Giving away free parking to electric vehicles blows my mind.

If you can afford an extremely expensive concept vehicle….why cant you afford to pay the meter? Im glad NYC wont be offering giveaways like that.

I have a hunch that Bruce Schaller may be overstating greenhouse gas reductions from converting U.S. passenger vehicles to plug-in hybrids by employing average rather than incremental emissions from electricity generation for recharging — a concern I raised in a comment here two weeks ago.

That aside, the city’s stated willingness to buck the worldwide tide of subsidizing EV’s with parking perks or other entitlements is yet another encouraging position from city transportation and sustainability officials. Is there any governmental agency in the U.S., at any level, that is doing as many things right and as few things wrong as NYC DOT and the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability?

Charlie, this is like a straight line
“Is there any governmental agency in the U.S., at any level, that is doing as many things right and as few things wrong as NYC DOT and the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability.”

My answer on the Sustainability office as it pertains to transportation: yes, any government agency anywhere which has done away with parking minimums is doing a much bigger thing right. The amount of parking potentially dedicated to electric cars is trivial compared to the massive amounts of new parking which NYC is compelling or allowing developers to build. From the city subsidized redevelopment of brown fields, like BX Gateway or Qns Commons, to East River upzoning (tower with parking)the city is actively fostering mammoth amounts of parking. It is especially jarring given DOT’s work to reprogram street space.The amount of new parking increases dwarfs DOT’s street reclamations.

It is questionable whether the grid will be able to support both electric cars and a city full of air conditioners. Chaos is likely and loss of life during a heat wave is a real possibility.

The amount of optimism here about the affordability of $40,000 electric cars is astounding.

Maybe in the future, instead of some pie-in-the-sky fantasy about electric cars, the country will have enough sense to put political pressure on those other cities to achieve the car-free household rate of NYC.

If a class of urban electric vehicle were being introduced that had with a very small spatial footprint, a maximum speed of 15 or maybe 20 MPH, maximim acelleration times to top speed (zero to 15 MPH in, say, 60 seconds) and proper management of carbon footprint (clean upstream electricity generation and downstream battery recycling), then I’d consider giving it an advantaged status with repsect to traffic and parking lanes, perhaps subsidize infrastructure like charging stations. Something like a golf cart or a Cushman. IMO, that would substantially ameliorate the key external costs of MV trafficn be enough of a change to justify government subsidy.

RE: “Electric vehicles can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% to 75% compared with conventional gasoline-powered cars.”

http://www.streetsblog.org/2010/01/17/panel-the-road-to-widespread-adoption-of-electric-vehicles/

(and)

#4 Komanoff, “I have a hunch that Bruce Schaller may be overstating greenhouse gas reductions . . .”

Agreed!

Lots of externalities are likely ignored from the 50% to 75% emissions reductions stats.

Further, eCars might ultimately serve as just another delaying tactic to responsibly address the climate crisis, projected for 10-years hence (minimum) broad commercialization, increasing emissions because of startup costs comparable to building 50-story Leeds Triple Platinum skyscrapers like One Bryant Park.

re: #17 Chris Lawrence, ” . . . move to a car free city.”

During World War II the manufacture of new cars was banned for nearly three years so that industry could support the war effort.

This is the scale of the effort required to mitigate and adapt to global warming.

Re-aligning industry on a massive scale to provide scale-appropriate mitigation of climate change, it will also likely help eliminate the current deep dangerous global economic recession same as what World War II did for the United States.

Further, most mitigation and adaptation efforts will like depend on the services provided by natural systems necessary to create the scale-appropriate solutions wherein the services provided by natural systems essentially come free. This will likely encourage decreases in the cost-of-living further amplifying mitigation and adaptation efforts and economic development.

The issue is not really reducing the number of cars in New York. New York City proper already has only 250 cars per 1,000 people, which is about on a par with other large transit-oriented central cities. The issue is that in the rest of the US, including New York’s own suburbs, car ownership and car use are very high. The suburban counties of New York have about the same car ownership rates as the rest of the US, and have very low transit use except for work trips to Manhattan. The other transit-oriented cities in the world are not like that: for example, Tokyo and New York both have 250 vehicles per 1,000 people, but Greater Tokyo has 350 whereas Greater New York is closer to 600-700.

Part of this discrepancy comes from the low costs of gas in the US, but another part comes from the fact that US transit systems are not built to serve trips to destinations other than downtown. Even in New York City proper the crosstown transit connections are poor, and the subway was never built for optimal transfers.

You’re concern trolling. On the one hand, you attack the political will to build mass transit; on the other hand, you declare that there’s no political will to build mass transit and hence electric cars are the only answer.

No, I think a large-scale expansion of mass transit would be bad public policy, because there isn’t the demand to support it and because our built environment is not dense enough to make it practical or efficient, and I also think there’s no political will for a large-scale expansion of mass transit anyway.

And you repeat this without even acknowledging the many arguments that we’ve made to the contrary.

It’s like that David Spade movie where every morning he wakes up with no memory of anything that’s happened to him in the past year or so. People interact with him, tell him important facts, build relationships, and then the next day he’s forgotten it all.

Thus it is with Garyg. He is not here to listen, he is not open to any arguments, he is here only to try and prove you wrong.

You remember selectively. Do you want links for every recent US ballot initiative in which people voted to tax themselves to build transit, or will a sample be enough?

No, I think a large-scale expansion of mass transit would be bad public policy, because there isn’t the demand to support it and because our built environment is not dense enough to make it practical or efficient.

That’s exactly the concern trolling in question. The built environment is a result of transportation policy. Decide to go with light rail, and even Calgary can get a decent transit mode share. Decide to go with cars, and suddenly density won’t work so well.

It all boils down to “In a car-dominated society, the car is the most efficient mode of travel.” It’s tautlogically true; it’s irrelevant for policy reasons.

Aw geez, Alon, why do you encourage him?

The long-term trend has been a massive decline in transit’s market share of surface transportation. That share seems to have bottomed out at a minuscule 1-2% of passenger-miles. Right now, transit is fighting desperately just to maintain even that tiny share. Transit agencies across the country are cutting services and raising fares. Over the past year or so, ridership has fallen in almost all markets. There is no serious prospect of a large-scale expansion of transit in the foreseeable future.

Nice shell game there, conflating market share with ridership. Over the past year or so, vehicle-miles traveled has also fallen in almost all markets, and there is no serious prospect of a large-scale expansion of road infrastructure in the foreseeable future. Forget about ridership, where’s your data for market share?

If people wanted a built environment and a transportation policy more favorable to transit, they would behave accordingly as consumers and voters.

If they were asked that, maybe they would have. Instead, they were asked about cars, “mobility” and “freedom,” and in most new developments they’ve been given the choice of driving on the interstate, driving on the boulevard, or being disrespected, harassed and discriminated against if they took transit. Not exactly a free choice.

#21 garyg,

“. . . electric cars, are the only remotely feasible way of achieving large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions . . .”

1. We do not live in a green economy and the more something costs the more it destroys the environment in most instances.

2. Small transit vehicles have 1% the footprint of cars electric or otherwise.

3. Small vehicle transit infrastructures are much less than 1% the footprint of automobile infrastructures.

4. With India and China coming online and a projected global population of 8 to 10 billion people by 2050 there is not enough room and resources for cars. Right now, arable land is in short supply and climate change is accelerating this serious problem.

5. The estimate is that it will take a minimum of 10 years for eCars to start having an impact on emissions. One estimate has the north polar ice cap gone in the summer of 2020; other estimates are both earlier and further in the future. In any case, global warming is accelerating much faster than scientists thought it was.

Modal preferences don’t exist in a vacuum. People don’t drive to work, or ride the subway to work, or walk to work because they think driving or riding the subway or walking is superior. They do so because driving or riding the subway or walking is the most practical way for them to get to work.

Land use policy in the U.S. has, for 70 years, been overwhelmingly suburban. In most places, housing is, by law, required to be in single-family dwellings with parking included; businesses are, by law, required to be located nowhere near the aforementioned housing, and are, by law, required to have large parking facilities, enough to absolutely guarantee parking for anyone who might possibly drive.

Most people who live in low-density, use-segregated suburbs don’t live in low-density, use-segregated suburbs because they prefer low-density, use-segregated suburbs over their other housing options. THEY HAVE NO OTHER HOUSING OPTIONS – all other potential options are ILLEGAL.

Transit cannot possibly be efficient in a low-density, use-segregated suburb – if there is any transit at all, it is probably a social service for the destitute, running a few buses a day on circuitous routes that nobody with any other choices would dream of riding. Walking isn’t much of an option either, since everything is so far apart. But driving? With plenty of guaranteed parking everywhere, there is little reason not to drive everywhere.

So of course transit has a low market share. Our dominant land use policy has forced people, like it or not, to live in low-density, use-segregated suburbs, where the only practical way to get around is by car. Even for people who would prefer to use other modes cannot practically do so.

Perhaps it’s time to change our land use policies to permit higher density housing, to permit mixed-use development, to leave parking decisions up to the developers. Let people have a real choice, and then see how they behave.

I would note that the most expensive real estate in the U.S. is on the high-density, mixed-use, transit-rich, hard-to-find-parking island known as Manhattan. Basic economics would conclude that the ratio of supply to demand for this sort of living environment is far too low. A lot of people who would love to live in a Manhattan-style setting can’t afford it; nobody lives in Manhattan because they can’t afford to live in a suburb.

Andrew,

Yes, our built environment and transportation system is generally conducive to travel by car and not very conducive to travel by transit. That is because for at least half a century consumer choices and voting behavior have favored cars and disfavored transit. Laws and public policies are not imposed on the American people against their will by unaccountable overlords. Laws and public policies are the product of the democratic process. If people wanted laws and policies that allowed for or encouraged higher densities they’d vote accordingly. If people wanted more public spending on transit and less on highways, they’d vote for that too.

You have incredible faith in our voting system. But the public at large does not generally vote for policies like this. And voting produces very crude results – assuming a binary decision, the result is the same whether the preferred outcome is preferred by 99% or by 51%.

And how is voting even an appropriate mechanism here? Say I want to live near a grocery store. That’s illegal in most places. You’d presumably argue that most people don’t want to live near a grocery store, and they voted that way. But how does it make sense to deny me the option to live in the setting I’d prefer? If you don’t want to live near a grocery store, then don’t live near a grocery store! Given that some people prefer to live far away from a grocery store, while others prefer to live nearby, a reasonable land use policy would permit both options. The same applies, for example, to parking – what’s the point of parking requirements, rather than allowing individual property owners to determine how much parking they actually need?

If Bob lives in an area that has only low-density suburban housing, then Bob’s choice to live in a low-density setting doesn’t reveal anything about his preferences. Most people drive everywhere; that doesn’t mean they’d prefer to drive everywhere even if they had reasonable transit options.

Your understanding of economics appears to have some holes. If high-density housing weren’t valued highly, yet prices were still high, vacancy rates would be high, since few people would be willing to pay high prices for it. The Manhattan real estate market tends to be pretty resilient.

If high-density housing weren’t valued highly, yet prices were still high, vacancy rates would be high, since few people would be willing to pay high prices for it. The Manhattan real estate market tends to be pretty resilient.

If high-density housing were oversupplied, prices would tend to fall until supply and demand were back in equilibrium. Same as in any other market.

I’m not sure what you think this has to do with what I wrote before. I was pointing out the fact that the price of high-density housing tends to be higher than the price of low-density housing doesn’t mean that high-density housing is undersupplied. High-density housing costs more to supply. So it has to sell at a higher price for builders to recover their costs (and make a profit).

Transit agencies across the country are cutting services and raising fares. Over the past year or so, ridership has fallen in almost all markets.

Over the past year or so, GDP has fallen, too. Should I take it to mean that the US economy is in long-term decline because of it?

If people want, and are willing to pay for, more and/or bigger mass transit systems, why haven’t they created and passed ballot propositions to raise taxes and build them?

Um, they have – see Los Angeles, St. Louis, San Jose, and Salt Lake City.

Over the past year or so, GDP has fallen, too. Should I take it to mean that the US economy is in long-term decline because of it?

No, but if GDP had been declining for a century, as transit has, you should. As I said above, transit’s decline seems to have bottomed out (for now, at least) at about 1-2% of passenger-miles.

Um, they have – see Los Angeles, St. Louis, San Jose, and Salt Lake City.

I meant bigger than the transit systems we actually have.

But in areas where each household has about one parking space in front of their (single-family) building, and no off-street parking, *the street is where they will charge their cars*.

Not if I can help it. If they want electric charging facilities, let them pay for them. If they really want to be green, they’ll take transit.

If the democratic process is fundamentally broken, if the outcomes it produces are “extremely likely” to be the opposite of what people really want, then land use and transportation policy should be the least of your worries. What about the economy, health care, education, defense, crime, social security and eveything else?

I believe I asked you the same question a while back, and you gave the same answer I’m going to give: transit is what I care about. I’ll support other people in their crusades on the economy, health care, etc., and hope that they’ll support me.

And presumably, this applies to outcomes you approve of as well as outcomes you don’t.

Sure, why not? A stopped clock is right half the time.

The democratic process isn’t broken; it just doesn’t function the way you think it does.

No, I just think the idea that, for 50 years or more, all over the country, people have been voting in favor of car-oriented land use and transportation policies that are the opposite of what they really want is so implausible it doesn’t even pass the laugh test.

Your reasoning is circular. You argue that we shouldn’t change our land use and transportation policies because people prefer the strongly automobile-oriented land use and transportation policies in place today. As proof of that preference, you cite current land use and transportation policies. So land use and transportation policies can’t change until a change in preference is demonstrated, and the only evidence that you’ll accept of a change in preference is a change in land use and transportation policies!

The fact is that many people now recognize that we do need a change in transportation policy (regardless of what modes they personally use now and what modes they personally envision using in the future).

If people want, and are willing to pay for, more and/or bigger mass transit systems, why haven’t they created and passed ballot propositions to raise taxes and build them? Ditto for zoning laws, gas taxes, parking regulations, and every other kind of law that affects land use and transportation.

In places they have.

But how often do people create and pass ballot propositions to raise the gas tax or institute tolls or increase parking rates to build and maintain the road system?

In a few places, voters have passed laws more favorable to dense, mixed-use development and mass transit. Places like Portland, Oregon and Arlington, Virginia.

That isn’t much good if I’m offered a job in, say, Indianapolis (which I’ll assume for the purposes of this discussion follows the suburban model 100% – apologies to the Indianapolisians in the room if that’s not accurate). And if I were to move to the Indianapolis area, I would presumably live in an automobile-oriented area (because that’s all that’s available) and I would presumably drive a car to the grocery store (because, by law, there’s no grocery store in walking distance) and to work (because getting to work by transit, if even possible, would take many times longer than driving; and because, by law, I know I won’t have any difficulty finding parking at either end of my trip; and because, by virtue of the grocery store issue, I obviously have a car in the first place, so the cost of the car itself doesn’t figure into my calculations of how to get to work).

And you would see that I live in an automobile-oriented setting, and you would see that I drive to the grocery store and to work, and you would conclude that my preferred living arrangement is in an automobile-oriented setting, and you will conclude that my preferred mode of transport is the automobile. Unfortunately, that conclusion is not valid; I can only choose from among the options presented to me. So you can’t conclude anything about the setting I’d prefer to live in, since I only have one option; and you can only conclude that I prefer driving over starving and over riding a slow, bare-bones bus system. If an urban living environment were available, perhaps I’d live in it; if a grocery store were in walking distance, perhaps I’d walk to it; if there were a frequent, fast, reliable transit system, perhaps I’d use it to get to work.

(And none of this even touches on the issue of cost. I’d actually prefer to get to work by helicopter. If somebody is willing to pay for the cost of my trip to work by helicopter, I’d take them up on the offer. But if I have to pay out of my own pocket, forget it – I’ll stick with the subway. There are plenty of external costs to suburban life. If those external costs were internalized, thereby increasing the cost of living in a suburb, some people would suddenly find themselves preferring other, cheaper options.)

But those places are the exceptions. People who prefer such laws are a minority. If they were the majority, we’d have lots of Portlands and Arlingtons all over the country.

Minority can mean 0.1% or 49.9% or anything in between. The voting booth makes no distinction.

There are certainly places in America that have housing near grocery stores. If you want to live near a grocery store you can move to one of them. Or you can lobby your fellow citizens where you live now to change the law and allow grocery stores in residential areas.

Why do they care if I live near a grocery store? I’m not telling them to live near one.

The reason people generally don’t want to mix retail development and residential development is that it tends to create problems of traffic, noise, pollution, litter, parking shortages, etc. in residential neighborhoods.

Nice try, but insisting that retail and residences be separate only exacerbates those problems.

To reduce congestion, attract customers, and prevent businesses from exploiting each other’s parking space, among other reasons.

I suggest you read some Shoup.

(And why does the law dictate how a business owner is to attract customers? Perhaps he thinks that he can attract more customers by devoting more of his land to the business and less to parking. Or perhaps he and his neighboring business owners think that they can make a mutually attractive neighborhood by placing their businesses in close proximity to each other and to a transit hub and, by necessity, providing little or no parking. Why is it up to anyone other than the business owner himself? Why not allow parking quantities to be determined by the free market?)

If Bob wants more transit options, he can vote accordingly and try to persuade others in his community to vote the same way. Or he can move to a place that already has the transit options he prefers. You seem to think it’s possible to give everyone everything they want in all places at all times. It isn’t. If you prefer a transit-oriented lifestyle, you’ll have to live in a place where enough people share your preference to create transit-oriented laws and policies and development patterns.

Once again, you demonstrate your misunderstanding of the voting system. If 84% of the population of a metropolitan area prefers suburbs and 16% of prefers dense cities, the end result is not 84% suburb and 16% dense city! (And that even assumes that people vote on the question, which they most likely don’t.)

If we (simplistically) divide the landscape into two types of housing – suburban and urban – do you really think the ratio of suburban housing to urban housing supplied matches the ratio of preferences? I’m afraid it doesn’t even come close.

Why not allow parking quantities to be determined by the free market?

Because of the problems I mentioned before. Businesses will try to exploit each other. Why pay for the extra land for parking if my customers can poach parking space from my competitors? Parking minimums create a more level playing field. They also help to reduce congestion, by reducing the amount of time people spend driving around looking for parking.

Why do they care if I live near a grocery store? I’m not telling them to live near one.

They don’t. They care about developers building grocery stores in their neighborhood because of the problems of traffic, noise, litter, pollution, privacy, etc. I mentioned before. And because it may lower their property values. Do you also object to zoning laws that prevent, say, adult book stores, or casinos, or waste treatment facilities from being built in the middle of residential neighborhoods? The fundamental purpose of zoning laws is to separate land uses that are considered to be incompatible. If you think the laws are too strict, you can lobby to relax them. But don’t be surprised if people do not find your arguments persuasive.

http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/20/president-obama-explains-the-science-behind-climate-change-and-extreme-weather-climatologist-kevin-trenberth-and-meteorologist-jeff-masters-on-npr/

American industry must be re-purposed to build wind, solar, and innovate as never believed possible.

American education must seek out and empower the most expedient and effective ways to bring the people of this country together up to speed such as leveraging the likes of MIT’s OpenCourseware originally funded by DARPA with a mass infusion of capital and even more advanced practices and distributed human capital synergies in our schools, universities, and communities.

Great inexpensive, safe, practical, high-performance, and zero eco-footprint transit such as small vehicle transit must be designed, developed, and broadly implemented to provide the new high-mobility infrastructure for American industry to effectively beat back this crisis as well as a complete transportation solution and global replicable model for broad dissemination.

Freeing up the vast space wasted by cars in our cities and elsewhere urban farming must go viral to lead the way for suburban farming as well and all efforts greatly decreasing the cost-of-living while increasing the quality-of-life and providing full employment for a skilled, motivated, highly energized citizenry in essentially a wartime economy.

This will be a wartime economy not to kill but, to build a new civilization by the most benevolent means necessary and, it will be amazing!