My employer is planning a new manufacturing plant. I work with some of the people designing it. They currently don’t have any plans to hook up to public transit, though there’s a commuter train station 3 miles away. It takes 20min to bike between them or 40min currently to take a bus. The area it’s in is extremely car centric. They’re looking at making an enormous multi level underground parking garage.
How can I encourage them to be more public transit friendly? Maybe a shuttle bus directly from the station to the plant? Looks like that would be about 10min if it runs regularly.
The company doesn’t really care about the environment or the health of the community, so I can’t really give those arguments. The designers said they had looked at shuttle busses before, but it was way too expensive, so they pushed the cost onto the employee.
Could I pitch it as a money save vs building the parking? Or that you’d open up opportunities for more worker applications? Or that it would help traffic jams? Are there any academic papers I could reference about the equilibrium of car driving vs public transit?
How can I argue for public transit in terms the company cares about?
Could I pitch it as a money save vs building the parking?
Given how much underground parking costs to construct, that’s the argument with the most leverage I think.
I somehow doubt that a few shuttle buses a day are more expensive than underground construction amortised over a decades or two. Especially not if that company intends to grow. (Go ask them how much growth they want to see in the company and how many more underground parking garages they plan to build to match.)
Or that you’d open up opportunities for more worker applications?
They’d likely not care. There’s likely a “If you don’t want to earn it, you don’t deserve it.” mindset at the decision level here; if you don’t want to drive your car 2h every day to get here, you don’t deserve to work here.
Or that it would help traffic jams?
Given you said that they don’t GAF about the health of the community, I doubt they’d care about the community’s traffic jams.
Take advantage of regulatory loopholes to affect the design of parking garage such that the parking garage can be almost instantly retrofitted into additional manufacturing space.
Bathrooms on every floor, cargo elevators (for cars, but can be repurposed for forklifts), the ramp is just a spiral on the side and not integrated into the structure, the height of each floor is consistent with the rest of the building, level floors, Include provisions for additional electrical, plumbing, compressed air, nitrogen, dry air, vacuum, and HVAC systems, etc.
That way, when cars drop in popularity in a few years, they can retrofit the parking garage into additional manufacturing floor relatively easily.
Disclaimer: I am not really interested in this sub, but it was in my feed so I feel I could at least contribute.
You could argue till you’re blue in the face. It won’t change the fact that there are building code minimum parking requirements. Depending on country / state, those may vary but still required.The underground parking is most likely a design necessity
How do you know minimum parking is required everywhere?
I don’t, just my current experience in the building industry. If you’re in the US there are minimum’s in all the states I’ve done projects. Could be some local overrides i suppose, but generally codes are only overwritten to be more stringent, not less.
Like most people, I am not in the US. I’m surprised to learn of these requirements.
the plant would never pay for a shuttle bus because that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. It’s easier to hire people that don’t require it.
Maybe lobby the local government to change the route of local buses to be there could be easier, but that might be difficult. When I went to high school, the local transit company suddenly changed the timetable to start the bus 5 mins before the end of classes, with the next one after 45 mins. Everyone complained, but they didn’t budge, that bus couldn’t start 5 minutes later because reasons. The solution was that everyone bought a gas-powered scooter and went to school with that, because waiting 45 minutes after school for the bus is unacceptable for any teenager
Saving money/space on building the parking and increased pool of potential workers seem like the two arguments that are written in the language that corporations speak. Not sure how effective they will be, but they’re the most likely to work out of the ones you posted. Good luck!
Oaf. For a very vocal sub, it sure goes quiet when people start asking for constructive solutions instead of criticisms/rants. 😆
I really do hope I’m mistaken, and the responses will start pouring in as this post gets more visibility.
Your implicit assumption here is that both criticisms and solutions are equally easy (or difficult) to make, which is obviously not true, hence the relative quietness.
Perhaps if this question was asked on a sub that isn’t an echo chamber about just hating on cars and everything cars use. This sub is basically just a big criticism/rant area as it is so…
…or that it was asked at 8AM EST and it’s only been a few hours?
People exist outside of America ;)
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Reduced expenditure on constructing and maintaining parking lots. Include the costs of security / cameras.
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Company has better control over when employees come and go.
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Employees can start working while on the bus (reading mails, catching up with co-workers, etc.).
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PR department can highlight this as a new green policy. They might even be able to convince the local government to bear a part of the costs, or give some other monetary reward.
Now excuse me while I go wash my hands.
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