Breaking Roads, Making Bank
2017-03-13 20:26:25.092423+00 by Dan Lyke 0 comments
“It’s common to see residential streets with low-density, single-family homes that are 40 feet wide — or wider,” explains University of California urban economist Steven Whitstanley, “when maybe 100 vehicles a day travel that route. If asphalt was distributed according to need — rather than aesthetics — most neighborhoods could get rid of half, three-quarters (or more) of their paved surfaces.”
“In many neighborhoods, residents argue that road-space is needed, especially for on-street parking,” Whitstanley continues. “But in almost every American city, we grossly overbuilt parking beginning in the 1970s.” Whitstanley points to the “parking crater” studies that started being done in the mid-2010s, showing how much area of a given metro was given over to parking. (The most famous example being Los Angeles County where more than 200 square miles were covered with parking in 2015 — around 18.6 million parking spaces, or about 3.3 spaces for each car.)