> “A study in Berlin . . . more than 51 percent of customers lived within that walkable distance.”
So what? Even in Berlin, businesses care about the 49% of car travellers. Plus, a study in Berlin not that relevant to Auckland: Berlin has a population of 3.6M (area 892 km² with 1.2M passenger cars and a metro system), Auckland 1.6M (area 1,086 km² with 0.74 passenger vehicles per capita and no metro system). New Zealand has a population of 5M.
Personally I know lack of parking affects me. I live in the suburbs of Christchurch where a car is necessary. I rarely go shopping in town, because our city council has been making the city centre more difficult to access (expensive parking, congestion due to slow zones and newer slower traffic signals, removal of street-side parking). I love pedestrian zones, but there needs to be a way to get to them.
Making it harder to access by car is a feature. You're not boycotting the city centre because you find it hard to park, it was actually them throwing you out. The people living there decided it's not worth it to cater to the few individuals demanding to drive everywhere to the detriment of others.
Rather safe, living and cozy streets for the inhabitants, than easy access for the suburbians.
Indeed, the city near me, that I used to live in, has a CBD that is dying a slow long death. The council keeps doing initiatives to try to prop it up, but at the same time keeps making it less and less car friendly, while the public transport continues to suck.
Meanwhile the large outdoor mall on the city outskirts is thriving, because of the easy parking.
It doesn't need to be much, decent size parking building with an arterial access actually in the CBD would work. Let people drive to the CBD and wonder around when they get there.
It’s not even logically consistent with itself. The article starts by saying that we have a “massive car addiction”, then talks about a village where only 4% of business customers arrive by car. If true, this leaves totally unaddressed the question of where all the car addicts are actually driving to, and what to do about it.
> “A study in Berlin . . . more than 51 percent of customers lived within that walkable distance.”
So what? Even in Berlin, businesses care about the 49% of car travellers. Plus, a study in Berlin not that relevant to Auckland: Berlin has a population of 3.6M (area 892 km² with 1.2M passenger cars and a metro system), Auckland 1.6M (area 1,086 km² with 0.74 passenger vehicles per capita and no metro system). New Zealand has a population of 5M.
Personally I know lack of parking affects me. I live in the suburbs of Christchurch where a car is necessary. I rarely go shopping in town, because our city council has been making the city centre more difficult to access (expensive parking, congestion due to slow zones and newer slower traffic signals, removal of street-side parking). I love pedestrian zones, but there needs to be a way to get to them.