Based
Pretty much how you’d build any train station in a city. Just look at any London train station. Article entirely meant to get ‘petrol heads’ riled up.
Cue the article comments about a war on motorists. Mostly from people who don’t even live there.
I’ve been through Cambridge on the train, and there’s always a shitload of bicycles. Presumably it’s mostly students about who use them locally, because there’s no way you’d actually get more than a handful on the trains themselves.
Presumably they’ve also got security, because if they tried that where I live, some lad with bolt cutters and a balaclava would help himself to the lot and swap it for heroin.
The people complaining about not having a car park would complain even more if Network Rail built one and then didn’t subsidise the parking charges.
Hard agree. Why do people always expect someone else to foot the bill for their parking needs?
Your car takes up space when parked. Somebody is paying for that space, so you need to do so when you park there. It’s not that difficult.
Based
So, like every train station I have ever seen in Japan?
Are other countries not allowed to do something good if Japan did it first?
No, I point that out because I also lived in Hawaii for 6 years and when they finally built their light rail system on Oahu, they built hundreds of parking spaces around the station. They provided no bicycle parking and no commercial storefront space. Convenience stores, super markets, doctor’s offices, dental clinics, and maybe a small police outpost are all handy things to have next to the station. Last time I checked an online map, the parking spaces are hardly ever used. Who takes a car to a train station and leaves it so they can ride the train?
i think they address the upset
Better headline: New £200m train station will serve 1.8m yearly passengers, converts wasteful long-term car parking with valuable new homes and businesses, and uses more efficient transportation facilities like drop-off zones and over 1000 bicycle parking spaces.
Some local residents have not been onboard with the lack of car spaces at the new station.
If you need a car to reach the station it’s questionable to claim you’re local.
To be fair, if they don’t have private parking they might suddenly find it very difficult to park at their own home. On the other hand, if they live that close to a train station…
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Not sure what that has to do with anything? The article says there’s spaces for blue badge holders, that’s the UK’s scheme for parking spaces for people with mobility issues.
Ohhh okay, I didn’t know that.
Like blind people? Or those who cannot afford a mobility van because a 10 year old used one is priced at $35k? Perhaps you mean those who suffer from seizures?
Let’s focus our limited budget into personal vehicle infrastructure that certainly wouldn’t force these suffering people to drive. It works, bro. Trust me.
Different people have different needs. Some people can’t get around by car unless someone else is driving, myself included. Other people can drive, but can barely walk. If they have nowhere to park, that hurts some disabled people. It’s not like not having somewhere to park magically converts the entire area into an idyllic car-free utopia with trams running every which way.
You cannot dive and yet in the very first picture of the station in the OP’s article is a passenger loading and unloading zone at the gates. How could this train station’s design prioritization unduly harm your own disability since they picked a design where you could be dropped off at the entrance? I’m actually curious here because I can drive and I would be harmed (no parking for me) yet I’m willing to let it go in favor of things like front-gate drop-off zones for public and private loading.
You’re absolutely right that different people do have different needs but priority must be given on every project. Not including disabled parking is a choice that does not unduly harm disabled people. Including disabled parking can harm disabled people. Let me explain.
Prioritizing private car infrastructure necessarily means de-prioritizing non-car infrastructure, like these loading zones. Maybe they can shrink the loading zone a bit and get a parking spot or two in, but would that be enough for those who can drive? Maybe they can put the parking in the back, but that’s not every disabled friendly either. A parking structure could address some of that, but where’s that money coming from? Remember, there’s a limited budget and limited land availability. What’s being taken away for that disabled parking?
Prioritization of parking appears harmless on the surface but manifests in unusual ways, which is precisely why I chose “San Bruno Man With Seizure Disorder Found Guilty In Double Fatal Car Crash” as a case-in-point. The disabled man in question, Rodney Corsiglia, felt forced to drive despite multiple doctor interventions and the DMV revoking his license.
Dr. Austin told Corsiglia he should not be driving because his seizures were not controlled and he did not have full awareness of them. Corsiglia had difficulty accepting the recommendation and wanted to drive because he lived alone, felt he needed a car for transportation, and had a new truck even though he did not have a driver’s license.
– People v. Corsiglia, A145944 (Cal. Ct. App. Mar. 7, 2017)
Being a local in the area, I fully understand Corsiglia’s argument and he has a point. There are no protected bike lanes, the sidewalks are a mess, there’s exactly one bus every hour that’s daytime only to the train station across the street from where the collision occurred. There’s no way he can reasonably function without a car, which is good because the train station where he murdered two people does have disabled parking. And that’s the issue: San Bruno prioritizes disabled drivers while excluding every other disabled member. It’s a decision the city, county, and state can and often makes. It’s also a decision that killed.
Pushing the “what about the disabled people” is exactly how cars get prioritized above people’s needs, disabled and abled alike. It’s counter-intuitive but pushing disabled parking and induces parking demand which, even in totally unreasonable circumstances, pushes disabled people to drive even when they shouldn’t need to.
While I would like to avoid divulging too much personal information, there are disabled people I know for whom not being able to get there by car would make it a non-starter. Public transit isn’t great where I live (US) and the nearest bus stop is outside of their walking distance. Maybe it’s different in the UK.
I completely agree. Public access to transport can be such a joke that it forces disabled people who shouldn’t be driving to be driving, like the case here with Corsiglia. They didn’t have a choice so they committed murder in order to find existence beyond being jailed in their own home. A real-life Shakespearean tragedy.
Continuing to push for disabled parking at places where parking in the first place doesn’t make sense encourages driving and discourages public transport. It’s actually harmful to ask for disabled parking because it takes away from the greater disabled group and places the general public at risk.
All that said, there are situations where it’s OK to demand disabled parking. When a public project clearly is going to include a parking structure, demand disabled parking in high quantities. Demand at-grade and wide zones at these spaces. Demand escalators and elevators. Fight for equal access. I would be there on your side.
PS: Thanks for engaging and listening. This is a topic that often doesn’t get the attention it deserves and typically devolves into some kind of public virtue signalling. The devil is in the details.
I appreciate your nuanced view. I’d love to live in a world where personal cars were obsolete. It just needs a lot of infrastructure.
Car-dependent infrastructure is antithetical to wheelchair and blind accessibility anyway. They’re much better off in a safer environment free of multi-ton death machines driving 45mph.
But what about those folks who use a car to commute from their garage to their car?
There are train stations where I would much prefer a huge car park, because they’re on the “outer perimeter” of a city region where denser movement options become viable. But this sounds like a newly developed area designed under the sensible European 15-minute-city principles; where 3 parking spaces is the region taken up by a single small shop. So to me, all the complaints here sound very much like car-brain.
This just makes me realise how bike crazy the Netherlands is, Amsterdam recently built underground bicycle parking that can hold 20,000 bicycles.
This bike parking was built underneath a canal.
