There are enormous swaths of the city that are not, can not be, and will not ever be served by good bus service, for the reasons you state.
Our heavily segregated-use, low density, highly entrenched land use patterns means people who live in single family neighborhoods, far from commercial arterials, can probably be expected to never ride transit in any meaningful numbers, ever. Those people bought their homes knowing that transit wasn’t available, so I’m okay with not serving them with buses.
However, as Raleigh runs out of room to expand but continues to add population, those areas will be a decreasing portion of our total population. The areas that have been rezoned for mixed use in the UDO are basically all feasible to serve with transit and that is where our growth will happen in the future.
So we can’t get rid of parking altogether.
I am not okay with a situation where we continue to build parking at today’s rates, though. I am okay with letting parking rates go up (meaning parking becomes more scarce) so that it incentivizes as many people as possible to use transit. The first place to start with this is to reduce public subsidy of parking facilities.
It always amuses me how some people are more than willing to penalize and punish other people so we can get what they (you) think is best for everybody else. Actually the first place to start is building reliable and efficient public mass transit which many of us suburbanites are quite willing to help pay for it knowing all along that we will probably actually never use it.
As an urbanite this amuses me since all my adult life I’ve paid for suburbanites roads (and schools) that I hardly ever use because they think that’s what’s best. Data/science/economics has shown that to be wrong (transportation, not the schools part). Not saying that’s you @TedF, but from working in and with people from Cary in the past I can tell you that a lot of your neighbors still do despite the evidence. But I think we’re getting slightly away from the thread topic.
To bring it back, the city is putting up at least $30mil just to make these sites more accessible to drivers so I still don’t think the balance has quite swung far back towards more holistic mobility.
Well those living in downtown Raleigh haven’t been paying for us suburbanites because until recently almost nobody was living in downtown Raleigh. Probably 95% of Wake County is suburbs and it’s these suburbs that have made Raleigh and Wake County a great place to work and live. Obviously this is the time to change to a more urban style, but I still don’t think it’s best practice to actively go after the car users especially while there is still not viable alternative to using a car. I mean we did pass the Transit Tax 3 years to help. Still waiting on that.
Point was, I drive far less than those I know in Cary but pay federal, state, county and local taxes that go towards new highways in suburbs that we really shouldn’t be building, towards parks or greenways that are built with small user bases, towards tax breaks for RTP (which is, combined with support for a more socioeconomically integrated school system and university support, actually what ‘made’ our suburbs and area a great place to live and work) and exurb companies, and on and on. I think it’s definitely time to heed the evidence that continued auto subsidies are not what’s making this place great (probably even the opposite at this point) and looking at reduced parking or at least reduced parking subsidies for these sites may be worth considering.
Sure let’s charge $200 a month for parking and then combine that with insufficient parking spaces. Let’s see how many businesses will want to move downtown Raleigh then.
Seems like that isn’t a barrier at the moment… People would rather pay the premium to be downtown than some bland anywhere street in south Cary. I think the rents have made that pretty clear. I’ve been in conversations with SAS brass and they are definitely worried that Goodnight’s continued suburban tilt is detrimental to the future of their workforce and recruitment. They even went so far as to suggest that once he’s moved on they will look at options for making their campus and the area around it more urban or consider other locations. Frankly, to say that the suburbs are what made this area great is ridiculous. Just because some of the things that make it great are located there is some mental contortion imo. But again, I think we’re getting away from the thread topic. I’ve enjoyed the conversation though. Now on to the plight of the nuggets
Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you always want to end our conversations AFTER you have the last say… But fair enough lets just say that we disagree and end it at that.
Of course! although part of it is to also appease our great moderator and at least make it seem like I’m ready to move on or bring it back but in relation to this site, when I saw the $30 mil for parking figure during their presentation it really did surprise me for a site with such (alleged, but still understandable) demand. Some of the studies referenced were from 2-5 years ago and I wonder how much has changed since then. Maybe not much, but surely it has
Suburbia is obviously a large part of the area’s appeal. Money magazine wasn’t looking at Fayetteville Street when it named Raleigh the best city to live in circa 1994. Society changes, and now our downtown is set to benefit from the shift in tastes in large part because we grew at 40% the previous 3 decades. The two areas aren’t at war, they complement each other
Eventually, downtown will reach a critical mass of residents, employers, and commercial services and the ecosystem will require much less parking to sustain itself. The question is, when will that tipping point be reached to change parking policy? Are there models of other cities (preferably southern/sun belt to be more apples to apples) that have successfully “urbanized” to the point of taking away parking minimums in the core, and supporting corporate HQs more with DT employees, micro mobility, and transit than car commuting from the burbs?
Where is there a mass suburb that is not connected to a city center? As in 50 miles from a city, just suburb.
Yes I would love to see Raleigh have transit on level of Manhattan or center city Toronto, But there will need to be a massive increase in population to make that happen. Need a LARGE mass of people to pay the taxes to subsidize the transit systems. I do not know of any mass transit system that does not provide huge subsidies to the riders. I have heard rummer that line 4 in Beijing (which is privately owned) makes a little money, but it runs packed 8 car trans every 2-3 min, that run that way for 18hours a day.
EDIT – Change drinking mug “rummer” to unverified report “rumor”, thanks auto correct.
If you want to go back then it was actually ‘downtown’ Raleigh that made 1800 Raleigh a great place for people to live. The suburbs are connected but it’s pretty clear that they aren’t very sustainable in their current form, even the Cary city manager freaked out when he heard available greenfield land was dwindling because current taxes don’t cover sustaining this sprawling system that’s now starting to age. It’s often ignored that so many roads for so little utilization has been ‘heavily subsidized’ for decades even though the evidence is literally everywhere that this results in many negative consequences we are now dealing with.
The roundabout point is we should be looking at each of these subsidies for parking and driving and making sure we aren’t saying we want one thing for our area and paying for something else that at this site and others may even be in conflict with what we want. Saying we want to make sure the most urban of sites that we have to offer in the region should have subsidized parking seems like a mixed message.
I know you are being facetious at this point, but almost none of 1800 Raleigh still exists. And even at that time, Raleigh was less than 5% of Wake’s population, albeit rural rather than suburban. You are pining for something that never existed here, an urban-dominated economy.
Granted we can and will build a different future but only if we transition properly. We can’t build as if we are in a near car-less world when we aren’t.
I couldn’t find where I posted this so I’ll sort of repeat myself but I have no issue with the $30 million going toward parking on this site. Recall that the city is basically done building parking decks on their own. Transitioning to a public/private partnership is the logical next step to getting them away from putting public money towards parking at all. They just did this with The Dillon so that’s the mentality right now.
It’s also a mixed-use site/area. $30 million is not only for the office workers on the sight but for the convention center and maybe more. Dix? Maybe it’ll be the official park and ride for the gondola to Dix station. I’M JUST SAYING!!
We’ll get there but it’ll take decades and an upgraded transit system that’s up and running, even absorbed by the local culture. (IE: not on paper or being discussed in committees)
Parking for a park here at one of our most prized sites for a park on the other side of Western that has plenty of other opportunities around it for such doesn’t seem the highest and best use imo. Seems like it would be better spent on more activated uses. If anything, maybe the other way around. But I get you’re probably just being a bit ‘facetious.’ However others here have indeed supported Park n Rides from around the beltline in to DTR
I suspect the reason that some people call reducing the priority of cars “artificial” is that they think the status quo is natural: driving makes it easy to get around, and people always do what’s easy, right? But take a step back and ask what it takes to make a world where driving is easy: (1) There is plentiful, free/cheap parking, (2) There are plentiful, uncongested, free roads to drive on, (3) Roads are engineered to keep obstructions (non-car users) subordinated and out of the way, (4) Social norms, traffic laws, and the enforcement of those laws, are firmly rooted in place and staunchly defended in order to protect and preserve this status quo.
Nothing about the status quo is “natural”. It’s about values. So, let’s talk values.
Reducing driving is a good thing for a lot of reasons.
(1) Less driving = less traffic
(2) Less driving = fewer people dying
(3) Less driving = less GHG emissions
(4) Less driving = less parking needed (= easier/cheaper to develop a better human environment)
That said. We do live in a world with cars. I just think we should start affirmatively reducing parking ratios by instituting parking maximums. Most places that have done this, have done so by converting existing parking minimums to maximums, while halving or eliminating parking minimums. What of the argument that “Companies won’t locate downtown if they can’t have infinite parking, and nobody will go there anymore!” - but that sounds overblown to me. Reducing the growth of parking downtown reduces the growth of traffic downtown, reduces the cost of building downtown, and improves the human environment because a greater percentage of the floor area (particularly at or just above ground level) will be dedicated to living, breathing humans, rather than 3 ton lifeless steel hulks.
Still believe you are putting the horse before the cart. Build good reliable effective mass transit first. Give people a safe affirmative option so that they can easily choose to leave the cars at home. I still insist there are better ways to get what you want without using strong armed negative tactics. By the way, I am greatly enjoying my government subsidized parking rate of $25 per month. Just for fun I looked up the bus routes to see how long it would take me to get to work > 1 hour and 17 minutes. Right now it takes me 25 to 35 minutes depending on traffic. Not really much of an option.
although part of it is to also appease our great moderator and at least make it seem like I’m ready to move on or bring it back 
but in relation to this site, when I saw the $30 mil for parking figure during their presentation it really did surprise me for a site with such (alleged, but still understandable) demand. Some of the studies referenced were from 2-5 years ago and I wonder how much has changed since then. Maybe not much, but surely it has