Automobility and transit or the real logic failure

One of the many things that bugs me is how people, usually in the suburbs, lament that they would use transit if only there were more parking at the stations.

A typical parking space is 8 to 10 feet wide and as much as 19 feet in length. That's 190 square feet. The amount of square footage to accommodate one subway car's capacity of say 120 people is 22,800 s.f., or slightly more than 1/2 acre. The cost to build a parking structure is significantly higher than spaces at-grade, but at-grade parking lots are a terrible waste of space.

Not to mention that it is an incredible waste of transit system money to build parking lots. Instead, they should spend money on improving transit.

Instead, there should be a focus on intra-neighborhood transit-shuttle services designed to move people to the station, promoting other sustainable land use and planning practices such as efficient use of land and compact development.

This little entry is a response to today's "Sprawl and Crawl" column in the Examiner, and the section entitled "Lacking Logic."

The logic issue is not with the transit system, but with the drivers and writers...