squirtdad

Mass transit and bicycle use are complementary to each other in many ways. But there are challenges with getting people to use and stay using both.

The San Jose Mercury news is running a series about the issues in the bay area. some things brought up include, decreasing rider ship due to amount of time commutes take and the cost of commuting (more than buy auto in many cases) the challenges in building new capability in times of declining ridership and deficits.

IMHO, there will be not be significant increase in bike ridership, no matter what infrstructure is in place ,what style of cycling you use/advocate, what health benefitst there are and what environmental benefits there are until there is a clear cost advantage to using bikes that tilts ridership to a level of commonplace that will then further act as a tipping point.

https://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-transportation

sauerwald

Squirt

I saw the article in the Sunday Merc. One thing that frustrates me is that we heavily subsidize private vehicle use in this country, and then we wonder why other modes of transportation have such a hard time. As an example, my employer provides 'free parking', the local grocery stores and other retailers also provide 'free parking', and even on the street in front of my house, there is 'free parking'. Beyond that, local (San Jose) codes require that my house have a two car garage, so I am required to pay for parking for a car myself. It is not free, the roads need to be built and maintained, parking lots take up space that could be much more productively employed etc. Who pays for it? - We all do, through higher taxes, higher retail prices, lower wages. Since I don't own a car, I am being forced to subsidize the use of private automobiles in my society. After we provide all of these subsidies for private motor vehicle use, we wonder why people tend to prefer this form of transport.

Roughstuff

Free parking? Wow....last time i looked, it costs alot for your employer, your grocery store, and other retailers to build and maintain, and plow these lots in the winter. The fact that they allow you to park there 'for free' means only that they hope the foregone revenue from parking meters (were they to install them) will be more the compensated by the additional customers, and/or the higher quality of employee they attract. You can always choose to go downtown and fight for a parking space and shove money in the meter if thats what gets your jollies.

2nd...as far as the two car garage is concerned, the solution is very simple: remove the power local zoning boards have to require such monstrosities. Its a classic case of dogooders getting kicked in the butt by their own naivete. WE delegate power to local hacks to tell us how, what, when, where, even WHY to build, and then we stand agape when this power is abused to by local real estate interests. I'll ask ya a question: name ONE PERSON on your local zoning board. Right...thought so. Not worth a penny of your time. Worth alot of money to local developers, though.

3rd building roads isn't a subsidy to 'cars.' It is a subsidy to any user to the roads, and this includes those monstrosities known as buses and light rail. Buses go where they want, when they want, and they end up stuck in the same traffic jams as the cars do. Many communities find it cheaper to provide people with vouchers for cabs, especially if these vouchers can be used by any motorist, not just some local unionized/medallionized cab monopoly.


roughstuff

Roughstuff

Hmmm...but isn;t there already a pretty substantial cost advantage to biking and not having a car? I would think its on the order to thousands of dollars in savings on insurance, gas, maintenance, and for finance afficianados, the opportunity cost of the capital tied up the vehicle.

roughstuff

squirtdad

Not for non-bike fans....I mean what it will take to get the "average driver" out of their car at least some of the time. I don't mean going carless...I mean what it will take for current drivers to simply start using bikes more for errands, for commuting or part of multi modal commute.

I started to see more people on bikes when gas was approaching $5 a gal..... as soon as it went down you saw fewer people on bikes.

Roughstuff

Ahh...I see. About all 'partial use of your autombile' saves is the incremental gas expenditures. The rest are pretty much fixed with respect to mileage.

The other challenge is both physical and social. I hear people talking about long walkers as crazy. I walk to and from 'work' about 2 miles every day. Even in this bracing winter, it has kept me fit and healthy.

It doesn't help that a decline in civic pride means many sidewalks remain unshoveled and dangerous in the winter. I have been tempted to go get the best lawyer in the county and fall down on the ice in front of the richest politicians' house I can find.

roughstuff

sauerwald

I think that a major help would be to increase the marginal cost of driving. As I mentioned in my earlier post - we have a lot of subsidized parking everywhere - if we were to eliminate that, so that whenever you drove somewhere, you would at least have to pay for parking, I think that more people would walk or cycle for short trips.

I'd also like to see roads, insurance and other driving related costs more directly tied to a gas tax, so that the costs of driving are more closely related to the activity of driving itself. With our current system of roads being paid for largely out of general revenue, cars being purchased and insurance costs not related to miles driven, there is little incentive to drive less. If you feel that you need a car at all, it is not that much more penalty to drive it everywhere.

Roughstuff

We could adopt the Singapore model, where you cannot enter the city in a car unless you already have a parking space that you have paid for (thru the nose, by the way! land is precioussssss). Many singaporeans who live in the city and do not drive cars sell their space to those who do....a double incentive to reduce car use.

Now for some humor. In my small apartment complex we have a number of loonies and mentally challenged adults. There is a parking space in front of each of the 14 efficiency apartments, for the tenant. The guy in #9 doesn't have a car, but you should see how quickly he will run out (even into the recent bitter cold!) if someone parks in his space!
Gotta love it.

roughstuff

Wogster

In the case of transit use, it's easy to multi-task while on a transit vehicle (bus, streetcar, subway, LRT, ICST, HRT) , in more and more places it's illegal to do so while driving. For those who are addicted to their crackberry and need to be up to date on their email when they arrive at the office, then it's easier to do so when someone else is driving. Even if the trip takes 5 times the amount of time, there is less wasted time. Cycling is inherently a multi-tasking activilty, you get where your going and you get exercise at the same time. If it takes you 10 minutes to drive, and 30 minutes on a bicycle, but you spend an hour at the gym every other day, then your actually ahead of the game by using the bicycle.

The problem with the automobile is that users are not rational about the cost. When figuring the cost of driving to work, most people only consider gas and parking. Even when a couple might only have one car otherwise, they will not include all the costs of a second car (car payments, insurance, maintenance, gas and parking). Of course there are the increased costs associated with more motor vehicles on the road, mostly borne by society in general. It costs about $8,000 a year to keep a small late model car on the road in the US, although this is public knowledge, people are shocked to hear that. Here in Canada it's about $11,000.

Wogster

There are two households in my house, one upstairs and one downstairs, neither drives at the moment, the single car garage is neatly (okay not so neatly at the moment), divided in half, and used for storage. With your 2 car garage, you could use 1/2 for storage and rent the other half to someone who needs an extra parking space. Around here there are a some people who have a summer car and a winter car, because their summer car is fancy or rare (read expensive), they have an old beater they drive in the winter, would love to have indoor storage for the winter without "wasting" their own garage space. If you don't want to do that, you can put in some nice shelving a work bench, add a bike repair stand and use the garage as a bike work shop.

Roughstuff

Correct....which is silly! After all, auto insurance bills come due monthly, much as rent and utilities, and people don't ignore the latter. Putting a positive spin on it, ditching a car can have immediate impact on your cash flow. You just need to make sure you can make do for those situations where a car would ordinarily be needed. I car pool with a buddy to go grocery shopping, for example.

roughstuff

Pscyclepath

The honorable Mr. Blumenauer say it succinctly: "How many people, right now, are stuck in traffic going to the gym to ride a stationary bike?"

Dchiefransom

How much will we charge for bicycle parking at the store, and at work, or will that be subsidized since cyclists are a special interest group?

sauerwald

I think that as a cyclist, I should pay for parking at a rate which is comparable to the cost of providing that parking. In a similar way, a motorist should pay approximately the cost of providing his parking space. If we consider that the major cost of the parking would be related to the real-estate that the space takes up, an automobile space is typically about 8' x 20', whereas a bicycle space is about 3' x 6' - which would imply that automobile parking should cost ~ 10X the cost of bike parking. I'm not asking for anything special, I am just making the observation that we, as a society, subsidize the costs of automobiles, often in ways that we don't even think about. These subsidies hide the true cost of driving, and as a result, cause more people to use automobiles than they would use if they were not shielded from the full cost of their choices.

jputnam

I would agree with most of that, but not with insurance. Insurance provides one of the few meaningful financial penalties for incompetent driving.

There's a reason my auto insurance rates are 1/10 of what one of my neighbors pays.

Unless we as a society start supporting meaningful traffic enforcement, with serious penalties, I'd like to keep insurance individually priced.

Now, insurance by the mile is being tested in some U.S. markets, but many drivers don't like the idea of their insurance company installing GPS tracking in their cars. And Americans are inventive enough that anything less than continuous GPS tracking will be hacked by enough drivers that it becomes financially unreliable for the insurance company. (I remember when my insurance company used to send me a form asking for my odometer reading annually -- how quaint, voluntarily submitting a mechanical odometer reading....)

Roughstuff

Well alot of parking is provided, as i described earlier, based on the 'expected revenue per vehicle.' Thats why shopping centers and WalMarts etc provide parking for 'free'....they hope to recoup the cost by selling you goods and services. Space in downtown areas is so cramped, overpriced, and in many cases unattractive, so such a revenue model does not work and communities resort to the sock-it-to-the-user model.

roughstuff

Roughstuff

And buses, which take up the space of six cars and 'park' every other block, should pay six times as much for the urban space gobbled up by their stops? Whats good for the goose is good for the gander.......

roughstuff

squirtdad

While I am still firm in my theory that it will take economic pressure to move people out of cars and into bikes at a partial level (and with increasing competition for oil (think India and China domestic car markets) and increasing push to reduce anything that contributes to global warming, the primary place that pressure will come in will be gasoline prices) you can also look at rewards to cyclists and disencentives to to drivers.

some ideas:

Companies charge their employees a fee for parking, but reward people who walk, ride, or use mass transit. People need to remember that by no means do all companies offer their employees parking.

Cities could allow businesses to open, without minimum required parking spaces that are often required, as long as they can show they offer bicycle parking and an incentive to customers who use the parking....

illdoittomorrow

Within a 2km radius of my place, there are about a half dozen houses whose attached garages have been renovated into living space, either as part of the rest of the house or as a suite with a separate entrance. It's a big regulatory hassle to create a secondary rental suite in Calgary (unless you do it illegally ) but it can be worthwhile.

Digital_Cowboy

With the right pannier bags, and/or trailer one doesn't even need to car pool (depending on the distance) to go grocery shopping. Between my pannier bags and trailer (Yakima Big Tow) I can carry enough grocery's to last me a week or better. Of course I'm lucky enough to live within about a block or so from the grocery store that I go to all the time, which I know helps. I can (and do) walk to the store carrying my canvas bags.

Dchiefransom

This year I'm working at Parkmoor and Meridian in San Jose. Next year we might be at the Willow Glen Post Office. Here's your challenge. Get me from around Thornton Ave in Newark or Fremont to the Willow Glen Post Office by 6:30 AM on public transportation. No options allowed that have me bumped and late to work because I'm using a bike.

Wogster

It's going to be very difficult to suddenly charge for parking that has been free, especially in businesses that have trade unions, so I don't see much happening there, because every employee who drives will immediately file a grievance, and they should. Probably be easier to simply reduce the number of spaces available.

With parking for other types of business, it can be difficult, because you may get rid of the free parking, but your competitor will then simply advertise that they have free parking, for businesses that are in predominantly car oriented areas, this would be a death blow. Especially if they are not well serviced by transit. I know of 2 malls that have subway stations, and their parking lots are still packed from 8am to midnight, every day.

For business parking space requirements, the key is to gradually reduce the number required, for example if the floor area today requires 40 spaces, you change the bylaw so that it's only 35 spaces, or you modify the type of spaces. For example currently you need 40 spaces, plus 4 wheel chair spaces. You change the law so that you require 40 spaces, including 10% handicapped parking and 10% bicycle oriented parking. Effectively reducing the car spaces required to 32. This could mean a considerable amount of land currently dedicated to car parking becomes available for other things. Take a mall that currently requires 4,000 spaces plus 400 handicapped spaces, you have effectively made 760 spaces available for other uses. In the same law you state the handicapped spaces must be the closest to entrances, and that the bicycle spaces must be the next closest.

Wogster

No kidding it can be worthwhile, I think rents in cow town are just as high as here in the big smoke.... Not to say you can't rent out your garage for car parking or storage.

wahoonc

But have the capability to carry 10 times the number of people of the average car...which is quite often only occupied by a single person.

Aaron

Snowman219

So many other things would be eliminated with more bike use that it would pay for itself IMO.