Ridiculous. If a city wants to remove parking, official process requires smart planners and leaders to consult with groups of unelected car owners – we call them “stakeholders” just so it doesn’t look bad – before making a decision. This can’t possibly work and whatever city you visited, Clarence, must be an unlivable nightmare.

I actually stayed on that street last year for a few days! The work had not started, but it was scheduled to go in the later half of 2018. (They were working on the street closest to the canal.) It was a very quiet street before the work due to all of the modal filtering for car traffic in place, but not a great-looking street because of the car parking and bikes were all over the place, overflowing from a lack of bike parking.

It works because the core of Amsterdam is very dense/compact and most residents don’t have cars. I believe the latest modal share survey stated that 40-50% of Amsterdam residents commute via cycling, and about 20-25% use cars (mostly those living outside or close to the A10 ring). You can get pretty much anywhere you need to be with a 10- or 15-minute bike ride, or using a nearby tram. There are two nice Albert Heijn grocery stores within a ten minute walk, and plenty of good restaurants nearby. (Van ’t Spit is a great dinner spot two blocks from that street.) It’s perfectly livable; the only nightmarish scenarios involved avoiding tourists who thought the bike lanes were sidewalks.

It could be implemented in the USA if land use policies changed to facilitate it. Basically you need dense housing (with good soundproofing – note those buildings are brick), excellent non-car transit options, and shops (especially good grocery stores) that people can walk or bike to. You can’t just take out the parking without the systems perspective of how to make the entire neighborhood/city work.

Just as an aside, that street still has plenty of parking, only it’s bike parking, not car parking. In fact, there are likely more vehicles parked than before, but because of their small size, there’s still a lot more space.

The challenge is the market seems to be moving over the past decade or two to larger and larger supermarkets that demand large service areas. one 60,000 supermarket or one 100,000 Super Target versus three 30,000 grocery stores. Supermarket operators (concentrated into fewer and fewer hands like the rest of the American economy) are disinterested in building smaller stores serving fewer people. Even Walmart has slowed or halted its “neighborhood market” concept. Unless a new operator comes in like Aldi, I am not sure this will change.

Who knows what will happen if even convenience retail goes all online/delivery.

Also note:

until the 1950s it was illegal to park curbside overnight in Manhattan.

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Can land use policies help with getting more smaller stores people can bike/walk to as opposed to large “drive only” superstores?

That’s a tough question. In the American context, even if your ZONE the land for commerce, in low density suburbia it does not seem to get many takers. Except for quite small “convenience stores” which often make their money from “sinful” purchases (tobacco and alcohol)*. 🙂 The landowners often petition for changes to the zoning for more housing.

* there are better quality convenience stores which can meet the demand for smaller, more localized convenience retail. The problem, of course, is convenience stores often serve as hangouts for people not always up to any good. 🙂 At least in the eyes of surrounding upper middle class home buyers.

The most powerful change in land use policies would be to eliminate parking minimums entirely.

It’s not just NYC, we have the same thing in Chicago

more economics please…. give me costs/benefits… something.