[Carfreeliving] Residential Driveways restrictions

[Tom Radulovich]

Good for Philadelphia! Garage doors and driveway cuts are proliferating 
madly in my neighborhood, creating conflicts with bicycle, pedestrian, 
and transit movement, as well as eliminating on-street parking and 
deadening the street-level facades of buildings. But with the city's 
idiotic off-street parking requirements, the city is virtually 
mandating destruction of the streetscape; if this continues unabated, 
our streets will be walled with lines of garage doors.

Several of the neighborhood plan proposals that have rolled forward, 
including the Market & Octavia, Transbay, and Rincon Hill plans, 
propose to ban or restrict driveway curb cuts on important pedestrian 
and Muni streets. We should extend such controls to important bike 
streets, transit preferential streets, and Pedestrian network streets 
citywide. The City could also levy a yearly fee on driveway cuts could 
also that would offset the public costs of the the loss of on-street 
parking and mitigate the erosion of the pedestrian, bicycle, and 
transit safety and service. It would incentivize folks who don't need 
or use driveways to give them up. We would of course need to 
decriminalize car-free housing in order to do such a thing.

On Apr 26, 2005, at 3:46 PM, Dave Snyder wrote:

> Look what they're considering in Philadelphia! This would be a good 
> thing to consider in SF, especially on bike routes, particularly where 
> we might want to consider putting the bike lane between the parked car 
> and the sidewalk. Such a treatment would add danger at every driveway, 
> but if you didn't have any driveways, it could add safety and comfort, 
> not to mention improve the sidewalk experience.
>
> Dave
>
>
>>
>> We are starting to grapple with the possibility of limiting front 
>> garages
>> and driveways for new residential development.  I'm talking about 
>> rowhouses
>> or twin houses here, not single-family detached.  Often the most 
>> compelling
>> argument against driveways is that they convert public parking spaces 
>> into
>> private ones.  However, I also want to make the argument that having 
>> too
>> many driveways diminishes the pedestrian quality of the sidewalk.  I 
>> seem
>> to remember hearing somewhere that a significant share of child 
>> pedestrian
>> injuries occur in driveways.  Can anyone confirm this?
>>
>> *********************************************
>> Deborah Schaaf
>> Senior Planner
>> Philadelphia City Planning Commission
>> One Parkway Building, 13th floor
>> Philadelphia PA 19102
>>
>> Phone: 215-683-4643
>> Fax: 215-683-4630
>> debby.schaaf at phila.gov
>
>
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