Is Scot downloading his phone from 2014?
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A busy coffee shop in summer on West 4th in Vancouver. Underused carpark, overused bike parking:.
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Compare to the parking lots at Kits Beach or Spanish Banks on the same summer day….
i.e. People may drive to destinations at farther distances, but they aren’t going to drive to a local coffee shop (they’d stroll or bike).
However, I do think that this lot and one across the street are the work of the Kits BIA to provide parking for the stores along West 4th Ave.
I would expect that the spaces would have been busier during the holiday shopping season when they [should] draw customers from farther afield (there have been a lot of vacancies along West 4th Ave. noted in the press in the past few years).
One alternate interpretation is that West 4th Ave. has ceased to be a retail destination drawing shoppers from farther away.
Scot is indeed (And dreaming of summer). LA Arts District coming soon…..
The number of bikes is quite remarkable with the nearest official bike route a couple of blocks away. The empty lot is a function of pricing. Curb parking is more convenient (for people that park there, less so for people that bike or even people that drive and get stuck behind someone trying to parallel park) and priced comparably to off-street. I like the policy some European cities have where on-street parking is priced at least 50% above nearby off-street spaces. That way off-street fills up first and on-street is available for short term parkers. And if there is too little demand for higher priced on-street it can be used for other purposes like bike lanes, green space, wider sidewalks or the like.
MetroVan chose to rather increase sales taxes. Parking indeed is far too cheap across MetroVan and would make an excellent source of transit funding. It would also disincent car use.
That picture makes me happy, whatever the reason of why there are so many bikes there.
On the dreary, somewhat foggy, afternoon of January 8 2015, there were 2 bikes and the car park was almost full at this location. What does this mean? Probably not much – I certainly wouldn’t conclude that the car park was over-use and the cycle parking was under-used. All the chatter about bike routes, parking costs, store vacancies, Christmas shopping, 4th Avenue as destination retail or not, etc. etc. is just that. A bunch of people made some random decisions to go to this location, by their chosen transport mode and parked. No big deal.
I actually traveled by there today and you are indeed right. I did however notice in the summer when I took this photo that there consecutive weeks that this location had an empty parking lot, hence why I took the picture. The other reason I snapped the photo was during that time the cafe was always full both inside and out and I found the empty asphalt could be put to better use with perhaps a pop up seating deck like they had at Rumpus Room on Main.
Saw this on YouTube today (courtesy of r/Vancouver) – an automated underground bike parking system in Japan – 200 bikes in what looks like about a 20 ft diameter cylinder. How much would you pay??