earners more. After all, the latest inequity in the name of equity is charging higher mortgage rates to folks with better credit scores.
The Parking Reform Network wants us to trust the planners, like we were told to “trust the science.” How did that work out?
Seems to me it’s a mindset straight outta Agenda 2030, right in goose-step with the infamous statement by the WEF’s Klaus Schwab: “By 2030 you vill own nothing und be happy.”
But Klaus and the planners who are working (wittingly or not) to implement a car-less future are up against a huge hurdle: with one possible exception, NOTHING enables and symbolizes American freedom and the American spirit more than the automobile.
Were Charlton Heston alive today he’d probably be saying, ‘I’ll give you my steering wheel when you take it from my cold dead hands.”
So look out America, they’re coming for your cars.
It’ll be so much easier to enforce those climate lockdowns when you’re trapped without a car in your 15-minute city. Just ask a billion Chinese.