GRA
Well-known member
https://www.autoblog.com/2019/08/12/minneapolis-drive-thru/
Obviously believers in "Complete Streets" measures.
Obviously believers in "Complete Streets" measures.
ABG: Minneapolis City Council votes to kill any new drive-thrus Hoping to make the city safer, quieter, and cleaner
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GRA
Well-known member
Drive-throughs present issues not just of air pollution as cars idle in line, but also of danger to pedestrians and cyclists when cars cross the sidewalk and/or bike lane (often with food in hand on the way out). "Complete Streets" programs aim to make public thoroughfares safe for everyone, rather than emphasizing cars and forcing everyone else to get out of their way.
As a pdedestrian/cyclist who dodges death or injury on at least a monthly basis when somebody cruises from/to the street across a sidewalk without slowing or looking for anything other than cars, I'm a big fan of limiting curb cuts to the maximum extent possible, and the typical drive through requires two cuts instead of one, doubling my chances of being hit.
Ideally, you also reduce the required number of parking spaces per site (best is if you eliminate parking minimums from zoning regs entirely), and instead consolidate the parking into one site serving several locations, which not only frees up real estate for more valuable purposes, but also gets people out of their cars and walking more, which not only improves public health but can also, if the intervening business frontages are interesting, increase sales as people walk past those other businesses on their way to or from their intended destination.
For more, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_streets and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartCode
As a pdedestrian/cyclist who dodges death or injury on at least a monthly basis when somebody cruises from/to the street across a sidewalk without slowing or looking for anything other than cars, I'm a big fan of limiting curb cuts to the maximum extent possible, and the typical drive through requires two cuts instead of one, doubling my chances of being hit.
Ideally, you also reduce the required number of parking spaces per site (best is if you eliminate parking minimums from zoning regs entirely), and instead consolidate the parking into one site serving several locations, which not only frees up real estate for more valuable purposes, but also gets people out of their cars and walking more, which not only improves public health but can also, if the intervening business frontages are interesting, increase sales as people walk past those other businesses on their way to or from their intended destination.
For more, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_streets and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartCode
More like a socialist place :roll:Oilpan4 said:
IMO Minneapolis should worry more about what seem like daily murders(I'm not sure how they are counted but we watch the local news almost every night, and almost every night they seem to be talking about another murder, mostly in Minneapolis and sometimes in sister city St. Paul and after a murder free newscast it seems like the next night is a doubleheader, at least near-fatal gunshots if not an actual murders).
Anyway I have to laugh when some brain dead new urban fool comes up with an idea like this, and it gets through! I use ZERO gas when idling, zero gas in stopped traffic, many new cars, even ICEs are starting to employ start/stop technology so the whole, burn up tons of gas waiting in the drive-thru line is bogus IMO. Besides most cars(properly tuned ones anyway) use little gas stopped, more in stop and go traffic. Face it, cities and businesses all want your money but very few want your cars, most new developments in my area have woefully too little parking spaces and the ones they have are getting narrower and narrower. The misguided city officials think making parking in short supply or miserable will promote people to walk, well let me tell you IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN! People love their cars and if they can't find a spot they'll just circle around the parking lots or blocks(burning gas.....) until they can find a place for their large SUV or pickup, generally carrying one person :roll:
Listen, I drive a small efficient car, rarely use drive-thrus(I prefer to actually bank in person or order my fast food at the counter where I can see the menu or ask questions) but I'm not the norm, most Starbucks, Caribous, Mc Donalds, etc. that have drive-ups frequently have 3-10 cars in line, because people like it and it's convenient for them. I don't live in Minneapolis proper but if I did I'd seriously think of voting out the yahoo's that voted for such a law and pray they were businesses owners trying to make a living selling their goods only to be hassled by a group of city officials trying to make the world a better place.....lots of other ways to accomplish that. Oh and Minneapolis is the same city that recently voted(and passed) a measure to rename several lakes and streets because apparently back in the time of slavery(yes we actually had such a time.....) the people who the lakes and roads were named after, owned slaves. Now I'm not condoning slavery but if your going to hold people today accountable for things that were the norm a hundred years ago, well this whole PC thing is getting way out of control.......steps off soap box
GRA
Well-known member
jjeff said:
As the saying goes for TV news, "If it bleeds, it leads". Judging how safe a community is by the stories that get the most play on TV isn't advisable. If that method were accurate, you'd have to assume that violent crime was up massively across the country, instead of being way down compared to say the '80s and '90s. The difference is 24 hour cable news channels with time to fill and viewers to compete for, which also drives the local broadcast stations' coverage.
jjeff said:
As of yet, plugs-ins and hybrids make up only a small fraction of the deployed fleet worldwide and in the U.S., and the pollution when idling (and in stop and go) is generated in the most heavily populated areas.
jjeff said:
Actually, some people love their cars, but most hate commuting and looking for parking, and many have trouble paying for a car. For the past 90 years or so, we have designed cities to suit cars rather than people. As long as most people were comfortable with that or at least willing to accept it, everything was fine (well, not if you lived in a minority urban neighborhood that had a freeway plowed though it during the height of the freeway boom, not only destroying the neighborhood but also a lot of housing). Increasingly, especially among creative millennials that's no longer the case, and many of them are perfectly happy to do without a car (but not a smart phone), which is why the % of teens/younger adults with driver's licenses is at something like a 50 or 60 year low (ex. https://www.inquirer.com/philly/hea...-getting-their-drivers-licenses-20180628.html). It's also why cities that have provided walk/bike facilities along with good transit are attracting them to live and work there, and why these same cities (e.g. New York, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Boulder etc.) are doing better economically than those that don't offer such amenities. It's also why some cities are freeing developers from parking minimums and allowing them to provide as many or as few parking spaces as they wish, especially in affordable housing. This allows rents to be lower, while charging only those people who own a car with the cost of storing same, which is the way it should be, don't you think?
Re circling for parking, the problem is that most parking, especially on-street parking is either free or radically under-priced. Pricing it properly, even varying it in real time as cities like S.F. are now trialing eliminates most of that circling and gas wasting and the resulting congestion and pollution while also freeing up parking spaces, increasing turnover and boosting merchant sales, which was the whole reason parking meters were installed in the first place. Smartphone apps that show you where parking is available and allow you to reserve a spot are also being deployed in some areas.
If you want to see just how things work, the mother lode is "The High Cost of Free Parking" (2005) by Donald Shoup, who's a professor at UCLA and has been studying the issue for several decades. In one of his studies conducted by his grad students, they monitored a block around UCLA during either 12-1:00 or 1-2 p.m. (forget which), and found that 96% of all the car mileage during that time was from people circling the block looking for a parking space. Shoup recommends, and most cities who've followed his recommendations aim to price parking to achieve an 85% occupancy rate (S.F. aims for 80% for reasons that are unclear to me), which in the typical block means that there'll normally be one or two open spaces at any given time. Pricing parking at market rates is about as far from socialist as you can get,and if you really want to get people on board, establish parking benefit districts where the money collected there goes into improving the district (paving, cleaning, sidewalks, trees, benches, lights, art etc.) to make it more attractive, rather than just disappearing into the city's general fund.
jjeff said:Listen, I drive a small efficient car, rarely use drive-thrus(I prefer to actually bank in person or order my fast food at the counter where I can see the menu or ask questions) but I'm not the norm, most Starbucks, Caribous, Mc Donalds, etc. that have drive-ups frequently have 3-10 cars in line, because people like it and it's convenient for them. I don't live in Minneapolis proper but if I did I'd seriously think of voting out the yahoo's that voted for such a law and pray they were businesses owners trying to make a living selling their goods only to be hassled by a group of city officials trying to make the world a better place.....lots of other ways to accomplish that. Oh and Minneapolis is the same city that recently voted(and passed) a measure to rename several lakes and streets because apparently back in the time of slavery(yes we actually had such a time.....) the people who the lakes and roads were named after, owned slaves. Now I'm not condoning slavery but if your going to hold people today accountable for things that were the norm a hundred years ago, well this whole PC thing is getting way out of control.......steps off soap box
I hope you're feeling much better now :lol: Seriously, yes, there are people who don't want to get out of their cars for any reason, and it'd be silly to suggest that everyone will love the change. When talking about the obesity epidemic in the U.S. in his book "Walkable City," Jeff Speck (an urban planner and member of the Congress for a New Urbanism, so exactly the kind of "socialist" you're ranting about, although the way most cities are now is due to an earlier generation of equally "socialist" planners who emphasized serving the car uber alles) points out that correlation doesn't prove causation, and it's possible that rather than car-dependent suburbs making fat people, fat people make car-dependent suburbs. That being said, there is no doubt whatsoever of the causative link between the decreased physical activity of Americans of all ages over the past 50 years or so, and the rates of obesity and related health issues. See "Urban Sprawl and Public Health"(2005, Frumkin, Howard; Frank, Lawrence and Jackson, Richard): https://www.amazon.com/Urban-Sprawl-Public-Health-Communities/dp/1559633050
Or if you'd prefer to read a earlier (2002) and shorter (12 pgs) academic paper by Frumkin which was later expanded into the book by including a lot more data and detail, here: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8e5f/c4b34a20cfea33061313de1c9568342f4855.pdf
I've read all of the above as well as several others on the same and related subjects, and have also been involved just as an ordinary resident with my own city's pedestrian and bike plan that is part of the master plan. Thankfully, as with many Bay Area cities we've opted for a New Urbanist/Smart Growth plan going forward, with the concurrence/support of most of the population.