The path to our sustainable future

Green parking decks surely ain't it.

The seven-level, $40 million deck, which opened at the beginning of the year, is not just green philosophically. It’s green, literally.

The garage’s three entrances feature “green walls,” tufts of vertically growing euonymus shrubs kept vibrant by a built-in drip-irrigation system.

The walls help to reduce “reflexive heat, the warmth that bounces off buildings,” Willis said.

And although its specific sustainability benefits aren’t great, acknowledged Paul Manning, director of project management, “it softens the whole feeling of a parking garage and it does have an aesthetic benefit. It’s a lot better than a big neon sign saying ‘entrance.’”

Continue reading The path to our sustainable future

Parking

I confess - i love reading the rose-tinted Facebook posts originating from the group calling itself the Durham-Orange Friends of Transit, or DO Transit for short. I wish they'd be a little more specific about who, exactly, they are beyond "an alliance of local organizations, civic leaders and citizens who support regional transit for the Triangle," since no actual individuals or organizations are listed as being members of the group, only signatories of their petitions.

But that's a minor quibble.

Here's their utopian post from this past Saturday:

Through smart land use, the Triangle can give residents the option of driving less -- a direct way to stem the demand for offshore and foreign oil. For example, parking eats up space, reduces walkability, and adds an incentive to drive. In certain areas such as downtown Durham, Chapel Hill and Carrboro we can plan for ...parking areas to be redeveloped in the future, when other transportation options arrive such as the Bull City Connector.

I love that. We can plan for parking areas to be redeveloped in the future.

Parking areas like this one, which we're building right fucking now with tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money which could be spent on, oh i don't know, rolling stock, or tracks for a future street car system.

Seriously, this is the 4th parking deck being built in the ballpark area in the past 10 years or so. Add another one for West Village, and maybe there's one or two more that i've forgotten or missed. I'm too lazy to do the math, but how much bond money have we committed to downtown parking decks over the past decade? Surely one of our elected officials who is a member of DO Transit can tell us? After all, we're going to be redeveloping them with additional tax dollars in the future, right?

Continue reading Parking

Things I learned today

There is a show on A&E called Parking Wars.

The people you love to hate - the men and women of the Philadelphia Parking Authority - are back, ticketing, booting and towing the cars of problem parkers who express their outrage in furious Philly fashion.

Fortunately, no need for a parking authority in Durham.

Continue reading Things I learned today

What's wrong with this picture?

Herald-Sun:

Big events like the July 4 fireworks show and tonight's Bob Dylan concert could wind up giving the city a big black eye if officials can't figure out how to empty downtown's parking decks more quickly afterward, elected officials say.

City Council members Eugene Brown and Diane Catotti complained about the pace of departures from the decks beside the American Tobacco complex shortly after the fireworks show, saying it took 45 minutes to an hour for traffic to clear.


. . .

Brown and Catotti said the July 4 problems affected the so-called "north" deck - the city owned parking structure along West Pettigrew Street - and to their eye came in part because attendants were only letting people make a right onto Pettigrew from the single exit that was open.

Catotti - who said she needed about 40 minutes to get out of the deck despite being parked only one level up - added that a gate arm that dropped between every exiting car helped slow the process.

Lanier officials said the single-exit, right-turn-only arrangement on July 4 complied with the Durham Police Department's specifications.

Most cars had exited the north deck by about 11 p.m., following the fireworks' conclusion at about 9:45 p.m., Joe Vallejos, a Lanier senior project manager, said in an e-mail to city officials. He added that the company would do whatever police and other city officials tell it to.

Police were happy with the July 4 traffic flow.

Central District Capt. Loretta Clyburn told her higher-ups that it took only about 35 minutes to clear the area around the American Tobacco complex, and that the worst jams lasted only about 15 minutes.

"I consider this a great success considering there were about 10,000 people in the area for this event," she added in a July 8 message to Deputy Police Chief Beverly Council.

The deputy chief agreed, and noted that there's another factor aside from speed to consider. "Moving 10,000 people without any accidents is awesome," Council told Bonfield, also on July 8.

Because getting 10,000 people to come to Durham, spend their evening in the parking deck, and leave without any accidents, is exactly what we need to boost downtown, isn't it? Wouldn't want any of those visitors spending any time walking around downtown and visiting our awesome restaurants and cultural facilities, would we?

I'll be at the Dylan show tonight. And i won't be parking anywhere near a parking deck.

Continue reading What's wrong with this picture?

Parking deck goodness

BBC:

A section of a car park has reportedly collapsed near the centre of Atlanta city in the US state of Georgia.

TV footage showed that part of at least one floor had fallen onto the level below, crushing cars.

Witnesses told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper that four floors of the deck had collapsed, but that the overall structure remained.

It is not known if anyone was hurt. The car park is near the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Let's hope everyone's OK. Let's also hope that Durham has fixed its own parking deck problems.

Continue reading Parking deck goodness

Cars

I'm too busy at the day job to post much this week.

But this is worth the read:

Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community. Car ownership is allowed, but there are only two places to park — large garages at the edge of the development, where a car-owner buys a space, for $40,000, along with a home.

As a result, 70 percent of Vauban’s families do not own cars, and 57 percent sold a car to move here. “When I had a car I was always tense. I’m much happier this way,” said Heidrun Walter, a media trainer and mother of two, as she walked verdant streets where the swish of bicycles and the chatter of wandering children drown out the occasional distant motor.

Vauban, completed in 2006, is an example of a growing trend in Europe, the United States and elsewhere to separate suburban life from auto use, as a component of a movement called “smart planning.”

Automobiles are the linchpin of suburbs, where middle-class families from Chicago to Shanghai tend to make their homes. And that, experts say, is a huge impediment to current efforts to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes, and thus to reduce global warming. Passenger cars are responsible for 12 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe — a proportion that is growing, according to the European Environment Agency — and up to 50 percent in some car-intensive areas in the United States.

Durham remains on the wrong end of the trend, requiring huge parking garages for every new or redeveloped building downtown, and giving virtually no thought to integrating pedestrian friendly features into road construction anywhere but the very heart of downtown.

Oh well.

Continue reading Cars

Didn't see that coming

We need more parking decks in Durham!

New research illustrates the health benefits of regular biking, walking or taking public transportation to work, school or shopping. Researchers found a link between "active transportation" and less obesity in 17 industrialized countries across Europe, North America and Australia.

"Countries with the highest levels of active transportation generally had the lowest obesity rates," authors David Bassett of the University of Tennessee and John Pucher of Rutgers University conclude.

Americans, with the highest rate of obesity, were the least likely to walk, cycle or take mass transit, according to the study in a recent issue of the Journal of Physical Activity and Health. The study relied on each country's own travel and health data.

Only 12 percent use active transportation in the United States — 9 percent walk, 1 percent ride a bike and 2 percent take a bus or train — while a quarter to a third are obese, the study said.

Continue reading Didn't see that coming

Parking question

I just noted this in the comments, but i thought i'd ask it out loud. Any of you city government folks reading this know why the north side of Dillard Street (especially between Roxboro and Mangum) isn't signed for on-street parking during theater events the way it is for ballpark events? Hell, any reason why it isn't signed for on-street parking all the time? It's certainly wide enough. And you're giving up at least 6 more on-street spaces at the Dillard/Roxboro intersection on the south side as well, that could be reclaimed just by repainting.

Continue reading Parking question

Parking discussion

Kevin and Gary have posts up about the possible closing of Seminary St. by the downtown Y for conversion to a surface parking lot. Right now, i'm trying to revisit my thoughts yesterday to determine whether or not the sentence "The Y also recommends adding family/youth locker rooms to the downtown facility (a widely-cited need) and trying to close Seminary St. with the City's blessing in order to add more parking capacity for the facility." should be interpreted to mean that the Y is seeking the "City's blessing" to close Seminary St., or whether the City has already given its blessing to closing the street.

My problem is with the hodgepodge of conflicting city policies and initiatives, of bike plans, pedestrian plans, new bus hubs, and rhetoric which all seem to say "Onward into the less car dependent future," and construction projects and actual decision making which in fact does just the opposite. Anybody from city government want to chime in and tell us definitively whether or not the city has given its "blessing" to closing Seminary St.? And while you're here, maybe you can talk about how the city intends to actually, you know, implement these fine plans and initiatives it's spent so much money creating over the past few years?

UPDATE: In comments over at Kevin's, Councilperson Mike Woodard flat out stated: "The City has not "blessed" a proposal to close Seminary Street."

That's good to hear. Hopefully, that will remain the case.

Continue reading Parking discussion

Downtown parking

So i'm reading the coverage of the Lakewood Y community meeting last night in the Herald Sun and over at Kevin's place. This is another one of those issues that i don't have a personal stake in. My experience with the Y over the years has been decidedly mixed. But i have a great deal of respect for the community members who are doing everything they can to convince the folks in Raleigh that the undersized facility in their part of town is worth saving. That they're having an impact on the process is a decidedly Durham thing.

But this post isn't about that.

Here's a quote from Kevin's piece that got my attention:

The Y also recommends adding family/youth locker rooms to the downtown facility (a widely-cited need) and trying to close Seminary St. with the City's blessing in order to add more parking capacity for the facility.

(emphasis added)

That's actually a throwaway line about parking. Kevin's main point is that the Y is committed to expansion, just not necessarily in the right places.

But the parking issue is a key one, at least for me. The city has some pretty misguided policies when it comes to parking. At a time when major cities are limiting the availability of free or cheap parking in their downtowns, as a means of encouraging people to get out of their cars, Durham is building parking decks and garages all over the place. Some cities have zoning laws that limit the number of parking spaces for new, urban development and redevelopment. In Durham, we have minimum parking requirements. We have pedestrian plans, we have bike plans, we have underutilized transit systems, we have new transit hubs being discussed and built and argued over. But when the rubber hits the road, what we end up with is more and more parking spaces.

Of course, what will inevitably follow is the dreaded "traffic congestion" caused by too many cars on our urban streets. And that will end up being accompanied by calls for wider streets, more turn lanes, and an infrastructure that is increasingly hostile to forms of transportation that are not automobile-centric.

More parking isn't the solution to every damn downtown problem, and it's time that all the different facets of Durham's disparate decision making authorities got on the same page with that.

Continue reading Downtown parking