Quote:
Originally Posted by pegster
My contrarian urbanist* hot take is that more street parking can be good, actually. It lessens the amount of space for traffic, forcing cars to drive more cautiously, and puts a barrier between them and pedestrians (and, apparently, store fronts). It's a de facto traffic diet and benefits local businesses. Just compare Osborne and Corydon, Corydon is a much more pleasant street to walk along as a pedestrian. In fact, Osborne at night, when it has street parking on one side, also feels more pleasant. Unfortunately, poor patchwork urban planning has resulted in Osborne being a major thoroughfare, so we probably can't have all day street parking there.
*I say this as a cyclist and pedestrian who lives in the Village and doesn't own a car.
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I'm torn about what Osborne should look like.
On one hand, parking on both sides does create a buffer to the sidewalk -- and an important one because the sidewalks are relatively narrow. Especially when it's slushy or wet, the street parking keeps pedestrians from being splashed by cars driving through puddles.
But on the other, buses that go through Osborne (16, 18, 58, 60) get horribly delayed in rush hour because they sit in the same traffic as everyone else. No diamond lanes or ways for buses to take priority. You might have as many people on one single #18 bus as the total number of drivers from River to Confusion Corner, but there's no priority.
So, without traffic, buses are slower than traffic because they have to stop. And with traffic, buses are just as slow as traffic because they get caught in the same jams. It's hard to incentivize mode shift from cars to buses when the bus is unreliable, behind schedule, and never any faster than traffic.
So, if I were resdesigning Osborne, I might break the four lanes into curb lanes that alternate between rush-hour diamond lanes and non-rush-hour parking lanes (keeping car traffic to one lane in each direction at all times).
The diamond lanes would also provide better access during rush hour to emergency vehicles, which also get snarled in Osborne traffic.
This would back up traffic along Osborne, but to be honest, if buses are moving and emergency vehicles can get thorugh, I don't really care how much extra time drivers have to spend in traffic to get through OV. Traffic jams are a cost to long commutes and (at least if there are diamond lanes) an incentive for mode shift.
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