And that is if you can find one:
"City wants a cutback on new parking; Encourages public transit; dense areas decry policy" by Casey Ross | Globe Staff, July 05, 2013
In a city where people can spend hours searching for parking, Boston officials are pursuing a strategy that seems as galling as it is counterintuitive: They are deliberately discouraging construction of new spaces.
The policy shift — which comes even as thousands of new residents flock into its neighborhoods — is being implemented across the city, with officials relaxing once inflexible requirements that parking be built with every new residence. The goal is to encourage the use of public transportation, and to devote more land and money to affordable housing, open spaces, and other amenities. Officials also say the city’s youthful population is becoming more accustomed to life without a car....
But the reduction in spaces is roiling residents in some of Boston’s densely populated neighborhoods, with critics arguing that officials are allowing high-minded planning principles to trump the needs of residents who wage a daily battle over precious street spots.
“This might make sense 20 years from now, but it doesn’t make sense today,” said Mark Rosenshein, chair of development for the Charlestown Neighborhood Council, a civic organization. “The city is asking us to believe that the people moving into the neighborhood don’t own cars, and we’re just not seeing that.”
He and other residents protested the BRA’s recent approval of a 54-unit apartment building with only 43 parking spaces in the Charlestown Navy Yard, a neighborhood with limited public transit options. “I have no idea where those people are going to park,” said Barbara Babin, a longtime Navy Yard resident. “I don’t think any more development should be allowed until they find a solution.”
For decades the city has imposed limits on the number of commercially owned spaces built in the city, but now the strategy is being applied to new residential buildings. Disputes over parking have rattled through Allston-Brighton, South Boston, the Back Bay, and elsewhere.
However, there is evidence that automobile use is declining among Boston residents, with new bike- and car-sharing stations being added frequently in neighborhoods across the city....
I'll get on the bike below.
While Mayor Thomas M. Menino, and presumably many of his top planners, are leaving office in six months, officials believe the generational shift in transportation preferences is here to stay. Tinlin said the city welcomes public debate on parking policy, but that developers, employers, and residents should be encouraged to use transit services, carpooling, and other alternatives “if we’re serious about making a difference on climate change.”
That's where you lost me and I parked it.
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Tinlin acknowledged that the policy remains a hard sell to many residents. Earlier this year, a proposal to build a car-free development in Allston sparked strong objections from neighbors. Eventually, the project died because the developer failed to obtain rights to the property, but some residents worried the proposal was just a precursor.
“The reality is that people here are going to have cars, and the BRA officials are just sticking their heads in the sand,” said Charlie Vasiliades, a member of the Allston Community Development Corp. “It’s policies like this that make me want to dissolve the BRA. They’re planning for themselves, and not the residents of the city. I think that’s wrong.”
In Portland, Ore., a city often cited as being on the cutting edge of urban planning, a backlash by residents prompted officials to block construction of car-free housing complexes and to require a minimum number of parking spaces for new residences.
But elsewhere in the country, cities are cutting back on parking.
In Milwaukee....
Seattle....
Los Angeles....
I'll take you on a little spin around there below.
Meanwhile San Francisco, New York, and Pittsburgh are placing strict caps on the number of new spaces.
And in Massachusetts, Boston is not alone in cutting parking. Cambridge restricts construction of new spaces, and Somerville is relaxing its rules....
Finally found a spot!
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Related: Don’t require more spaces; price curbside ones properly
You know what you are going to have to do, right?
"Like motorists, bike riders scramble for spaces" by Beth Teitell | Globe Staff, July 08, 2013
Casie Gillette was eager to look at jewelry and get a grilled cheese at the SoWa Open Market on a recent weekend, but parking in the South End was tight, and she was forced to circle the block before finally landing a spot.
For her bicycle.
“I got rid of my car because I was tired of parking,” the South Boston resident said, “and now I have a new kind of problem.”
No rider has yet to mark her spot with a toilet or a garbage can, as some territorial Boston drivers do on snowy winter days. But with a growing number of cyclists competing for limited places to lock up safely, riders are starting to suffer from a condition made famous by their vehicular counterparts: parking monomania.
“It’s on your mind the whole day,” said Andy Clinkman, an account coordinator who bikes to his Seaport District job at Kel & Partners.
Even as Mayor Thomas M. Menino continues his push to unseat cars as king in Boston, cyclists are starting to sound like drivers. They’re griping about rack hogs who take up more than one space. They’re avoiding areas where they know there won’t be a single rack, parking meter, tree, gate, fence, railing, or sign that’s not already hosting one or more bikes. And just like the very motorists over whom they lord with their zero body fat, they’re complaining if they have to walk more than a couple of blocks from bike parking spot to destination.
Just wondering if all you bike-riders feel about the elitist insults from the agenda-pushing paper you thought was your friend?
In Central Square, bike commuter Chuck Tanowitz sometimes simply won’t use his bike for a midday outing if he likes where he locked it up that morning. “I’ll take a Hubway bike,” said Tanowitz, a principal at Fresh Ground, a Central Square PR firm. Hubway is a bike-sharing network.
A Citibike?
Bike advocates acknowledge that Boston, surrounding cities, and the MBTA are adding bicycle parking at a pretty fast clip.
Boston, for example, has tripled the number of city-owned rack spots since 2007, to about 3,000 today, said Nicole Freedman, director of the city’s bike program. Boston University and other large institutions, such as hospitals, have also added a tremendous number of racks, she said.
I thought she had left the job. What happened?
At the same time, ridership keeps growing. In 2007, the city had 200 yards of bike lanes, said Freedman, a former Olympic cyclist. Now they extend for 64 miles. The number of daily bike trips hit almost 55,000 last year, up from 30,000 in 2007.
The city is doing well, Freedman said, but can do better. “We definitely want to add more spots.”
The city got the majority of its racks for free, thanks to a grant, Freedman said, but when they do buy them, they’re not cheap. A rack that can accommodate just two bikes costs $150 to $200.
I wonder which well-connected interest had the contract.
Despite the additional bike parking, demand is outpacing supply, said David Watson, executive director of the nonprofit Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition.
And when racks are scarce, people lock up anywhere. Technically, only rack parking is allowed in Boston, but the city doesn’t ticket violators. Rather, if neighbors complain, the city can remove a bike, something that happens about twice a month, Freedman said.
Adding new racks is not just a financial issue, however. Turf is at stake. Pedestrians, outdoor cafes, newspaper boxes, and garbage cans compete for sidewalk space. And some merchants don’t want racks in front of their stores, although, as advocates point out, in some areas cyclists are a big part of the clientele.
“That’s the struggle,” said Jeffrey Rosenblum, a cofounder of the nonprofit LivableStreets Alliance and a Cambridge city transportation planner.
In a quest for space, some cities are starting to turn car parking spots into bike corrals, which can hold about 14 bikes.
In Cambridge, for example, several large curb-side racks around the city are marked off with tall traffic cones. The corrals are portable and can be put in storage during the snowy winter months.
Nonbikers don’t spend much time thinking about cycle parking, other than to cringe at the skeleton of an abandoned bike locked to a fence. But in biking circles, it’s of a matter of such significance that rack-design competitions attract submissions from firms around the world. Changing bicycle design and ridership habits have rendered some older rack designs obsolete.
“I have this great slide show of some of the worst racks ever,” Freedman said, recalling the laughter it scored at a New England Parking Council meeting.
Some racks are now being designed as functional art. In New York, a musician and avid cyclist, David Byrne, designed nine temporary bike racks that were installed in Manhattan and Brooklyn several years ago.
Closer to home, after hosting a design competition last year, with points given for playfulness and functionality, Cambridge is poised to install 40 to 50 of the five winning designs in Kendall Square. One of the delightful racks looks like an ocean wave. Others resemble a mathematical sine wave, a very tall hat rack, and a flower pot.
Then again, some day in the future locking up your bike yourself may sound almost quaint. The Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition recently bought large portable racks to increase the valet bike-parking service it has been offering for about a decade for events.
“What if there was no place to park your car when you got where you were going?” asked Watson, the executive director. “It’s exactly the same for issue for bicyclists.”
Meanwhile, even as racks are added, Jenna Finn, a publicist from South Boston, still can’t bike to her gym in Downtown Crossing. She either walks or takes the bus.
“There’s nowhere to park,” she said.
Then I'll keep driving.
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Related: Car-free future? Not for families
You'll love LA!
"Fewer cars in LA culture shift; Transit use rises; bike lanes, light rail are expanded" by James Nash | Bloomberg News, June 21, 2013
LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles embodied America’s love affair with the automobile in the last century. In this one, it is trying to kick the car to the curb.
The city that put drive-through restaurants on the map has doubled bike lanes to 292 miles and expanded light rail by 26 percent in eight years. Bus and train ridership is increasing while the number of passenger cars registered in Los Angeles County has declined.
The traditional combustion-engined, gasoline-powered car is under assault from those and other options: electric cars, hybrids, and car-sharing plans such as the one operated by Avis Budget’s Zipcar. Los Angeles, the largest market in the biggest US state for vehicle sales, could be the ultimate test of the conventional car’s future.
Related:
And wait until you try getting out of town.
“The next 10 years will be as important to the auto industry and transportation literally as the invention of the Model T,” said Scott Griffith, former chief executive officer of and now an adviser to Zipcar.
“We’re now on the edge of all these new business models coming along and the intersection of information and the car and transportation,” Griffith said. “If you look out 10 years, I think we’re going to see a huge change, particularly in cities.”
Though the new-car market has rebounded from the recession, Los Angeles County had 28,000 fewer passenger cars registered in 2012 than five years earlier, according to California’s Department of Motor Vehicles. Boardings on the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s buses and trains increased....
Authority officials plan to spend $14 billion to accelerate that shift.
Under outgoing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who accelerated funding for light-rail and subway systems, Los Angeles is working to reach almost 115 miles of track, from the current 88 miles, by 2036.
Subway system in an earthquake-zone. Sweet. Who got those ill-conceived contracts?
Angelenos have been among the most car-dependent US commuters, with 67 percent commuting solo in 2009, compared with 24 percent for New York and 51 percent for Chicago, according to the US Census Bureau. In Detroit, home of the US auto industry, the figure was 71 percent.
Los Angeles had the nation’s longest congestion-related delays in April, according to Inrix Inc.’s scorecard, with the average driver wasting 5.2 hours, up from 4.5 hours in April 2012.
Villaraigosa, 60, who was elected in 2005, championed a 2008 ballot measure that raised sales taxes in Los Angeles County by half a percentage point for 30 years, with the projected $40 billion in proceeds earmarked for rail lines, expanded rapid bus service, widening highways, and adding carpool lanes. Twenty percent of the revenue was devoted to highways, with the largest share, 35 percent, for rail and bus rapid-transit lines....
The city has added bike lanes and reminded drivers they must share the road. Los Angeles is making plans for a bike-share program similar to New York’s Citi Bike, the network inaugurated last month in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Uh-oh!
See: Sunday Globe Special: Afternoon Bike Ride
Gonna be a long ride! I just hope your chain doesn't fall off.
Privately held Bike Nation USA announced plans last year for bike sharing in Los Angeles, beginning downtown this year, with as many as 4,000 bicycles eventually.
The changes are making it easier for two-wheeled commuters like Madeline Brozen, 26, who studies urban mobility, and Mehmet Berker, 27, a graphic designer.
“I feel pretty spoiled by the transit system in LA,” said Brozen, who uses a bicycle and buses to make a 12-mile trek to her job as director of the Complete Streets Initiative at the University of California.
Berker, who sold his car after moving from Minneapolis, said he cycles, takes the subway and bus, asks for rides from friends, and uses Zipcar’s short-term car rentals.
“It’s sometimes a matter of bumming a ride,” he said, “and sometimes, it’s just impossible.”
Villaraigosa, whose two terms in office end June 30, leaves behind a city partially reshaped by his bus and bike initiatives, with the potential for a denser, more developed urban core.
The city also plans to extend a light-rail line to Los Angeles International Airport within the next decade.
As Los Angeles develops its public-transit lines, builders, business owners, and investors will be enticed to areas near transit stations for development opportunities, said Robert Cervero, a professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Your limo is here:
"Driverless cars could reshape the city of the future" by Nick Bilton | New York Times, July 08, 2013
SAN FRANCISCO — While driverless cars might still seem like science fiction, imagine a city where you don’t drive in loops looking for a parking spot because your car drops you off and scoots off to some location to wait, sort of like taxi holding pens at airports. Or maybe it’s picked up by a robotic minder and carted off with other vehicles, like a row of shopping carts.
Inner-city parking lots could become parks. Traffic lights could be less common because hidden sensors in cars and streets coordinate traffic. And, yes, parking tickets could become a rarity, since cars would be smart enough to know where they are not supposed to be.
As scientists and car companies forge ahead — many expect self-driving cars to become commonplace in the next decade — researchers, city planners, and engineers are contemplating how city spaces could change if our cars start doing the driving for us.
There are risks, of course: People might be more open to a longer daily commute, leading to even more urban sprawl.
That city of the future could have narrower streets because parking spots would no longer be necessary. And the air would be cleaner because people would drive less.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 30 percent of driving in business districts is wasted in a hunt for a parking spot. The agency estimates that almost 1 billion miles of driving is wasted every year as people search for parking....
If parking on city streets is reduced and other vehicles on roadways become smaller, homes and offices will take up that space. Today’s big-box stores and shopping malls require immense areas for parking, but without those needs, they could move farther into cities.
Great.
The Autonomous Intersection Management project, created by the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin, imagines cities where traffic lights no longer exist but sensors direct the flow of traffic. Although a video showing off the automated traffic intersection looks like total chaos, the researchers insist that such intersections will reduce congestion and fuel costs and can allow cars to drive through cities without stopping.
Of course, getting to a utopian city will take a little longer than circling the block looking for a spot, but the pieces are starting to fall into place, at least enough to excite future-minded thinkers. Last year, Jerry Brown, the governor of California, signed legislation that will pave the way for driverless cars in California, making it the third state to explicitly allow the cars on the road. And federal agencies are starting to consider their impact.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: California's Budget Surplus
So that is what they decided to spend the money on.
But....
Nothing about total tracking and surveillance as the car as it is chauffeuring you around.
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Of course, there will never be a glitch or accident anywhere.
Related: Safety agency OK’s self-driving car test
Maybe you should park out at the airport:
"FlightCar brings peer-to-peer car sharing to Logan" by Katie Johnston | Globe Staff, May 16, 2013
Tired of paying to park at the airport? If you don’t mind letting a stranger drive your car while you’re gone, you could make money instead — and even get a free car wash.
Or a terrorist could use it and then you are in trouble.
That’s the idea behind FlightCar, a new car-sharing business set to start operating at Logan International Airport at the end of the month. The San Francisco-based company, started by three teenagers earlier this year, plans to rent departing airline passengers’ cars out of an East Boston parking lot. If someone rents a car, the owner gets a cut of the earnings — $10 per day for newer cars — as well as a free car wash and ride to the airport in a Lincoln Town Car.
If no one rents the car, well, the parking is still free.
Modeled after Airbnb, the company that rents out rooms in people’s houses, FlightCar is part of the so-called sharing economy, in which people offer tools, bicycles, and other belongings to strangers for a fee. FlightCar founders know most people aren’t comfortable letting someone they don’t know drive their car — 80 percent wouldn’t do it, according to FlightCar’s informal poll of San Francisco airport passengers. But, said chief executive Rujul Zaparde, “Twenty percent is enough.”
FlightCar launched at the San Francisco airport in February and has had about 650 cars listed for rent and 1,000 reservations booked. There have been a few scratches and minor accidents — all covered by the company’s insurance — but no thefts, Zaparde said.
Jim Newton of Redwood City, Calif., estimates he’s saved a few hundred dollars in parking by turning his Ford Expedition over to FlightCar while away on business. “It’s a little weird to give your baby to someone,” he admitted, but he likes that FlightCar is a “disruptive little company” that challenges the traditional rental market.
It hasn’t been a seamless beginning. San Francisco International Airport has issued FlightCar three cease-and-desist orders because the company hasn’t applied for a permit. Zaparde said his company doesn’t have to be licensed by the airport because it uses an airport-authorized car service to pick up and drop off customers and doesn’t rely solely on the airport for customers.
FlightCar doesn’t have a permit at Logan either, airport officials said, where the parking lots are often overflowing. The company faces an additional hurdle here because ground transportation companies at the airport aren’t allowed to ferry rental car customers.
Zaparde, 18, started the company with Shri Ganeshram, 19, and his Princeton, N.J., childhood friend Kevin Petrovic, 18 — the three dropped out of or delayed attendance at Harvard, MIT, and Princeton, respectively. In the beginning, they were using Airbnb to rent the back room of a San Francisco couple’s home because they couldn’t afford their own place.
But with the help of a start-up accelerator, they raised $5.5 million in the span of a few weeks in April. Investors include General Catalyst Partners, a Cambridge venture capital firm, and “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest, as well as Airbnb cofounder Brian Chesky.
The shared economy that FlightCar has tapped into is thriving....
Collaborative consumption like this is an efficient, empowering experience that makes sense because people often only need a bass amplifier or a surfboard for a short time, said Juanjuan Zhang, a marketing professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. These peer-to-peer transactions, in which people rent items directly from one another, are propelled by online social networks that help alleviate distrust of strangers and easily connect those who need with those who have.
FlightCar insures each car for up to $1 million and will either fix any damage incurred or reimburse the owner, and supply a loaner car if needed. It also performs a three-year driving record check on renters and rules out anyone with major infractions such as drunk driving or with more than two minor accidents or speeding violations. Eighteen-year-olds can rent from FlightCar but must have a clean record and at least two years of driving experience.
All those checks mean nothing when terrorists slip through the security net to bomb road races.
Renters are limited to 90 miles a day and will probably get a less pristine car than from a traditional company — but the price is right.
Still....
(Sigh)
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