Column: Storing cars a waste of urban space

A cursory glance at the pages of this newspaper gives a solid summary of the threats to our way of life in Honolulu: congestion, housing prices, climate change, chronic diseases associated with sedentary lifestyles and air pollution. And not least, crisis levels of traffic deaths, and particularly pedestrian deaths, are choking the city and threatening our future.

It is clear that a common factor in these threats is our broadly subsidized commitment to prioritizing the speed and convenience of automobile travel, at an exorbitant, yet often invisible, cost to our health, safety and economic vitality. And parking policy is a key enabler of that commitment.

That’s why Lee Cataluna’s recent column celebrating Honolulu supposedly entering an era of “good parking” should alarm anyone concerned about the economic, environmental and social health of this city and island (“Walkable Honolulu becoming parkable, too,” Dec. 28).

Parking is expensive to build and maintain. Surging housing costs mean more and more of our neighbors are struggling to stay in Honolulu, so dedicating expensive land to store cars — which sit idle 95 percent of the time — borders on immoral.

“Good parking” exacerbates the housing crisis in at least three important ways:

>> It ramps up costs, with each spot adding $50,000-100,000 to construction costs;

>> It reduces available land for other, better uses; and

>> The low-density development that it enables has huge infrastructure demands (storm- and waste-water, road/sidewalk/bridge, utilities and other public works), compared to transit-oriented development.

These burdens make housing more expensive. They make food and retail more expensive. They increase our tax burden. And ultimately, they significantly increase health care, insurance and public health/safety related costs.

While Cataluna asserts that “bad parking makes people stay home,” the most vibrant, thriving cities in the world understand that the opposite is true. New York, Paris, London, San Francisco and dozens of others increasingly see that parking and driving are poor uses of urban space. So they’re systematically reducing them to make more space for transit, pedestrian zones and dedicated bike lanes. This creates easier flow and circulation in commercial districts, and research suggests that people who walk, bike and use transit to get to businesses spend more over time than people who drive.

The necessary shift won’t be instantaneous, but neither was the slow boil that got us into this mess. It took a century to forge a modern world where many cities consider walking “alternative transportation,” where our cars enjoy housing subsidies, but not our working class, and where our tolerance for collateral damage has made car crashes the leading cause of death for American children. The best time to course-correct was 50 years ago; the second-best time is today.

Reducing driving and increasing sustainable development and transportation choice is a moral imperative in an time of climate catastrophe and epidemic traffic injury and death. What’s more, as our future promises (or threatens, depending on your lens) autonomous, networked vehicles, on-demand ride services, scarce resources and more people, the idea of adding so much as one new parking space in Honolulu, especially the urban core, is an act of denial.

Indeed, many of us associate driving with “freedom.” But a careful accounting of the cost subsidies and overhead required for “good parking” proves quite the opposite. Abundant parking, while a tempting idea, imposes a tremendous burden on our wallets, our neighborhoods and our planet. It is our responsibility not to indulge the shortsighted and disastrous appeal for “parkable neighborhoods.”

Now is the time invest in sustainable, forward-looking development, increase access to sustainable transportation, and leave “good parking” in the rear-view mirror.

Chris J. Johnson is an advocate for healthier, safer and sustainable transportation.