LogFAQs > #972783118

LinkPizza posted...

Either foot traffic diminishes or stays the same. But I dont see it growing if theres more public transit

People walk to and from transit stops (and when buses/trains show up frequently enough, you don't have to worry about being delayed by half an hour if you missed the next scheduled one by making a brief detour to shop). High-traffic thoroughfares are also a lot less pleasant to walk along than quieter streets, especially when the question of crossing to check out the other side comes up, and when streets are developed with mixed-use properties (the most common version of this most people think of is having a small shop on the ground floor and 2-5 floors of flats above it, which is a lot easier when you don't need parking somewhere nearby for all of those units) you get foot traffic from people that just live in the neighbourhood. Transit-centric planning promotes all of these things because you don't need to allocate nearly as much space to moving and storing cars.

LinkPizza posted...

I dont think most people will be looking to ditch them, even if they didnt need them all the time, as they could still be used when needed

Leaving a car parked in your driveway isn't free. Cars need regular upkeep and use to keep them in good working order, plus you'll continue to pay for insurance and registration even if you aren't using it. If you rarely use a car, you should very strongly consider getting rid of it in favour of using a carshare or rentals for the occasional time that you do actually need one. The exact calculus there will depend on one's specific situation, but it's well worth trying to do the math to figure out just how much that car you "might need now and then" is actually costing compared to what it would cost to employ a different solution.

LinkPizza posted...

That said, just because people want a house with a driveway doesnt mean theyd be able to get it For example, maybe the family looking at the two houses there could get approved for $400,000 for the no driveway house, but not the $500,000 for the house with one

Then they'd need to go somewhere else. Again, there isn't a version of this where the lot that's cheaper because it has no driveway and is therefore smaller has a driveway to accommodate people that can't afford the lot that is larger and has a driveway. Driveways take more land, and more land costs more money. That's inescapable no matter how much you want somebody car-dependent to be able to afford parking (which is actually a major part of why car-centric development is such a problem, since it means prospective home buyers need enough money to be able to afford lots large enough to accommodate driveways).

That's not to say that it couldn't be possible to put a driveway in to the smaller lot by sacrificing yard space as a post-purchase renovation, but if that's a popular enough option then the developer stands to make even more money by offering even smaller driveway-less lots, and we're back to square one. You're not going to find a way to make it "fair" to people who can't afford the extra land that a driveway requires.

LinkPizza posted...

Just because the only apparent difference is the driveway isnt always going to dissuade people. Chances are that most people arent even going to know that the extra 20% is only the driveway. Unless youre getting a birds eye view, all you know is it has more land and a driveway And the developer most likely isnt going to say that unless they asked. Hell probably say something like, It has a driveway, and 20% more land. Which is true and sounds appealing to many Even if in the end, the driveway is the 20% more land. But they may not say that unless we directly asked about it

It's still going to be a hard sell, especially when the yard doesn't look any bigger than the neighbours'. That's a lot of extra money for very little value.

LinkPizza posted...

Just because its transit-centric doesnt mean you would remove the land, though Many people like having yards Removing the driveway in one thing. Taking the land altogether is another

It's the same amount of yard either way. The only difference in the lot size is that needed to include a driveway, and the driveway takes up all of that difference. This is oversimplifying the geometry somewhat for the sake of an easier hypothetical, since in practice it's not exactly easy to increase a rectangle's size by 20% just by adding an extra rectangle to one corner of it, but the core point is that not needing a driveway enables lots to be smaller while providing the same amount of house and yard. Bringing in hypothetical scenarios where there's no driveway but the lot is the same size isn't really relevant, unless you're looking to provide another benefit of not needing a driveway (that is, that people can get more yard without needing a larger lot).

LinkPizza posted...

Idk. I just know things are sometimes going good, and then fall apart Or the funds end up being not enough Or it doesnt work as well as they thought Or it doesnt work as well as the buyers thought (which means the people building/developing/etc. knew how it would be, but the buyers didnt)

That's true of any model, really. There are a lot of factors that go into deciding where you want to live, and those factors can often change for reasons beyond your control.