How Yosemite Does Parking

Click for Credit: LA Times Story

From the article:

• 6500 parking spaces
• Staging areas outside the park are impractical, even un-American
• Car driving is free-choice, buses are socialism - Board of Supervisors
• Each year tourists bring $686 Million to Yosemite Valley
• Car entry fee $30
• Park's latest pilot plan:  150 parking spaces available for $1.50 on-line fee
• Laguna gets 6 million visitors per year (Visitors Bureau)
• Yosemite has a million to go

Clearly Yosemite needs more parking, like a parking garage. Mebbe eight? Decades ago the Yosemite Valley Railroad served the valley with passenger trains, restoration of the rail is politically unpopular and financially challenged, but you can still trace the old railbed by car.
     
UPDATE:  10/23/17 Car entry fees are expected to double, $70 per vehicle will pay for bathrooms, parking lots and road construction. Building more car infrastructure draws more cars, what better example than Yosemite.      -LS

Ohio Capitol Does the Unthinkable

Columbus Ohio doesn't have a rail system and they aren't building 8 parking structures. Instead they are buying bus passes for 43,000 workers. 

Click for CITYLAB story

• Office rents tumble, vacancies up, business blame insufficient parking, sound familiar?
• Building parking structures is cost prohibitive and futile
• Developers, property owners, employers, and cities subsidize actual parking costs
• Parking Requirements tie cars to job access
• Building owners pay for Free-Pass instead of Parking Requirements
• Pilot Free-Pass program doubled ridership, frees- up parking
• Laguna Beach Live/Work take note 

-LS

Laguna Beach Land Use Plan

Photos in order: the amount of land consumed in San Francisco for

• pavement
• parked cars
• transit
• bikes

Should Laguna Beach adopt the SF plan?  How about that Oklahoma plan?        -LS

Credit: Matthew Lewis, Twitter

Here's Oklahoma City,  pavement and sidewalks.

CicLAvia San Pedro to Wilmington Sunday

 Think of CicLAvia as a public education tool to build bike modeshare. 

What did Artwalk do for Laguna pedestrian awareness?  Think CicLBvia.   -LS

Total Solar Eclipse August 21

Path of Largest Flash-Mob and traffic jam in US history?

Path of solar eclipse August 21 2017

Eight More Parking Structures

Despite objections from ten civic group leaders representing resident's interests, the Laguna Beach City Council last night voted unanimously to approve the latest plans for not one, but EIGHT parking garages for downtown Laguna Beach. One of the eight serve as peripheral parking.  See plan drawings attached to the agenda bill here.

So much for civic participation in Laguna Beach.           -LS

The Choice for Laguna Beach

Via Garibaldi, Torino Italy, Before and After

Today car-free other than very sparse local traffic, this street encompasses old fashioned shops and more modern chains. What was once dominated by the automobile, polluted and scary, the Garibaldi neighborhood has become an attractive colony of artists and artisians that keep it alive. Fancy that.

-LS

How to Make Traffic Disappear

Amazon (www.Audiable.com) says "motorist coordination is the problem, not the number of cars". Amazon proposes the simple solution to traffic congestion is to remove the motorist, notice how the Amazon success criteria is not better mobility for people, but rather "car throughput" - a measure for moving more cars.

Video #1 The Amazon simple solution to eliminate traffic congestion.

1. poor driver coordination causes traffic snakes and traffic jams
2. traffic congestion is solved by removing the driver, automate the car
3. reduce the space between cars and driving faster increases throughput

Consider the how the Amazon automated car will improve people mobility in the following videos.

Video #2 Saigon, Vietnam

Video #3 Skopje, Macedonia

Video #4 Nasr City (Cairo), Egypt

Video #5 Worst 10 Car Traffic Jams in World

In this next video consider that no traffic controls nor automation is used at all. 
Video #6 Meskel Square, Addis Abeba

To understand the mobility bias at Amazon, take the mobility poll at the right and measure yours.       -LS

What is Laguna's Vision?

Add your priorities in Comments below. No (car-centric) Caltrans is not in the top 10.        -LS

Mayor Decrees User-Friendly Roadway

Click to Enlarge

The roadway on the right follows the Siene River in Paris France, the roadway on the left passes under SR-133 Laguna Canyon Road. By decree from the mayor of Paris (Paris May Goes Car-Free) the Siene roadway shall be redesigned as User-Friendly, the Laguna roadway remains undeclared.                        -LS