this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2026
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Is it so strange that people don't want to add another 20 minutes to the commute to a place by having to walk several blocks? I have little enough free time as it is. Maybe it can enjoyable if the weather's good and it's a nice part of the city but it's cold here more often than not and most places aren't particularly scenic.
According to Google Maps, it takes 17 minutes to walk entirely across the isthmus our downtown sits on, from the Edgewater Hotel to the Monona Terrace convention center, and you have to detour around the state capitol to do so. That's about 10 blocks, and between city, county, and private parking structures, significantly longer than the distance between any destination and nearby parking.
But then, back to the topic of the meme, drivers will willingly add another 20 minutes to their commute by perversely choosing to sit in a traffic congestion, when they could park at a free park-and-ride lot and take the BRT downtown. Last time I went with my mother to a show at the performing arts center, we spent over 20 minutes breathing exhaust fumes just waiting to get out of the parking ramp. (Like many Baby Boomers, she's weird about public transit. She lives two blocks from a BRT station; we could've been home already in the time it took to exit the ramp.)
I've tried using the bus system a few times but it wasn't ever a good experience, or at least not better than driving and dealing with parking. It's just now well built out. I don't think there's anywhere in the city I can't get to faster by just driving and walking from the closest parking over parking at one of the ride lots, and waiting on the bus, riding, and then walking from the closest stop to wherever the destination is. Either option sucks really. I hate going into the city.
My downtown is the opposite, extremely hot and sunny. So i get wanting to park near your destination, anything else underscores the convenience of driving. However, it's impractical and ugly for every block to have tons of parking. Which is why i believe that there should be more carless areas and make downtown a pleasure to walk through. Provide shade, chairs, etc.
I've always thought they should put more actual garages up rather than having a shitload of parking lots then and have shuttles/buses/trams/people movers/whatever, from those to other points nearby. They could even put facades on the garages to make them look like nicer buildings.
Just mandate all new builds have a parking garage under them. Seattle is my closest big city which has notoriously bad public transit, extremely steep hills, bad and wet weather most of the year, and parking 20 minutes walk for your location is very very common. I used to be disabled, used portable oxygen and the lack of parking combined with these other things essentially made the whole city off limits to me. People like to call others lazy, entitled or stupid for wanting parking but having adequate accessible parking is a real issue that impacts more than just able bodied people. Even some medical clinics don’t have on sight parking. Accessible parking is part of a socially responsible plan for inter city transportation.
Seattle has some transit problems for sure. East-West travel is a nightmare, the interstate runs straight through the heart of the city, there's a bunch of bridges that bottleneck flow to various neighborhoods, expansion is physically bounded by the Sound and Lake Washington, and we have a loud NIMBY population that has slowed all public projects for decades. Walking sucks, cycling sucks, driving sucks, the busses only don't suck on some routes, the Link mostly works if the thing you want to go to is near a station, and the ferries work except when they don't.
Plus there's the bureaucratic quagmire so bad it has a Wikipedia page.
I don't know how much it would cost to do that but I feel like that would price smaller businesses out of building in the city as I'd imagine it'd be quite a bit more expensive to build on top of a garage than it would a plot of land. Maybe the city could subsidize the cost though.
Small businesses aren’t the people building towers, and are rarely the people renting space in said towers, but like you said there’s no reason a city can’t encourage any specific kind of business with tax breaks or subsidies
Right the skyscrapers could afford it, what I'm talking about is like the smaller bars and shops and things like that which aren't in towers.
not sure how large you envision blocks to be, or what exactly constitutes "several", but even like 10 fucking blocks shouldn't take 20 minutes.
I was calculating in total. 10 there and 10 back. Which is about the average for me when I go somewhere in the city that doesn't have parking I'd estimate.
It's not so much about adding another 20 min onto an already existing commute, but swapping the mode of transportation and keeping the time the same as a thought experiment.
For example, would you choose a 20 min walk to your work/store/playground/park/bank.
Or would you choose a 20 min car ride to your work/store/playground/park/bank.
You can assume distances and time is exactly the same in both situations.
What I meant was having to drive 20-30 minutes to get into the city (and usually the last mile or so of that is atrocious) and then having to walk 3-4 blocks on top of that because there's no parking near your destination. That's what makes me hate going into the city to do shit. There's just no way to get anywhere that isn't a fucking slog.
If everything's all the same then yeah I'd rather just walk than drive, except maybe to the store depending on how much stuff I have to get but that's not the reality of anywhere I can afford to live.