PARKING PROBLEM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 August 1938, Page 3

PARKING PROBLEM

DIFFICULTIES IN AMERICA AND ELSEWHERE. SOME STOP-GAP SOLUTIONS. New Zealand, with the second highest car population ratio in the world, has a parking problem in most of its cities and provincial towns. Stop-gap solutions of the problem in the Dominion are practically the only ones that have been attempted for this evergrowing problem. America, whose car population ratio holds first place from’ New Zealand, has of late been tackling the problem with typical frankness. Into every American city every day shoals of motor cars are driven and abandoned. Cars without drivers constitute a parking problem which daily becomes more acute, depressing and difficult to solve. The motor car, like the train and 'plane, travels far and fast, -yet has no terminal like the train, or landing-field like the aeroplane. In an article in the “Atlantic Monthly” (New York) Arthur Pound explains the threat to business which parking pressure directs towards the merchants and landlords in urban shopping districts, and urges them to unite in self-preservation.

CROWD FOR CONVENIENCE. People crowd together, he says, for convenience in adjusting their affairs; a dentist, for instance, rents an office in a skyscraper inhabited by scores of his competitors, whom he can consult by changing floors in an elevator. A women coming downtown to shop may wish to compare prices and goods in many stores of like nature. But the megapolitan urge brings with it great herds of standing automobiles which defeat the benefits of congestion and make decentralisation preferable. None of our cities was designed for motor traffic. Chicago’s Loop, for example, built great retail stores because street cars were the favourite means of transport and all lines reached the Loop. Land values soared. The city based its budget on the favoured blocks. Then habits changed and the Loop began to lose trade because people could not get into the stores. Parked cars were in the way.

How many? In the whole Loop the curbs accommodated only 1,100; at best only 8.800 a day. All sorts of compromises were tried. A “no parking” rule was slapped on. Demand for offcurb parking space saw condemned buildings torn down for the space on their lots. Tax-enforced clearance became the vogue. Competitors parked cars on the roofs of their stores, in their basements, built parking decks and garages.

RISK STILL HIGH. Even today the risk is high. If garages must be built, apparently a combination of monopoly, to decrease risk, and municipal supervision, to decrease charges, is needed. A Parking Authority set up by each city would encourage the construction of motor terminals by reducing the tax burden for a number of years on certain sites of public utility in connection with parking. Capital would be bought at low rates for construction. Stop-gap solutions are those of Allen Brett, Detroiter, who has fought motor car confusion for ten years. Brett tried the tiered deck without walls which Boston and Pittsburgh now find useful. Parking meters, charging, for parking on a time basis, are also stop-gaps, and in some States an illegal exercise of the taxing power. Ultimate solution is the proposal to establish interior parking lines for future buildings, to' take cars of the parking demand created by each new building so that the building will not be obsolete before it is put up. Exterior building lines regulate street and sidewalk space everywhere. The interiors of blocks wil be surveyed for this purpose and all the service departments for the structures will be placed underground. The space left open is an interior large enough to accommodate the automobiles of tenants and also provide for off-the-street loading and unloading of both customers and goods. Creation of double frontage, with relation to light, air and merchandising more than offsets in rental value the loss of enclosed space. The Marquery and “277 Park” apartment hotels in New York City are such buildings, and are now in operation.