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daybeers t1_jbd9alb wrote

How ridiculous; free or cheap street parking takes up so much room in this city when there are far more spaces than would ever be needed in garages and surface lots. We desperately need safer streets for everyone, and outdoor dining is a key part to opening the street to everyone as a community instead of hunks of metal taking up valuable space. The spaces around the aforementioned restaurants should be pedestrianized anyway for the city to move forward and improve safety for everyone.

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eddie964 t1_jbeffru wrote

Street parking is important, and it helps drive up downtown foot traffic. Many people prefer it for short errands, as opposed to parking lots or garages, which are perceived as less convenient and .ore expensive.

I can say from experience that street parking is much harder to find than it was 25 or so years ago, when I could reliably find a spot across from Blockbuster Video on Chapel Street on weekend evenings.

I recently had the experience of driving around the city for close to half an hour looking for a spot at midday on a Thursday.

I'm a big fan of outdoor dining and would hate to lose the steps forward we've made since 2020. But we can't brush off the importance of street parking.

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catsmash t1_jbegx9d wrote

parking in a garage was less convenient & more expensive than driving around for half an hour looking for street parking?

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daybeers t1_jbevxfy wrote

Honestly, I'm glad it's more difficult for you to find a street parking spot; that's extremely valuable land that's being taken up for storage for a couch, a couple recliners, a sound system, and some cupholders 🤷🏻‍♂️

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eddie964 t1_jbfgzpz wrote

We can have a long discussion about the difference between how people ought to behave and how they actually do behave. We live in a car-centric society; I'd love to be more like Copenhagen, but for the foreseeable future, we have to play the cards as they lay.

There is a role for street parking, just like there is a role for garages, bike lanes, pedestrian throughways, outdoor dining, etc. Frankly, I think we use our downtown streets inefficiently. I'd like to see more of all of the above.

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daybeers t1_jbfstph wrote

Then let's have that long discussion. I agree there's a place for everything you mentioned to a point, but the city has thousands and thousands of unused spaces. The area these take up isn't nearly as large as, say, Hartford, but it's still a big portion of the city's most valuable land. There are strides being made, but it's not enough yet.

There's no reason New Haven couldn't lead the charge in vision zero and safe streets in its class of mid-sized cities.

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MattFantastic t1_jbfguzj wrote

City garages generally match pricing with meters so it’s basically the same and much much easier to deal with.

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eddie964 t1_jbfhdl2 wrote

Both have their role. If I get a craving for Arethusa on my way back from the train station, a garage is not a great option.

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MattFantastic t1_jbfitih wrote

A slight bit more convenience for people from outside the city driving through, assuming one of the handful of spots directly in front of your destination is even available at any given time, seems like a bad trade off for the significant positive impact outdoor spaces and closures have on everyone actually living and working in and around the neighborhood.

Walking a couple blocks to get where you’re going is pretty normal city parking. But turning that parking space right in front of Arethusa into nice outdoor seating is going to make a lot more people happy and do a lot more for the neighborhood.

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green_lemonade t1_jbl70tg wrote

I don't see why your convenience is more important than the quality of life and safety of the people walking and using these streets every day and living in the city. A lane of parking can easily be converted to a dedicated bus or bike lane which would move far more people than just you in your car.

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eddie964 t1_jbmc7hw wrote

Wow. You certainly put some words in my mouth there. I think we could do all of the above with some planning and commitment.

For what it's worth, we're stuck with cars, and no amount of utopian pipe dreaming is going to change that. Find a way of unwinding 75 years of building our communities -- and literally our whole country -- around the automobile, and we can talk about buses and bikes as primary modes of transportation.

So yes. By all means, build bike lanes and bus lanes and pedestrian streets, but if we want to attract suburbanites to New Haven's stores and theaters and restaurants (and I'm old enough to remember what the city was likebl when suburbanites wouldn't come near downtown), we're going to need good parking options that meet their various needs.

I think we can do all of the above. There is a lot of wasted roadway capacity in downtown New Haven. Everywhere I look, I see broad streets that accommodate two lanes of traffic in each direction, plus parking, and still manage to become choke points because of standing bases, delivery vehicles, and inefficient traffic management. We can do better.

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green_lemonade t1_jbmy649 wrote

My apologies I didnt mean to put words in your mouth. However, your premise is flawed, the health of cities doesnt hing on "attracting suburbanites". Plenty of studies have shown tax revenues generated in the urban center are what subsidize suburban life and infrastructure, not the other way around. Suburbs are by and large financially insolvent, dependent on debt financing and continuous expansion to pay for their own infrastructure.

Downtown businesses also routinely overestimate how much out of town car-travel custom they get, they're mostly running on foot traffic and local demand.

Also, the notion that suburbanites have to take cars to use urban amenities is just wrong, plenty of cities around the world in Asia and Europe do fine with high quality frequent rail service. Its not a pipe dream at all, it is in fact exactly the kind of infrastructure we had in the US for the first half of the 20th century.

Edited to add - saw something on another subreddit that nicely sums up my argument in re: infrastructure. We dont need to bulldoze more of our cities for the sake of the car: https://www.reddit.com/r/bikecommuting/comments/11ncpvp/a_city_designed_around_driving_doesnt_work_for/

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