I haven’t done any technical calculations. On a quick glance I’d say all of this parking is about half the size of the park itself. Very little parking inside the main park boundaries, which is mostly for service vehicles (these spaces aren’t highlighted).
Just something I was curious about, it’s wild how much we accommodate, and how much space we waste, for cars.
Edit: not shown is the large lot southeast of the park. It is about three times the size of the lot to the southwest. There are other lots further outside the picture that add additional parking space not shown. Thanks to RvTV95XBeo for pointing this out.
Shuttle/train from the airport? Doesn’t seem too difficult to solve honestly.
Flying commercial has a larger carbon footprint than just driving a car.
Anyone coming from out of country is probably flying, which is a significant amount. Anyone coming from the eastern half of the continent is probably too.
A quick check found some (admittedly dubious) stats claiming 71% of visitors are from in-country, presumably meaning 29% are not. Can’t really be bothered to check further.
Depends on the number of people in the car.
Now this is just fuel burn but the MPG required of the car is listed below. Average commercial jet gets 58mpg per person, which interestingly is better then my bike by 3.
1 person - 58mpg
2 people - 29mpg
3 people - 19mpg
4 people - 14mpg
I’ve heard conflicting data on the makeup of the gasses coming out of a turbine and wether it’s better or worse than a car. Except for during takeoff should be an extremely lean burn that should be a very complete burn. Looks like the highest temperatures are just below the point that makes significant NOx.
Not necessarily. Depends on several factors like the vehicle, distance, number of passengers, etc. In some cases flying can be a better option.
But really, I wasn’t endorsing flying, it’s just that for many people coming from out of state, that will be their method of transit. Enabling them to get to their destination without driving is still an improvement.
You’re forgetting to account for the other parts of the vacation experience. Hotels, restaurants, and other tourist attractions. While you can probably fulfill this with various forms of public transit, a lot of this would require undoing decades of car centric city design. From the perspective of a park, parking lots are a much simpler (though unpleasant) solution.
Fair point. But I still think that would be doable. Might take some time. Odious as parking lots are, they aren’t the worst aspect of cars on cities, so I don’t mind if we wait to eliminate them until other alternatives are present.