Travel lanes vs parking vs active transportation

Getting back to removing travel lanes, we need to become bolder in our thinking and stop believing there’s a level playing field out there. The cities that have high rates of walking and bicycling also have conditions where driving is difficult, expensive, even painful. We cannot continue to think we can add or create walking and bicycling infrastructure while maintaining mobility for drivers and hope to see anything more than a miniscule modal shift. Rare and expensive parking is part of the needed pain for drivers, but off-street parking should be reduced before on-street parking is threatened. We should be advocating for new traffic engineering rules such as “Never have more than two lanes of traffic in each direction.” “Never require a person to cross more than three travel lanes at once.”

Michael Ronkin

Active modes of transportation -- walking and biking (among other, less common forms like, say, rollerblading) -- are an important element of moving people from place to place in urban areas. Because urban space is so constrained, this is more true than in, for example, suburban or rural areas, though those spaces could also benefit from increased biking and walking, where possible. Of course, the density in urban areas also facilitates these choices: you have to have things worth walking or biking within a reasonable distance for that.

If you've been paying attention to this stuff, you're probably aware of the increasing focus on parking, and the way it spreads out human settlements while also making it easier for people to deal with their cars. Cheap or free parking has a lot to answer for in the eyes of new urbanists, smart growth proponents, and others who love the vitality of urban areas. Are cities for cars, or are they for people?