No parking minimum requirements, most places in the US have minimum parking requirements for both residential and commercial construction which not only makes construction unnecessarily expensive but also ensures that the built outcome functionally serves cars more than people.
You can also simply cap the allowable number of driveways per distance on a street. New construction can either join with an existing driveway, put their driveway on another side of the block, or simply not have a driveway.
Municipalities can designate specific areas for parking: Commercial districts can ban on-street parking completely and have a low-cost municipal parking garage in a business district. You can also cap the number of parking lots per block and mandate that any commercial property on the block have access to that lot instead of having a constellation of business-exclusive lots.
As for the visibility complaint, standard guidance is to ensure that the car is completely perpendicular to the bike lane by the time it’s crossing, so that the driver can clearly see both left and right down the lane before they cross it. You do this by setting the driveway a car length off of the road, which can be achieved a bunch of different ways. The way it’s set up now, it’s like putting a right turn lane on the left side of a highway. And they’d also put signage at a crossing like this.
Ofc all the buildings pictured were built before that was the case and before there was a protected bike lane. What you mentioned is all good policy but mostly focused on building from scratch.
How would an existing streetscape be handled? Would existing driveways actually be seized by eminant domain?
I don’t understand the complaint about driveway frequency. How would the Netherlands handle that?
No parking minimum requirements, most places in the US have minimum parking requirements for both residential and commercial construction which not only makes construction unnecessarily expensive but also ensures that the built outcome functionally serves cars more than people.
You can also simply cap the allowable number of driveways per distance on a street. New construction can either join with an existing driveway, put their driveway on another side of the block, or simply not have a driveway.
Municipalities can designate specific areas for parking: Commercial districts can ban on-street parking completely and have a low-cost municipal parking garage in a business district. You can also cap the number of parking lots per block and mandate that any commercial property on the block have access to that lot instead of having a constellation of business-exclusive lots.
As for the visibility complaint, standard guidance is to ensure that the car is completely perpendicular to the bike lane by the time it’s crossing, so that the driver can clearly see both left and right down the lane before they cross it. You do this by setting the driveway a car length off of the road, which can be achieved a bunch of different ways. The way it’s set up now, it’s like putting a right turn lane on the left side of a highway. And they’d also put signage at a crossing like this.
Somerville does not have parking minimums.
Ofc all the buildings pictured were built before that was the case and before there was a protected bike lane. What you mentioned is all good policy but mostly focused on building from scratch.
How would an existing streetscape be handled? Would existing driveways actually be seized by eminant domain?
Establishing maximum parking spots per occupancy does seem like a good idea (say 1 car parking spot for every 4 people).
If the owner doesn’t block the parking spots (eg planting trees or building housing in their place), fining them would make sense.