Experts Will Humble You With Their Knowledge

Today we had the homie Morse Attack on our show The Trainman Report.

He was there in his capacity as a data analyst familiar with how the city approaches urban planning. This is amazing as we in our community of NDG in Montreal are now fake experts waxing poetic about bike paths. Personally I’m into poking holes in those arguments and frustrating our local unofficial lobby efforts.

Either way, when we’re dealing with issues like how to develop our city, we should learn how things really work.

Today’s episode of Trainman Report was a blessing in that regard.

I’ll share a few insights with y’all.

Parking spot density is relative to the direction the houses face

Turns out on Terrebonne, the houses on the corner of each block tend to face the side street.

Basically this means that if there are 5 houses on a block, only 3 of them actually face Terrebonne. When it comes to parking, this means there’s actually a surplus of parking spaces relative to homes on that block. When the decision was made to remove parking on Terrebonne, they knew how many doors faced the street, relative to the number of spots there are.

It’s entirely possible removing over 200 spots is actually a negligible thing in the big picture. 

This is on average, closer to the schools may suck a little more.

People are only willing to travel about 60 minutes a day on average

Apparently Marchetti's Principle states people are willing to travel about an hour a day.

This is around the world, and in all economic circumstances. Whether it’s plane, train or bicycle, people are willing to travel approximately 30 minutes to work (in each direction). City expansion is relative to people’s ability to travel to the city center, where the jobs be at.

Good urban planning takes into account all of this. There are stats related to work, to cultural stuff, amenities and everything else you can think of. Urban planner types analyze all sorts of stuff when making decisions.

Turns out the REM making downtown 10 minutes from Brossard is why Brossard is popping now.

Parking tickets and meters are a deterrent not a revenue source

While the city does make money off tickets and meters, that’s not their purpose. 

The reason they exist is because if there were no limits on parking, people would abuse the system. They’d park their car and leave it in the same spot all day. While this seems fair, parking in commercial areas tends to be understood as meant for the people frequenting those establishments.

If people just parked their cars there for residential reasons, ignoring the stores, it prevents commercial activity to those stores. 

By making parking cost money, or imposing tickets as a violation, it keeps the cars moving and circulating spots.

Anyway, that was 3 insights from The Trainman Report this week.

Live Long and Prosper Everyone