02-11-2015, 12:40 PM
(02-11-2015, 10:34 AM)MidTowner Wrote: Partly because driving is so expensive, more people opt not to and have supported the development of great transit, and the ability to leave closer to amenities.
You got it backwards. European cities have been walkable since before the car was invented. You can make parking as expensive as you want, I'm still driving for groceries in Canada, since it is so far away. Open a Metro store within walking distance and I'm trekking there even if parking is free.
My roommate a while back moved from Europe here at age 30. Never had a car, barely had a drivers license. After several weeks of waiting on the cold (with many others) for a scheduled bus 5 that never materialized and goes by every 40 minutes and then getting a job offer in an office park that is not served by buses he caved in an bought a used car.
Then you come and say: oh if only parking were more expensive he wouldn't have done so.
This is the reality that most people confront with current zoning in KW. A car is a necessity not a luxury. Let's fix the zoning first, let's make the bus goes by more frequently than that, and people will switch.
The number of people waiting at my local bus stop went up by a factor of 3-7x since the iXpress 202 was introduced. This is the way you get people into public transit: provide viable alternatives.