The garage in the pic is great — anything that reduces the amount of surface area devoted to car storage — but the article is really about the “Green Garage Certification Standard”. Lipstick on a pig, IMHO. There will be private automobiles and public parking for the foreseeable future but minimizing the demand by charging proper prices seems, to me, like a better way to go. As land prices go up, you’ll see more of the ramped monstrosities give way to more efficient storage units. And price will help that along.
Not the first designer to “fix” parking regulations signs and probably not the last. This one really is simple.
It’s the exceptions that cause issues, though, like if it’s a loading zone for a few hours in the morning. Do you add another color? A different pattern? An asterisk. It gets complicated in many places. But for the example above, the proposed solution is better.
I also like that they just stick these up in places without permission. 🙂
Adjust the rates to keep one or two parking stalls open on each block face. That may be $5/h on some streets at some times and $0.25/h on other streets at other times. But live experiments are showing that it works. Mostly, it cuts traffic congestion since up to 40% of automobiles in cities are looking for parking.
Dumb? Sure, but if you actually allowed a little tolerance, I could see where this might keep parking spaces in front of urban take-out spots free of all day parkers.
Of course, it’s much easier to just charge the correct price for the space if that’s the goal.
