Rogue Coder Turned a Parking Spot into a Coworking Space (vice.com) 432
An anonymous reader shares a report: It looked like yet another weird symptom of San Francisco tech culture: a cluster of people sitting on the side of a road, working at desks placed within the boundaries of a parking space. But WePark -- a project led by San Francisco-based web developer Victor Pontis -- was actually a manifestation of an idea that has become more popular in the last few years: Cities use space inefficiently and prioritize cars over people. The people at the desks were attempting to reclaim a sliver of space for human use. "Car parking squanders space that can be used for the public good -- bike lanes, larger sidewalks, retail, cafes, more housing," Pontis said. "Let's use city streets for people, not cars."
(There are also WePark franchises in France as well as Santa Monica.) Pontis said he got the idea from a Twitter exchange in which Github's Devon Zuegel pointed out that eight bicycles could fit in one park spot instead of a car. Urbanist Annie Fryman, responded, suggesting that the metered parking spot be used as a coworking space instead. Pontis turned that hypothetical into a reality, choosing popular real estate like Santa Monica's Ocean Avenue. The set-up was simple: he paid for a day's worth of parking meter, then charged users people per hour. He said 30 people showed up on the first day in the three cities, paying the $2.25 per hour fee that WePark charged for a spot at a parking lot desk. (Paying for a desk at a regular coworking space, like WeWork is approximately $50 per day plus a monthly membership fee.)
(There are also WePark franchises in France as well as Santa Monica.) Pontis said he got the idea from a Twitter exchange in which Github's Devon Zuegel pointed out that eight bicycles could fit in one park spot instead of a car. Urbanist Annie Fryman, responded, suggesting that the metered parking spot be used as a coworking space instead. Pontis turned that hypothetical into a reality, choosing popular real estate like Santa Monica's Ocean Avenue. The set-up was simple: he paid for a day's worth of parking meter, then charged users people per hour. He said 30 people showed up on the first day in the three cities, paying the $2.25 per hour fee that WePark charged for a spot at a parking lot desk. (Paying for a desk at a regular coworking space, like WeWork is approximately $50 per day plus a monthly membership fee.)
Ah the exhaust (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ah the exhaust (Score:5, Funny)
Don't worry, on at least a few days the rain will clear up the air.
Re:Ah the exhaust (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry this idea is idiotic. What is a very common problem in most cities? Parking. Sorry Mass transit doesn't work for everybody. Many still have to drive unless they want to spend hours making the same commute that takes them 30 min or less to drive. So we need parking spaces at or near our work sites.
Maybe once full autonomous vehicles begin to dominate the roads then we can just send the car home or to play taxi until we are ready. Or we just summon a car when needed with no ownership. Then we can most likely reduce the amount of space dedicated to parking.
Further I don't know about others, but I prefer protection from the elements and traffic that you are not going to get in a parking space. Power, network, restrooms, etc are also nice features of a work space versus a parking space.
Re:Ah the exhaust (Score:5, Informative)
And come next fall/winter Snow will help to dampen the sounds of traffic.
Snow? In San Francisco?
SF is one of the few places where working outside is generally pleasant for most of the year.
Sorry this idea is idiotic.
Yes, of course it is idiotic, but the point is symbolic protest, rather than practical problem solving.
It helps when you are protesting something completely intractable and ambiguous, like "cars vs people", so you never have worry about your protest movement being obviated by success.
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SF is one of the few places where working outside is generally pleasant for most of the year.
Winter days are clear and bracing. Great to walk through on your way somewhere, but not to sit outside all day and get work done. Midsummer is unexpectedly cold and rainy there. Workers are going to feat August more than December.
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Nothing but flakes and nuts.
Re:Ah the exhaust (Score:4, Insightful)
That's more a problem of mass transit in the US than one of mass transit in general. Because the state of mass transit in the US is generally deplorable. Some European cities have public transport concepts that actually make sense and work, in most of them you only need a car anymore if you actually plan to leave the city for some godforsaken country side village.
Re:Ah the exhaust (Score:5, Insightful)
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When talking about infrastructure projects like mass transit you can't treat the entire US as one homogeneous blob.
Mass transit is for cities, and cities all have similarities.
Every biome on earth is represented in the USA.
Tundra is found only in Alaska, which does not have a transportation problem, so we can ignore that fact.
In others like SF actually you can't make subways because half the city is built on artificial land fill from debris leftover from the 1909 earthquake.
Yes, clearly subways in San Francisco are impossible [wikipedia.org].
Where I live you can't do it because all the bedrock is limestone and sinkholes and unmapped underground caves are common.
You know they can map underground caves with radio waves, right? And that they would do this along any proposed route?
Buses IMO don't count as they only marginally shift the issue around from cars.
Buses are complicated. If you give them dedicated lanes, they can function. In some cities, that's feasible.
So mass transit means light rail.
I guess you haven't heard of PRT [wikipedia.org].
Everything you said was wrong. Ca
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Nah, people here have something to lose so they generally try to avoid being locked up just to have a steady source for food and shelter.
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>Are the cores of European cities dangerous high crime areas?
Top tip: Different cities are different. Europe has a lot of cities. But I've never had a problem in any European city.
Re: Ah the exhaust (Score:4, Insightful)
There's nothing inherently American about America's problems, other than your unwillingness to restrain the excesses of the few for the good of the many.
Every issue; healthcare, crime, education, traffic, insane military spending, corruption... all of these things are issues in other places, but they are willing to create laws that benefit the whole of society over the privileges of a few.
Healthcare: Everyone for themselves, or everyone for everyone?
Crime: The ability to protect yourself, or make it more difficult for criminals to hurt everyone?
Education: Pull yourselves up by debt-laden bootstraps, or pay taxes for education for all?
Traffic: Your right to drive wherever you want, or functional mass transit and walkable cities?
Spending: Spend twice as much as you need to on the military so you can start a new war every few years, or spend half as much for an effective defensive force.
Corruption: Exercise "free speech" to the tune of billions of dollars a year, or tightly regulate campaign spending, nepotism and conflicts of interest.
You guys seem to believe that having all this freedom to screw one another over is going to pay off when you "make it", or when your flavour of oligarch is in charge. It never occurs to you to make your lives better now at the expense of potential future gains that will never materialise.
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Our homeless shit in public toilets. Why do yours shit on sidewalks, are there no public toilets?
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American neighborhoods demand the removal of public toilets, because they feel public toilets attract the homeless. It's really the NIMBY attitude and the power of lawyers that prevents America from addressing a lot of homeless issues.
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Odd. So Europeans are the better people and we shipped off our rubbish overseas?
So far I thought it's only customers, bosses and politicians that are assholes in the US. Now I find out that even your homeless are. Is there a decent person in the whole country?
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No, just wondering. Why would any person shit anywhere but a toilet when there is one available?
Most businesses won't let non-customers use their bathrooms, especially since the homeless are far more likely than average to mess them up by trying to bathe in them, since they have nowhere else to do that. There are few public toilets in the USA. Mostly they are clustered around recreational facilities like parks. The others tend to get destroyed by mentally unsound homeless people who have been on the street since Reagan shut down the asylums instead of reforming them.
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They're sprawling a lot, true, but don't shift the blame to public transport when your zoning is crap. In other words, your cities occupy more space, they ain't necessarily larger.
Re: Ah the exhaust (Score:2, Insightful)
I think this is a really poor choice of what to do with the space, but "public transit doesn't work for everyone" is something you'd only say if you live in a small town, a city where it's fucked by political design, or if you just *really* dislike homeless people.
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I think this is a really poor choice of what to do with the space, but "public transit doesn't work for everyone" is something you'd only say if you live in a small town, a city where it's fucked by political design, or if you just *really* dislike homeless people.
Saying public transport doesn't work for everyone is something you say if you don't live on or your destination isn't near or on a main public transport route. The place I live for example it's shit. The buses run on , I dunno, a spoke design is the best description I can come up with. There are buses through most main areas but they only go to the city centre. Which is fine if that's where you want to go or home from there but if you need to go anywhere else the system doesn't really work and its easier to
Re: Ah the exhaust (Score:5, Insightful)
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What is a very common problem in most cities? Parking.
Maybe y'all could drive smaller cars.... just sayin'.
Re: Ah the exhaust (Score:4, Insightful)
knowing we will win in an accident.
Only in a head-on collision with a small car, which is one of the rarest forms of accident. In most other accidents you'll come off worse because the high center of gravity will flip you over.
The other problem is that a false feeling of safety makes people drive like idiots, ie. the guy that hits you head-on will be driving something ever bigger than you at a faster speed.
TLDR: Statistically, you ain't any safer.
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No argument there.
More kinetic energy = more destruction of everything around them before they finally slide to a stop.
Re:Ah the exhaust (Score:5, Funny)
And come next fall/winter Snow will help to dampen the sounds of traffic.
Sorry this idea is idiotic.
That's why the idea is so San Francisco.
Re:Ah the exhaust (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus, in San Fransico, if you're at your WeWork parking spot and need to drop a deuce, you can just lay it out there right on the sidewalk.
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What is a very common problem in most cities? Parking.
It is the worst sort of person who thinks 'most cities' should have more parking. (Never mind being the sort of person who is oblivious to induced demand.)
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Nothing like the smell of the exhaust and the noise of the road to help one concentrate on the day's work!
In other words, no different than today's modern open floor plans.
Except the exhaust and the noise come from the people.
Re:Ah the exhaust (Score:5, Interesting)
this idiot that doesn't understand why cars are an important mode of transportation.
He is not protesting cars as transportation. He is protesting street parking.
You can use cars for transportation without street parking. Japan has plenty of cars, but downtown street parking is uncommon there. You park in a private space off the street, or a public multi-story garage. That is a way more efficient use of space and traffic is not congested by people looking for street parking, or trying to parallel park in a tight space.
In America, street parking is unlikely to be reduced until self-driving cars alleviate the problem.
Re: Ah the exhaust (Score:4, Interesting)
Self-driving cars won't alleviate the problem, they'll make it WORSE by keeping workers' cars on the road at least twice as long per day... to work, to home, back to work, to home... instead of to work, parked all day, then to home.
Ditto, for cars doing laps around the block for an hour instead of being parked somewhere.
The big problem isn't just cities with inadequate transit... it's cities with NEITHER adequate transit NOR adequate parking. Or cities like Miami that have more parking per square foot of leasable space than most outlet malls, but allowed speculators to buy multi-year leases on those spaces for a pittance during the Great Recession & now create artificial scarcity by keeping garages empty rather than lower prices... and simultaneously failing to build public garages to fight the problem since (in theory) there's abundant parking (that just happens to be unavailable).
In the US, we end up with the worst of BOTH alternatives... inadequate roads & parking AND transit that sucks.
Re: Ah the exhaust (Score:4, Funny)
In the US, we end up with the worst of BOTH alternatives... inadequate roads & parking AND transit that sucks.
Have you considered moving to Europe? According to Slashdot posters, it's damn near perfect.
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Japan has plenty of cars, but downtown street parking is uncommon there. You park in a private space off the street, or a public multi-story garage. That is a way more efficient use of space and traffic is not congested by people looking for street parking, or trying to parallel park in a tight space.
It also helps that they don't drive things the size of Dodge RAMs into the city and expect to be able to park them wherever they goddam like.
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Best thing about Japanese car parking spaces is that they are a sensible size. In the UK they are all tiny, you can barely open the doors half the time. Over there they are either wide, or they just put the car on skis, you get out and it gets taken off to be filed away.
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Nothing like the smell of the exhaust and the noise of the road to help one concentrate on the day's work!
They probably spend half the time blogging about congestion and how its too hard to get around too.
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Not to mention that he is unintentionally rising the parking prices for the people who need to drive.
By cutting the supply of available parking spots, this will lead to a rise in prices due to good how supply and demand affect price.
American City living is expensive, loud, dangerous. It isn't that it is unbearable life style, but it isn't for everyone. For the cost of renting a small apartment in a City, I can have a good car, and a decent home and commute, which may add an extra hour every day to my travel
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Yeah, where's his Proposition 65 warning that his workplace contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and reproductive harm?
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No exhaust in the city where everyone drives a Tesla!
Because the unicorns fart out the electricity?
Emissions displacement (Score:2)
If you have a herd of unicorns all farting on the same ranch, it's easier to capture those farts than if you have them drawing carriages around town.
Battery electric vehicles displace emissions from the road to a coal or natural gas power plant, where it's more practical to thoroughly scrub the exhaust than it would be on a vehicle. They also offer a chance to remove emissions by adding wind or solar power in those places where it is practical.
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So many laws in Cali (Score:3)
There's no way this is not breaking laws. California regulates everything.
Re:So many laws in Cali (Score:5, Informative)
San Francisco City Attorney on a related case:
"San Francisco Police Code Section 63(b) specifically prohibits the buying and selling of public street parking spaces"
https://www.sfcityattorney.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/S.F.-City-Attorney-letter-to-ParkModo.pdf
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You can just hear the entitled hipster screaming "But we've rented this space; we can do anything we want with it".
Completely failing to understand that even at high parking prices, a parking space is still typically rented at a loss to the community.
Also; spot the hypocrisy in this:
[quote]"Car parking squanders space that can be used for the public good -- bike lanes, larger sidewalks, retail, cafes, more housing," Pontis said. "Let's use city streets for people, not cars."[/quote]
Just substitute "people"
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One of the stupidest ideas I've heard in a while. Who drives cars? Why do we drive them? What's going to happen when we can't find a spot to park? What happens when we clog city streets with douchebags on computers?
The road to hell is literally going to be paved with good intenders
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As a right-winger, I admire his entrepreneurialism and free-market solution to a societal problem.
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Re:So many laws in Cali (Score:4, Informative)
Hmm, did he mean leasing and subleasing? Because the space is not purchased, it's rented.
To answer your question, buying means leasing.
A specific code was cited, which you could have looked up. You could have viewed the letter that was linked where the code in question is cited.
San Francisco Police Code Section 63(b) specifically prohibits the buying and selling of
public street parking spaces. The San Francisco Police Code provides: “It shall be unlawful for
any person, firm or corporation to enter into a lease, rental agreement or contract of any kind,
written or oral, with or without compensation, for the use of any street or sidewalk.” SFMPC
63(b). Any “person, firm or corporation who is in violation of this section shall be subject to
an administrative penalty not to exceed $300 for each violation.” SFMPC 63(c).
Re:So many laws in Cali (Score:4, Funny)
Yea but have they been doing it... on a computer???
...with one click?
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It depends. Some cities allow people to rent parking spaces for things like this - basically the rent is what the space would otherwise bring (so the city doesn't lose out of parking revenue). Other times the city offers up spaces for projects like this.
They're often called "parklets"
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Some cities allow people to rent parking spaces for things like this
I'm sure most cities would make it illegal to sub-let said rented parking spaces.
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What I don't understand is how they have all-day parking meters. That's remarkably rare, they're usually two hour max or even shorter to encourage availability and turnover.
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Replying to myself because I didn't read the entire attorney's letter.
Aside from the $300 fine per violation, the business model being illegal means that the city is permitted to sue to company in court for damages of $2,500 per violation. Each rental agreement they make would have to cost the renter at least $2,800 for the company just to cover the fines and court assessed damages.
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Making love in the month of October is also known to cause cancer [wikipedia.org] 9 months later, but you don't see cities and states banning that.
The entrepreneurial homeless (Score:2, Insightful)
Man, San Francisco is freaking weird.
Pricing is even weirder... (Score:2)
Charging users people per hour?
I thought JFK abolished slavery?
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Yeah Halle Berry is so ugly. You dopey cunt.
meh
Why would you pay to do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are the coffeeshops and bookstores full?
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I was thinking public libraries. In fact when you stop and think about it, public libraries should do it on purpose and promote it and good source of income to pay for more books.
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That’s not a bad idea.
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STREET CRED
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Street Cred for Street Code?
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Are the coffeeshops and bookstores full?
Because more people would see you do this.
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Are bookstores still a thing in illiterate murica ?
Why do you think the current peak of hollywood cinema is comic book films?
This makes me angry. (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Lets use city streets to move as many people as possible as quickly as possible. People can walk around cars that are in gridlock, but other cars cannot. People can walk up and down stairs on a plaza, cars cannot. All of this in the City of San Francisco, which is widely known for having cable cars. People will stop traffic to board and disembark these cable cars. What is happening to all the cars that have to wait for the pedestrians to board the cable car? They are stopped and idling. What happens to all the cars that can't find a parking space because some jerks decide to have a picnic in the parking spaces? They circle the block looking for a place to park - wasting fuel.
You can say "save the environment" or you can say "use city streets for people, not cars", but you can't say both!
Re:This makes me angry. (Score:5, Informative)
If you can't find a parking space, it's because the parking fee is below market equilibrium [wikipedia.org]. San Francisco figured this out and implemented demand-based pricing [sfpark.org] to keep a space or two empty on every block at all times without overcharging anyone. It worked remarkably well [streetsblog.org], helping drivers find parking more quickly while increasing sales to local businesses.
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OK, I'm baffled. Why is San Francisco, of all places, using a market-based strategy to deal with its problems?
Charging more because you can get away with it and to dissuade others isn't dealing with the problem.
Re:This makes me angry. (Score:4, Interesting)
In the areas where SFpark was tested — Civic Center, the Embarcadero, Downtown, the Mission, the Fillmore, the Marina, and Fisherman’s Wharf — the SFMTA found that SFpark resulted in cheaper parking prices overall, more readily available parking, many fewer parking citations, and much less time wasted by drivers circling around, looking for open parking spots
Price coordinated markets are highly effective at balancing supply and demand and ensuring that resources aren't being misallocated.
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Nice, they should implement that around here. The only times I need to drive into a city, it is for work, and the office picks up the ticket. So I don't care what it costs, as long as there's a space available.
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That's not really solving the problem. It's just making it so expensive that people can't afford it.
Like the toll lanes going in outside of Washington DC. Sure, traffic is light. Because it costs $46 one-way. So the riff-raff are just snaking through residential streets or just not going to work anymore.
So? (Score:3)
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No. Lets use city streets to move as many people as possible as quickly as possible.
I agree. We should ban all cars from inside the city centre. You can move far more people by foot and bicycle than you can by car. Then institute mass transit systems to bring people to city edges where they can use cars. Ultimately it results in a more efficient systems.
You're absolutely right. At least your first sentence was. The rest of your post is a throwback to 1950s era thinking that got cities into their gridlocked mess in the first place.
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Then institute mass transit systems to bring people to city edges where they can use cars
Banning cars from cities completely is a rubbish idea but this one seems to work. The city where I live built a bunch of "park & ride" facilities; basically it's a huge parking lot next to a subway station near the city's ring road. Judging from how full those parking lots are, they are crazy popular with commuters. (When you drive into town, there's signs that show how many free parking spots the nearby facilities have, and at what frequency the subway is running. Often the sign will say "full")
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"Let's use city streets for people, not cars."
Maybe we can park in office blocks instead?
Well, he clearly didn't think that through. (Score:2)
No, parking spaces don't squander anything. (Score:2)
Parking places on city streets don't squander space; they're there to be used so that the city needs fewer parking lots and/or parking structures. Of course, Mr. Portis might prefer that his city copies the way Tokyo does things: the city has so many cars that you can't get permission from the city to buy a car unless
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There's backwards parking. Only an idiot needs two car lengths to park a car.
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Don't be silly. Come in forwards at an angle and if you're halfway across the sidewalk then who cares? Works in Belgium.
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You need twice the length of your car to parallel park?
Learn to drive before clogging the roads, please.
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The space has to be twice the size of a large car AT LEAST so that the car can turn in and then turn out without having to seesaw back and forth to do so. It has to be a lot wider to, so as to fit in door opening and the person getting in/out. But I see the problem here is that someone DARED criticize cars and you HAVE to be butthurt at that.
Sad.
People here are going to be criticising your apparent lack of parking skills. Twice the length plus extra width? Fuck off.
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We REALLY need to make parallel parking part of the driver's license exam again.
a joke (Score:2)
This isn't something being run in San Francisco, global capital of ridesharing and expensive real estate. They're trying to get this working in Los Angeles, specifically Santa Monica.
This is a place with million dollar condos, no public transit, a strong car culture, lots of co-working space, and cheap parking at great beaches. I think this is the worst place to set up a business like this.
Did that 20 years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
At Borland in Scott's Valley, in the parking garage, there was a triangular place where no car would fit, which was designed as a smoking area.
Since everybody still smoked at that time, the firm had outlets and Ethernet (no WIFI yet) installed at the spot (smart move) and so there were always people coding there.
disingenious jerks (Score:3, Insightful)
"Car parking squanders space that can be used for the public good -- bike lanes, larger sidewalks, retail, cafes, more housing,"
They are engaging in politics by claiming to know what is the common good, which coincidentally happens to be something that makes them money, and they feel that entitles them to break the law.
Typical.
illegal (Score:2)
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And Santa Monica is full of catering trucks, so they know all about mobile businesses.
cities are the problem (Score:2)
Expanding vertically will inevitably stress systems of transportation and every other system, because we do not (at least not today) have the ability to move things around in three dimensions. Cities are inherently problematic. And living/working in a place that is so inorganic - all concrete, steel, and noise - seems very anxiety-producing to me. But to each their own.
"Pave Paradise, put up a parking lot...took all the trees, put 'em in a tree museum."
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Cities are the solution, not the problem. They permit population density you can't have otherwise, which can bring efficiency. Cars are the problem. They are dumb, especially in cities, where public transportation has an easier job to do because of those densities. Unfortunately, public transportation is made less effective by cars. Buses and cars, for example, interfere with one another. You can make buses fairly efficient (in both time and fuel) by giving them dedicated lanes, but if you did that in SF, y
How about the opposite? (Score:2)
Here in Paris once had the opposite idea: a 6M outdoors public parking slot is 35€/24h while the highest rent for 1M is 37€/month.
So let's say You got an 30M apartment on the ground floor, You cold rent it for 1110€/month at best.
However, if You convert it in a parking with a 60% efficiency You'd get 3 parking slots that You could rent for half the price and still get 40% more revenue. And trust me, the'd never be empty.
Of course, no one would let You do that, but still fun to consider.
eight bikes (Score:3)
Pontis said he got the idea from a Twitter exchange in which Github's Devon Zuegel pointed out that eight bicycles could fit in one park spot instead of a car.
Too bad that eight bikes can't transport my son's wheelchair. Or our groceries. Or ...
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FYI: wheelchair bike trailer: https://www.cargobike.co.uk/pr... [cargobike.co.uk]
Could probably fit some groceries on there too.
Good thing San Fransisco is known for being very flat and free of steep hills.
This was a Portlandia skit (Score:2)
What crazy person pays $50 / day for a DESK? (Score:2)
CoWorking spaces usually range $200-500 / month for a desk. What type of insanity could possibly justify $50 per DAY PLUS a monthly fee?
Rouge Coder Setup a Bowling Alley For Cars! (Score:2)
Death Race 2019, but made far easier, just put the targets right on the street!
Why not just do this in public parks where there's something other than concrete and traffic all around? Might not be legal since it's commercial, but certainly not as illegal as using parking spots.
Why not in a park? (Score:2)
Broad City #IRL (Score:3)
Re:News Flash streets are (Score:4, Funny)
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No, but he has vinyl records and a quinoa salad in a mason jar.
Don't bother asking which records he has though, you won't have heard of them.