A subcompact takes up exactly the same “one parking space” as a truck
Yes, short term that is absolutely correct. What the other person meant makes more sense long term.
When parking lots are built, or design specifications are layed out, the size of cars in use is taken into account. If average car size increases, average parking lot size follows. Just recently I heard that parking lot size has to increase due to the increase in car sizes, driven by SUV popularity.
There are also parking situations where there are no discrete parking spaces, but one continuous space to park, for example along a street. In these situations, bigger cars directly translate to more space being occupied.
Who cares if the parking spaces are 8x18 or 10x20 or whatever? That doesn’t matter. What matters is dipshits continuing to insist on building fifty of them when they ought to be building zero!
Switching fifty people from driving big trucks to driving small cars does nothing but chip around the edges of the problem because they’re still fucking driving. That means, for example, you’re still building suburban-style strip malls for them when you should be building walkable main streets instead.
The issue here is that we need to switch (back) to an entirely different style of urban development, and the size of cars does precisely fuck-all to help with that!
Switching fifty people from driving big trucks to driving small cars does nothing but chip around the edges of the problem because they’re still fucking driving. That means, for example, you’re still building suburban-style strip malls for them when you should be building walkable main streets instead.
The issue here is that we need to switch (back) to an entirely different style of urban development, and the size of cars does precisely fuck-all to help with that!
Very true, you have the correct long-term vision. If we compare the two “strategies” (smaller cars vs urban design), the latter clearly has the bigger impact, big time.
But it’s also more costly to reach. It requires much more time, more political effort, infrastructure changes, …
Opting for smaller cars has none of these strings attached. And they aren’t mutually exclusive.
It requires different strategies that efforts toward smaller cars (or electric cars, or autonomous cars, for that matter) do not contribute to and could in fact distract or detract from.
After all, folks might think “why keep trying to make me change my car centric lifestyle when we’ve ‘already solved’ the pedestrian safety problem (or the environmental problem or whatever),” not realizing there are so many more interconnected problems that only a change in development patterns can address.
Yes, short term that is absolutely correct. What the other person meant makes more sense long term.
When parking lots are built, or design specifications are layed out, the size of cars in use is taken into account. If average car size increases, average parking lot size follows. Just recently I heard that parking lot size has to increase due to the increase in car sizes, driven by SUV popularity.
There are also parking situations where there are no discrete parking spaces, but one continuous space to park, for example along a street. In these situations, bigger cars directly translate to more space being occupied.
Who cares if the parking spaces are 8x18 or 10x20 or whatever? That doesn’t matter. What matters is dipshits continuing to insist on building fifty of them when they ought to be building zero!
Switching fifty people from driving big trucks to driving small cars does nothing but chip around the edges of the problem because they’re still fucking driving. That means, for example, you’re still building suburban-style strip malls for them when you should be building walkable main streets instead.
The issue here is that we need to switch (back) to an entirely different style of urban development, and the size of cars does precisely fuck-all to help with that!
Very true, you have the correct long-term vision. If we compare the two “strategies” (smaller cars vs urban design), the latter clearly has the bigger impact, big time.
But it’s also more costly to reach. It requires much more time, more political effort, infrastructure changes, …
Opting for smaller cars has none of these strings attached. And they aren’t mutually exclusive.
It requires different strategies that efforts toward smaller cars (or electric cars, or autonomous cars, for that matter) do not contribute to and could in fact distract or detract from.
After all, folks might think “why keep trying to make me change my car centric lifestyle when we’ve ‘already solved’ the pedestrian safety problem (or the environmental problem or whatever),” not realizing there are so many more interconnected problems that only a change in development patterns can address.