05-03-2018, 06:22 PM
(05-03-2018, 05:49 PM)ijmorlan Wrote:(05-03-2018, 02:32 PM)creative Wrote: So if all parking spaces are not filled 100% all of the time then we have too much parking? Can we also say then that if I rarely see bike lanes being used that we have too many bike lanes? I never called you names as you so implied or said anything negative regarding your bike lane suggestion. I park in that location if a spot happens to be available when I am going DTK.
No, but if the minimum parking bylaw requires so much parking to be built that even at peak times there are empty spots available at no charge, then there is way too much parking. Imagine if for some reason (maybe a government edict) grocery stores baked so much bread they couldn’t give it all away, even when the store was busy. By any reasonable definition, there would be too much bread. Same deal for parking. Many suburban locations never run out of parking, even though it is free and even at peak times. This is often because the property owners are required to build such a grossly excessive amount of parking.
In theory, a bike lane could be so underused that it is not justified, but in practice the tiny additional cost of a road with a bike lane compared to a road without a bike lane makes that pretty much a theoretical concern. Also, similar to transit lanes, a bike lane can be helping a lot of people without appearing busy. Say one bicycle per minute uses the bike lane during a 2-hour period in the morning and again in the afternoon. Then it’s helping 60 people an hour or 240 people each day. But it will look pretty much empty; if you stand and watch you will occasionally see somebody bicycle by. Now rip it out and install parking spots, and 30 people come and park all day. 30 drivers have been helped, at the cost of putting 240 bicyclists in danger (well, maybe 120 bicyclists using the lanes twice). But the lane will look much more used when it’s full of cars. Similarly, the LRT tracks running through the city look vacant now, which is obvious because the system is not yet open. But even if the system is insanely popular and we have to increase to a pair of LRVs every 2 minutes in each direction, the tracks will still seem quiet and underused because they will just sit there for two minutes and then one train will come through. But if that were to happen they would be moving more people than any road in the city, including the expressway.
I love the bread example, because my favourite bread/traffic related analogy is that traffic congestion is equivalent to soviet bread lines. Same concept, same issue, different supply/demand.