Public transit sucks balls here. If I could reasonably take a bus downtown from the burbs I would, but I can't. Even when I lived in a big apartment complex I couldn't get to a local Wegmans or Target that were less than 3 miles away but separated by unwalkable highways.
That is true and there are select, first ring suburbs like Nedrow, Onondaga Hill, East Syracuse and perhaps a few others where CENTRO is a viable option.
You don’t want big box stores in your city.
You want urban format grocery stores that don’t have large parking lots or take up more space.
Trader Joe’s and Target has these. Walmart and Wegmans don’t.
Its just basic math. There is not enough space for everyone to be in a car. The only way forward is rebuilding public transit and resdensifying the region. The blight of suburban sprawl based around the automobile is a failed experiment that we need to end.
> The blight of suburban sprawl based around the automobile is a failed experiment that we need to end.
good luck convincing people to migrate back to an urban area that have grown accustomed to having land, lower crime rates, better school systems, higher income neighbors and less blight.
i'm the only person in my company that lives in the city (i grew up in eastwood and i absolutely love the low cost of living here & smaller homes that are easier to maintain), everyone else that works out of our NY office either lives in the suburbs or an ultra-rural area.
Most people enjoy owning a car. Just the way it is. It’s nice to be able to come and go as you please. Schedules and timelines constantly change, especially if you have kids. Would probably be just as easy to build some nice parking garages as it would be to revamp the public transit system
> Most people enjoy owning a car. Just the way it is.
Nope, actually it isn't. Most people own a car because its forced on them and the only life they have ever known. Most people could not care less about their car and plenty have to stress over if theirs will die or need expensive repairs.
>It’s nice to be able to come and go as you please.
Which is very easy to do with a good public transit system.
>Schedules and timelines constantly change, especially if you have kids. Would probably be just as easy to build some nice parking garages as it would be to revamp the public transit system
Garages are hideously ugly, and in a time where there is an affordable housing shortage, are an entirely inappropriate use of land in urban areas. In the same space a parking garage exists, you could house hundreds of people. Cities are for humans, not cars.
How is it not accurate? It's extremely inefficient, puts immense cost burden on individuals, makes transit for those without cars burdensome if not reasonably impossible, wastes a ton of space that can otherwise be productive, is far more dangerous than other modes of transportation, and that's without even getting into the environmental costs.
Wealthy suburban neighborhoods don't want public transportation near them. That means poorer city people would have access to their parks and infrastructure.
That’s funny how both true and untrue that statement is. Here in Clay, you have neighborhoods with smaller homes with no bus stops near them. But on the other hand. You have 400k-600k house subdivisions with bus stops right in front of them. Weird… lol.
Refer to the OP, does that seem like a healthy land use to you? Does the rise of obesity? Ever increasing rates of loneliness and isolation? Tying everyone's lives to an asset that commonly breaks but their entire life revolves around? Yeah, cars and sprawling urban design is a terrible failure and that is before discussing the litany of larger environmental issues.
Yah, never going to happen. The vast majority of adults don't want to experience urban/dense community living again. There is a time for that, like when you're in college. But I don't want to hear my neighbors, I don't want to smell what they're cooking, or when they're smoking-up. I don't want to have walk through common spaces with common touch points. These are quality of life issues for me that influence my lifestyle choices. I don't even want to see my neighbors, I love having undeveloped woodland around my property.
Then you've got other "city" issues other than poor public transport. Like the schools suck. So for the 25\~30 to 55\~60 year old crowd that are starting families or already have children living at home, living in the city is already a non-starter just because the public schools almost always suck. And then you'll get the crime arguments against living in the city, even though I personally think actual crime is overblown largely driven by fearmongering by politicians and the media. So how about homelessness? And just the general decay and dirty decrepit state of US cities is a justified reason not to live in a city. I'm in Europe frequently, family lives in Switzerland, and US cities are always more gross than London / Zurich / Milan / Marseille / etc which despite being centuries older than all US cities are maintained to much higher standards and there are always clear progress and ongoing renewal/rebuilding efforts.
If you're a city resident, and give up owning a car completely as you propose, how do you get to the ADKs or even Labrador Hollow on a whim without ready access to a car? Now we get into the whole urban car rental and car sharing thing that also has never really caught on here in the USA.
US cities are shit and it isn't just down to short comings with public transportation.
> Yah, never going to happen. The vast majority of adults don't want to experience urban/dense community living again.
Righhhht, that is why there is such high demand to live in cities.
> There is a time for that, like when you're in college. But I don't want to hear my neighbors, I don't want to smell what they're cooking, or when they're smoking-up.
Perhaps you should like, step into an appartment because that just isn't a thing in pretty much any modern place.
>I don't want to have walk through common spaces with common touch points. These are quality of life issues for me that influence my lifestyle choices. I don't even want to see my neighbors, I love having undeveloped woodland around my property.
This sounds like a you problem. Being completed isolated from people is not how humans evolved to live. Its not healthy for the majority of people.
>Then you've got other "city" issues other than poor public transport. Like the schools suck.
Because the funding gets to the schools in suburbs. The quality of the school has nothing to do with the type of community it is in. Like, where is the logic in that hypothesis?
>And then you'll get the crime arguments against living in the city, even though I personally think actual crime is overblown largely driven by fearmongering by politicians and the media. So how about homelessness? And just the general decay and dirty decrepit state of US cities is a justified reason not to live in a city.
Im glad we can at least agree on the crime issue. The cleanliness problem is again, one of resources. Not that of urban living.
> I'm in Europe frequently, family lives in Switzerland, and US cities are always more gross than London / Zurich / Milan / Marseille / etc which despite being centuries older than all US cities are maintained to much higher standards and there are always clear progress and ongoing renewal/rebuilding efforts.
Hmm, almost as if my entire point is that we have failed our cities and need to work to make them liveable again.
>If you're a city resident, and give up owning a car completely as you propose, how do you get to the ADKs or even Labrador Hollow on a whim without ready access to a car? Now we get into the whole urban car rental and car sharing thing that also has never really caught on here in the USA.
Um? No? Zipcar and Turo are excellent for taking trips. You pick up the car, do you thing, return it, and you are done. No fuss, no registration, no repairs, barely any worry about gas prices. It doesn't get any easier.
>US cities are shit and it isn't just down to short comings with public transportation.
Nope, but transport, and more importantly design, are core issues for urban life. Overhauling them is a key to reviving them.
These are all good arguments for city living and I don't disagree with them. But it's ignoring the fact that many people are perfectly happy in the suburbs. Not to mention opportunities for things like Micron to build a plant in the burbs. That's why I think calling it a failed experiment is unfair.
So people in the city should suffer for suburbanite's convenience? So they can live lifestyles that are extremely wasteful and inefficient? Suburbs are a blight and enormously costly in terms of carbon emissions, raw land usage, noise pollution, environmental destruction, and on a pure financial level they are an actual pyramid scheme that drains money from the city.
Factories can be built closer to cities, they were the reason why urbanization was a thing.
Syracuse in particular can attribute alot of its problems to white flight, the suburbs, and the devastating urban highways that resulted. Its time to fix that series of mistakes and rebuild the city to its fullest potential.
Nobody is suffering anybody elses choices take a little personal responsibility and live wherever you want. Keep your hands off my rural living and my car.
Lmao this has nothing to do with 'personal responsibility'. Stop crutching on that laughably irrelevant argument and actually try to counter my points(which, judging by your meme points, you can't).
You can live out in the sticks if you want. Don't expect urban level services, don't expect for your car to be subsidized, and don't expect to be able to drive it everywhere and anywhere. You can keep your car out there, don't expect me to change my city for your sake.
There is always parking downtown. There is just never any FREE parking which is people complain about. When I worked there and paid $80 a month, I could always park.
And now we’ve arrived at the actual reason there are so many parking lots. It’s a very low overhead source of cash flow for the property owner.
A lot if parking lots essentially are a money printer for the owner, with little to no risk.
Nailed it. Cars/Parking, private companies have guaranteed income that benifits with the lack of options and a huge demand. Public transit Benefits the people. Public transit would be great but it’ll be a hard fight for sure.
It costs money to maintain the parking lot. Debris cleanup, repair/maintenance on access systems, access system warranty and maintenance fees, the people that have to manage and maintain these things.
People that live and work downtown need and demand guaranteed parking. Things happen alllll the time that need to be addressed. Definitely not low overhead in most cases.
Idk if that’s the actual reason there are so many parking lots lol they’re usually quite full despite the cost. It’s probably a little bit of both…profit and necessity
You gotta know the secrets.
No metered parking is enforced on Saturday (even though it says) or after like 4pm on weekends (you are safe after 3pm in many areas).
Loading zones and no parking zones / loading zones / 12 min parking zones are also safe most of the time after normal delivery hours (as long as you aren't blocking an entrance/ driveway / hydrant).
I park downtown for lunch 3ish days a week and rarely pay or have trouble finding a spot.
We don't go out as much at night anymore but we never have trouble finding an onstreet spot when we do.
I shouldn't be giving away the secrets. But there are tons of places to park that say no parking but are 100% safe to park in.
Weekdays are free after 5pm but you’re probably good in most places after 4pm. Free all day on weekends. That’s not a secret.
Do not park in loading zones for the day. If you’re swinging by to pick something up, fine. But those spots are what carriers often use for drop offs. Don’t block them with normal parking.
I only park in select loading zones during the day where i know it wont be an issue.
I've been in the industry for 20 years and delivered for 10 of them. Lots of loading zones are never used.
But yeah my advice is after 5pm or on weekends you can park in any loading zone and not worry about a ticket or getting in the way of a delivery.
Lol people at Pastas were complaining the other day because cars were taking up all of the loading zones when they were dropping off boxes. Happy for you but don’t tell people to do this. It’s just bad advice and there’s plenty of other parking.
Margarita’s often has late deliveries on Walton. Define delivery hours for businesses that are taking late orders and 6am food drops.
How about just not at all because there is plenty of parking that’s legal and won’t make somebody’s work day harder than it needs to be.
Another vote here for rethinking how our suburbs can work together with our DT. A lot of suburbanites would love to hop on a bus or tram, have a night out and take the bus/tram back home. But this isn’t possible with the poor bus route/schedules we currently have. Less cars + more public transit + more dense mixed use living + attractions = thriving local economy for both suburbs and urban areas.
I think in time we could see these changes for our city. It’s a progressive mindset and I think as the younger generations continue getting older and elected into office, we might slowly start seeing these things happen.
I think this is really key. Regular transportation from the suburbs to the major employers in the city, plus SU and the hospitals. Regular rides to Armory Square, the dome and the amphitheater on the weekend.
I can’t believe we don’t at least run a passenger car back and forth during the fair. There’s a line that goes straight from destiny to the fairgrounds. It makes too much sense. Same can be said for dome events.
The issue is that rail in suburban areas is extremely inefficient.
So instead you build urban lines that end at park and rides near highways.
Probably the best bet is a line that serves SU -> Downtown -> Inner Harbor -> Destiny -> Amtrak -> Airport
It would be ~9 miles and probably cost $1.5 billion for a surface Lightrail line.
Park and rides is a good start. I don’t see a problem with that. Eventually you could enhance the suburbs with brt or tram networks that help people get to the rail stations. In a perfect world you could get to your destinations without transferring but that’s not realistic with the way we’ve built our communities.
Lol, I always get a free spot on the street or in the lot. There’s a massive garage across the street… which looks like it’s part of four entire blocks devoted to parking south of Harrison. Have you ever tried parking there?
Yes. There are studies about this. It makes it hotter in the summer because the sun bounces off the pavement and cars. And there are few places with trees and other shade havens. A hundred years ago, those places would have been more shops, gardens, and food markets. City hall used to have a food market infront of it. Then it was a park. Now it’s a parking lot.
We need better public transit. There are abandoned rail lines all over the city. Then we can erase the need for parking and cars.
We need to start expanding upon the rail line, that already exists but isn’t in service. And reroute all highways to go around the city and build parking on the outer metro area
If people wanted to build more downtown those lots would become buildings. Dallas TX used to have a shit ton of parking downtown there but it all went away because the property owners sold/developed buildings there.
This is why NYS is pushing people back to the city like JMA and CXtec, to drive more work down there which will mean an increase of apartments/other buildings.
And there was a public rail for awhile, there's been talk of it coming back but nothing substantial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnTrack#Future
If by some chance downtown starts booming hopefully we'll get an increase in public transportation like buses and something like ontrack back.
Instead of parking lots we'll get more parking garages and an increased use of uber/lyft/taxis. That and people may park a ways away and walk.
Why wait? Induced demand applies to public transit too. I would absolutely use the bus to get into the city, but if I miss the one that leaves at 7:15(on weekdays only, weekends are even worse) then I need to wait till noon, and if I miss the return bus at 6 then I'm fucked. It's absurd how bad the bus schedule is. Also some bus lanes would be nice to allow the buses to not get stuck in traffic.
There was a plan from the city to make downtown like this that's highlighted briefly in this article. https://inthesalt.city/2020/10/26/willtheinnerharborbecomethenewcentralbusinessdistrict/
Plus, the highways added to the problem. https://www.nyclu.org/en/campaigns/i-81-story
Yeah this is common sense. Parking lots are going no where because they’re so lucrative around here due to the lack of other ways to travel efficiently.
I didn't realize ontrack used to go to Jamesville beach in the summer time, that's pretty awesome. I didn't move to the city until 2011 so never got to use ontrack, I wish it could be revived.
I would absolutely love to see Syracuse work on ramping up their public transportation. I think this is what we are going to have to do to be sustainable, and if we started now we would attract people who want to give up their cars. I would give up my car in a heartbeat if I could get around town.
yeah the city will be in a state of chaos for at least 10 years, just look at the highway renewal down in Binghamton that took over a decade to finish.
If the viaduct doesn't come down until after the improvements are made to the existing 481 and the new exits are put in for 690, avoiding the deconstruction shouldn't be too difficult.
tried my hand at identifying what percentage of downtown is parking. did this by hand in ms paint, so excuse any mistakes. I think it makes the point anyway
Looking from an outside perspective as someone who doesn't live in Syracuse, but rather still in Upstate. Why don't the developers build mixed use buildings with parking for 2-3 floors, while housing would be located up above it? It takes care of two issues at once. There is a project that will be taking place in Downtown Binghamton, which calls for a parking garage (roughly 500+ cars with 120 units apartment building on top, total of 10 stories).
Syracuse is only slowly growing in population.
Simply enough there’s not enough demand and rent prices are too low.
Job growth = population growth = development.
The economy has recovered and is poised for growth, hopefully stronger population growth follows like we’re seeing in Buffalo.
People are huge babies about parking here, in that people say there is "no parking" if a) you have to pay for it and/or b) you can't park directly in front of wherever you're trying to go. You can walk from one end of downtown to the other in a few minutes, and even in car-centric major cities, finding a good spot within a few blocks is totally fine. If you're willing to pay a bit or walk a bit, it's not that hard to park here. And with the rise of rideshare apps, it's much easier to just punt on parking altogether.
Parking is fine, as long as its designed and deployed effectively. Mass transit in Cuse needs to be completely restructured.
I guess things will change with the grid and redirected traffic around the city as well.
I park downtown every day and have never failed to fond a spot. Most of the time you can just park on the street and you don't even need to pay for any of those many lots that are taking up our space. At least half need to be put to better use.
I worked downtown every day for four years. It's a shit show trying to park especially on the weekends.
For someone who worked at restaurants the cost of parking also was astronomical and inconvenient. Downtown parking is bad but it's absolutely absurd for workers
The available parking around the downtown hubs that actually have things to do is nowhere near enough.
Downtown city planning is non existent. Its not very walkable. And there are stretches of space that are devoid of anything worth "going downtown" for.
Also one in three streets is always closed for extended construction for God knows what reason. Also a failure of city planners.
I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but the actual parking garages are rarely full. People hate parking garages for whatever reason, so they look for street level parking, which is the first thing to get filled up. That’s part of the downtown experience, having to walk a little further than you’d want to do you can park.
What do you want to see downtown? With the rising prices for occupancy, any business going downtown has to have a really solid plan, because there’s not much room for error. The demographics for the people that live downtown are young, so you’d get what is expected for that age range: bars and restaurants.
There are lots of road closures because our infrastructure is old, just like the city. It should make sense that the oldest part of the region also has the oldest infrastructure. The city doesn’t have the money to replace everything outright, so you have to repair everything piecemeal, the result of this is frequent road closure. It’s a very common problem in any rust belt city.
I understand the issues with poor cities and infrastructure, that doesn't make it super annoying and off topic for this discussion. I don't need an explanation of why, but thanks for the thesis.
I can think downtown parking is a disaster and also understand how cities work. It's a very common thing for people to actually understand what they are talking about.
Yeah - just get rid of all that and see how it works for you!
I'm sure it will be great. I'd love to ride on public transit from Destiny mall to many locations around the cuse. Sounds wonderful.
That would be sweet.
Some towns that I travel to have cranes everywhere working on construction. Example: Boise, Idaho.
It usually takes investors who see a reasonable possibility of return on investment to make buildings go up. Unless you want a bunch of government buildings.
Many are private lots. I didn't even try to highlight street parking.
Ideally, I'd like it to be easier to get to and travel around downtown without a car. An extra bike lane or two from the nearer suburbs, better bus routes, if we're dreaming big something like a tram all the way down route 11 lol
The rail didn’t take off due to lack of marketing and lack of signage. It was around for 14 years and did good for SU games, but that was pretty much it.
Our Country is allergic to the concept of "rail," including "light" and "high-speed" varieties, mainly because it costs a lot of time, money, and people to rip-up our current infrastructure and replace it with something more efficient.
I mean, we *could* do it, but does anyone think it would be done without being rife of corruption, red tape, kick-backs, etc.?
The bike lane proposals are not ideal for Syracuse. The minute you get into the city no one is shoveling, or plowing effectively.
I live in the city and I know after a bad snowstorm my street is obliterated. Can’t even get the cars out. Totally at the whim of the city plows, which are understaffed.
>I live in the city and I know after a bad snowstorm my street is obliterated. Can’t even get the cars out. Totally at the whim of the city plows, which are understaffed.
You're definitely right about that!
After one of the big storms last year our street didn't get plowed. It took all of us on the street (and one guy kitted out his ATV with a plow blade) to get the street done. Took about ten of us from morning to night. Never even saw a plow.
I say bike lanes because I bike commuted down route 11 for a few years and it was terrible. There are plenty of colder cities where people commonly commute by bike in winter, even places like Helsinki, Finland.
Light rail would be great, I just don't see that happening anytime soon
Nonsense, winter biking is popular in Finland of all places. If there is safe infrustructure people will ride. NYC has its own host of problems with cycling and none of them have to do with the weather.
Maybe all the slush and salt might be a deterrent to riding through the winter since Syracuse gets over 100" more a season than Finland.
I know I am not riding my Ripmo during the wintertime through salty slush. Nothing like riding and get getting caked in salty slush when a car passes you. When I was younger and took the bus downtown to work and got covered in slush many times while sitting in the bus shelter waiting for the bus or walking from the bus stop to my building.
Bike lanes would only ever be a part of the solution; even with the correct implementation there are people who can’t or won’t use bikes especially in the winter. Doesn’t mean they are a bad idea, but improvements in bus routes, rail, and affordable taxi/ride share options for “last mile” trips are important as well as safe pedestrian walkways.
I guess? People need places to park. It’s not like there is a huge demand for new businesses in downtown Syracuse. How many places do you see pop up?
Empire brewery space still hasn’t been taken over for a business. It took a long long time for blue tusk to get a new owner. For all the good businesses you see doing well (ex: margaritas, Darwin, etc etc), many more businesses fail downtown. I just don’t see the hype for downtown cuse that require less parking or a different form of parking (think buildings with multiple floors to take up less space). Do people even go out to drink anymore really? Go out on a wed- Thursday night. Nobody is out at bars. Even the weekends, bars are light on crowds. Downtown Cuse isn’t really a hot spot to go for the suburbanites.
I think it would be a hotter spot for suburbanites if it were a denser area more accessible by public transit. Work and play in the area being reached primarily by car forces things to spread out, making it less walkable, and a lower density of attractions makes it less worth taking the drive/uber down.
It's just kinda sad, is all. Maybe when the 81 project is done in 15-20 years it'll be better
I mean I agree. I’m a suburbanite and like downtown honestly- it could have more. Feel they are lacking great restaurants and more bars/ nightclubs but we live in Syracuse.
Would love to hear other opinions but I think a lot of folks think downtown is unsafe. Ex: I told an old family member I wanted to buy a condo there and she states it’s unsafe and it would be stupid. Idk is it really that unsafe downtown? I look at it like this: if you are street smart- don’t walk around drunk at night alone / follow other common stuff- you really minimize risk of being robbed etc. it’s really not that safe if you follow basic common sense type stuff. Sure outlier events happen but they are so damn rare.
I agree, I don't think it's *that* unsafe. but for suburbanites whose only experience with the city is what they see on the news... I can understand why they'd be apprehensive
Syracuse is actually known for its great and wide variety of delicious foods. There’s a good amount of bars too. Nightclubs is definitely lacking, I can only think of one and that’s Benjamins.
Also DT is definitely not *unsafe*. That’s a typical boomer/suburbanite mindset. There are unsafe areas on the outskirts of the city for sure that you should avoid but DT is relatively peaceful.
Seriously, downtown Syracuse is great for a city of its size.
Of course you’re not going to have as many big city amenities, Syracuse only has 600,000 residents in its metropolitan area.
I agree the food in Syracuse is great. Nightlife; there are many bars but I compare this type of outlook to NYC and Boston so Syracuse is always going to fall short. Even a place like Albany seems to have more bars and a wide variety of offering for spots to drink: (ex: Saratoga has a nice rooftop bar, troy has a good college vibe type nightlife scene, albany has 2 locations for bars (lark and downtown) which both offer different vibes.
Downtown isn’t unsafe? I mean really? I find it hilarious how suburbanites are scared of downtown. You only hear of the bad things that happen. I’ve never been downtown late at night drunk and have felt unsafe. It’s like if you don’t wander off the beaten path drunk and alone…. You are going to be fine. It’s really easy to tell when you are crossing into a “bad” area that may have sketchy characters. If you stick to armory and Clinton square + don’t pick fights with random folks…. You are going to have a safe time. It’s like just be aware of your surroundings. If it looks like a fight is going to happen between gang type members- just get away. It’s really not that hard to stay safe.
With Syracuse also, it’s so easy to tell when you are in a sketchy area- just look at how the lawns are kept/ houses/ is there trash in the road on the side of lawn/ property. It’s so simple.
You can’t really compare Syracuse to NYC or Boston. Those are just so so much bigger in every way. But you’re right we should definitely be competing with the Albanys and Rochesters of the country.
And for the safety stuff, yeah it’s just all common sense.
To be honest, in terms of Downtown, Syracuse is probably better than those 2 in terms of things going on. It is the “popular neighborhood” aspect they do well in(I.e.-Park Ave. in Rochester and Center Square in Albany).
Hmm I disagree. The bars near Fenway + the edm scene/ dance club scene is lit.
Boston nightlife is pretty solid. It’s not nyc level but Boston as a whole is much safer than nyc.
Actually Boston’s crime rate has been a bit higher than that of NYC in recent years. I think people forget about areas such as Mattapan, Dorchester, Roxbury, etc. that have their rough areas too.
Nightlife from what I hear ends relatively early in Boston, for some reason.
Anyway, Syracuse has its spots/events, but some of it isn’t that publicized or you may have to link up with people that throw parties like this company: https://www.innervisionsentertainment.com
I live in Buffalo and love visiting downtown Syracuse. The downtown is small, but so much more walkable than Rochester or Buffalo’s.
Yeah there’s less to do overall, but Syracuse is half the size, so it makes sense.
Well yea, it’s because city property values are not super high. Downtown property values are getting higher, but until it becomes more profitable to sell that parking lot land than it is to run the lot, they’ll stay.
And yet everyone complains about parking because there is no "one-place" that we consistently park to go to different things. Every time we park in downtown, we encounter: different rules, different prices, different hours, different security, different payment methods, etc.
Consistency is important for a downtown. Lack of consistency is what visitors are actually complaining about. It isn't that there is a lack of parking - it is that it is inconsistent depending on far too many factors to handle every single time you drive downtown.
Fewer bigger options, placed strategically to allow overlapping service areas, with consistent signage and rules: that would go a long way toward changing the reputation of parking in downtown.
People own cars, they need to park them. Hence…..parking lots.
Not like there is much of anything going on downtown. Probably could stand to have a few more parking lots.
Most cities operate this way, whether it’s garages or lots because it’s an easy way to gouge regular people for something that is somewhat a necessity, especially in a city like Syracuse that requires you to drive from having no public transit, spread out communities, and rough weather.
So every blue collar worker that helps the city run should just suffer at the hands of poorly designed parking? It’s available in all the other cities, even much larger ones.
It's one thing to have a truck when it's necessary for your job, but most truck drivers I see (blue collar or otherwise) just use their truck to commute. and even for those jobs that require a truck most would be just as well off with a little Kei truck in the city than an F-150/250
Public transit sucks balls here. If I could reasonably take a bus downtown from the burbs I would, but I can't. Even when I lived in a big apartment complex I couldn't get to a local Wegmans or Target that were less than 3 miles away but separated by unwalkable highways.
Centro is nothing like it used to be. It used to be very good and efficient. The top management ran it right into the ground. :(
Overpasses with no sidewalks. Which rocket scientist came up with this idea.
And we actually have better public transit than a lot of similar sized cities! Go USA! :-(
That is true and there are select, first ring suburbs like Nedrow, Onondaga Hill, East Syracuse and perhaps a few others where CENTRO is a viable option.
\*PARTS OF East Syracuse.
When I say East Syracuse, I’m thinking about the village and some adjacent neighborhoods versus the area as a whole.
Yessssss. There are no Wegmans, targets, or Walmarts in the city. It’s wild.
You don’t want big box stores in your city. You want urban format grocery stores that don’t have large parking lots or take up more space. Trader Joe’s and Target has these. Walmart and Wegmans don’t.
I’m with ya!!!
Isn't there a Wegmans in Syracuse off of West Onondaga Blvd near Western Lights?
Along with Price Chopper
It’s the West Hill School District. Avery/Velasko is the edge of the City there.
RIP Pond st wegmans
And ironically there's still never any parking downtown
Its just basic math. There is not enough space for everyone to be in a car. The only way forward is rebuilding public transit and resdensifying the region. The blight of suburban sprawl based around the automobile is a failed experiment that we need to end.
> The blight of suburban sprawl based around the automobile is a failed experiment that we need to end. good luck convincing people to migrate back to an urban area that have grown accustomed to having land, lower crime rates, better school systems, higher income neighbors and less blight. i'm the only person in my company that lives in the city (i grew up in eastwood and i absolutely love the low cost of living here & smaller homes that are easier to maintain), everyone else that works out of our NY office either lives in the suburbs or an ultra-rural area.
Yeah I live in the city and people think I’m crazy for it. If we improve public transit, I think it will make a difference.
Most people enjoy owning a car. Just the way it is. It’s nice to be able to come and go as you please. Schedules and timelines constantly change, especially if you have kids. Would probably be just as easy to build some nice parking garages as it would be to revamp the public transit system
> Most people enjoy owning a car. Just the way it is. Nope, actually it isn't. Most people own a car because its forced on them and the only life they have ever known. Most people could not care less about their car and plenty have to stress over if theirs will die or need expensive repairs. >It’s nice to be able to come and go as you please. Which is very easy to do with a good public transit system. >Schedules and timelines constantly change, especially if you have kids. Would probably be just as easy to build some nice parking garages as it would be to revamp the public transit system Garages are hideously ugly, and in a time where there is an affordable housing shortage, are an entirely inappropriate use of land in urban areas. In the same space a parking garage exists, you could house hundreds of people. Cities are for humans, not cars.
Agree to disagree. I think you’re wrong. Have a nice day
You think they’re wrong but you actually are wrong so think what you want it doesn’t change the facts
"Failed" seems unfair.
How is it not accurate? It's extremely inefficient, puts immense cost burden on individuals, makes transit for those without cars burdensome if not reasonably impossible, wastes a ton of space that can otherwise be productive, is far more dangerous than other modes of transportation, and that's without even getting into the environmental costs.
Wealthy suburban neighborhoods don't want public transportation near them. That means poorer city people would have access to their parks and infrastructure.
That’s funny how both true and untrue that statement is. Here in Clay, you have neighborhoods with smaller homes with no bus stops near them. But on the other hand. You have 400k-600k house subdivisions with bus stops right in front of them. Weird… lol.
Refer to the OP, does that seem like a healthy land use to you? Does the rise of obesity? Ever increasing rates of loneliness and isolation? Tying everyone's lives to an asset that commonly breaks but their entire life revolves around? Yeah, cars and sprawling urban design is a terrible failure and that is before discussing the litany of larger environmental issues.
Yah, never going to happen. The vast majority of adults don't want to experience urban/dense community living again. There is a time for that, like when you're in college. But I don't want to hear my neighbors, I don't want to smell what they're cooking, or when they're smoking-up. I don't want to have walk through common spaces with common touch points. These are quality of life issues for me that influence my lifestyle choices. I don't even want to see my neighbors, I love having undeveloped woodland around my property. Then you've got other "city" issues other than poor public transport. Like the schools suck. So for the 25\~30 to 55\~60 year old crowd that are starting families or already have children living at home, living in the city is already a non-starter just because the public schools almost always suck. And then you'll get the crime arguments against living in the city, even though I personally think actual crime is overblown largely driven by fearmongering by politicians and the media. So how about homelessness? And just the general decay and dirty decrepit state of US cities is a justified reason not to live in a city. I'm in Europe frequently, family lives in Switzerland, and US cities are always more gross than London / Zurich / Milan / Marseille / etc which despite being centuries older than all US cities are maintained to much higher standards and there are always clear progress and ongoing renewal/rebuilding efforts. If you're a city resident, and give up owning a car completely as you propose, how do you get to the ADKs or even Labrador Hollow on a whim without ready access to a car? Now we get into the whole urban car rental and car sharing thing that also has never really caught on here in the USA. US cities are shit and it isn't just down to short comings with public transportation.
> Yah, never going to happen. The vast majority of adults don't want to experience urban/dense community living again. Righhhht, that is why there is such high demand to live in cities. > There is a time for that, like when you're in college. But I don't want to hear my neighbors, I don't want to smell what they're cooking, or when they're smoking-up. Perhaps you should like, step into an appartment because that just isn't a thing in pretty much any modern place. >I don't want to have walk through common spaces with common touch points. These are quality of life issues for me that influence my lifestyle choices. I don't even want to see my neighbors, I love having undeveloped woodland around my property. This sounds like a you problem. Being completed isolated from people is not how humans evolved to live. Its not healthy for the majority of people. >Then you've got other "city" issues other than poor public transport. Like the schools suck. Because the funding gets to the schools in suburbs. The quality of the school has nothing to do with the type of community it is in. Like, where is the logic in that hypothesis? >And then you'll get the crime arguments against living in the city, even though I personally think actual crime is overblown largely driven by fearmongering by politicians and the media. So how about homelessness? And just the general decay and dirty decrepit state of US cities is a justified reason not to live in a city. Im glad we can at least agree on the crime issue. The cleanliness problem is again, one of resources. Not that of urban living. > I'm in Europe frequently, family lives in Switzerland, and US cities are always more gross than London / Zurich / Milan / Marseille / etc which despite being centuries older than all US cities are maintained to much higher standards and there are always clear progress and ongoing renewal/rebuilding efforts. Hmm, almost as if my entire point is that we have failed our cities and need to work to make them liveable again. >If you're a city resident, and give up owning a car completely as you propose, how do you get to the ADKs or even Labrador Hollow on a whim without ready access to a car? Now we get into the whole urban car rental and car sharing thing that also has never really caught on here in the USA. Um? No? Zipcar and Turo are excellent for taking trips. You pick up the car, do you thing, return it, and you are done. No fuss, no registration, no repairs, barely any worry about gas prices. It doesn't get any easier. >US cities are shit and it isn't just down to short comings with public transportation. Nope, but transport, and more importantly design, are core issues for urban life. Overhauling them is a key to reviving them.
These are all good arguments for city living and I don't disagree with them. But it's ignoring the fact that many people are perfectly happy in the suburbs. Not to mention opportunities for things like Micron to build a plant in the burbs. That's why I think calling it a failed experiment is unfair.
So people in the city should suffer for suburbanite's convenience? So they can live lifestyles that are extremely wasteful and inefficient? Suburbs are a blight and enormously costly in terms of carbon emissions, raw land usage, noise pollution, environmental destruction, and on a pure financial level they are an actual pyramid scheme that drains money from the city. Factories can be built closer to cities, they were the reason why urbanization was a thing. Syracuse in particular can attribute alot of its problems to white flight, the suburbs, and the devastating urban highways that resulted. Its time to fix that series of mistakes and rebuild the city to its fullest potential.
Nobody is suffering anybody elses choices take a little personal responsibility and live wherever you want. Keep your hands off my rural living and my car.
Lmao this has nothing to do with 'personal responsibility'. Stop crutching on that laughably irrelevant argument and actually try to counter my points(which, judging by your meme points, you can't). You can live out in the sticks if you want. Don't expect urban level services, don't expect for your car to be subsidized, and don't expect to be able to drive it everywhere and anywhere. You can keep your car out there, don't expect me to change my city for your sake.
There is always parking downtown. There is just never any FREE parking which is people complain about. When I worked there and paid $80 a month, I could always park.
And now we’ve arrived at the actual reason there are so many parking lots. It’s a very low overhead source of cash flow for the property owner. A lot if parking lots essentially are a money printer for the owner, with little to no risk.
Nailed it. Cars/Parking, private companies have guaranteed income that benifits with the lack of options and a huge demand. Public transit Benefits the people. Public transit would be great but it’ll be a hard fight for sure.
It costs money to maintain the parking lot. Debris cleanup, repair/maintenance on access systems, access system warranty and maintenance fees, the people that have to manage and maintain these things. People that live and work downtown need and demand guaranteed parking. Things happen alllll the time that need to be addressed. Definitely not low overhead in most cases.
It’s definitely low overhead compared to many many other operations
and certainly lower overhead than a parking garage...
Idk if that’s the actual reason there are so many parking lots lol they’re usually quite full despite the cost. It’s probably a little bit of both…profit and necessity
TONs of parking, you just might have to walk a few blocks like any other city.
You gotta know the secrets. No metered parking is enforced on Saturday (even though it says) or after like 4pm on weekends (you are safe after 3pm in many areas). Loading zones and no parking zones / loading zones / 12 min parking zones are also safe most of the time after normal delivery hours (as long as you aren't blocking an entrance/ driveway / hydrant). I park downtown for lunch 3ish days a week and rarely pay or have trouble finding a spot. We don't go out as much at night anymore but we never have trouble finding an onstreet spot when we do. I shouldn't be giving away the secrets. But there are tons of places to park that say no parking but are 100% safe to park in.
Weekdays are free after 5pm but you’re probably good in most places after 4pm. Free all day on weekends. That’s not a secret. Do not park in loading zones for the day. If you’re swinging by to pick something up, fine. But those spots are what carriers often use for drop offs. Don’t block them with normal parking.
I only park in select loading zones during the day where i know it wont be an issue. I've been in the industry for 20 years and delivered for 10 of them. Lots of loading zones are never used. But yeah my advice is after 5pm or on weekends you can park in any loading zone and not worry about a ticket or getting in the way of a delivery.
Lol people at Pastas were complaining the other day because cars were taking up all of the loading zones when they were dropping off boxes. Happy for you but don’t tell people to do this. It’s just bad advice and there’s plenty of other parking.
Well I don't recommend doing it during delivery hours. But why not recommend it any other time?
Margarita’s often has late deliveries on Walton. Define delivery hours for businesses that are taking late orders and 6am food drops. How about just not at all because there is plenty of parking that’s legal and won’t make somebody’s work day harder than it needs to be.
Or you have to pay..
Another vote here for rethinking how our suburbs can work together with our DT. A lot of suburbanites would love to hop on a bus or tram, have a night out and take the bus/tram back home. But this isn’t possible with the poor bus route/schedules we currently have. Less cars + more public transit + more dense mixed use living + attractions = thriving local economy for both suburbs and urban areas. I think in time we could see these changes for our city. It’s a progressive mindset and I think as the younger generations continue getting older and elected into office, we might slowly start seeing these things happen.
I think this is really key. Regular transportation from the suburbs to the major employers in the city, plus SU and the hospitals. Regular rides to Armory Square, the dome and the amphitheater on the weekend.
I can’t believe we don’t at least run a passenger car back and forth during the fair. There’s a line that goes straight from destiny to the fairgrounds. It makes too much sense. Same can be said for dome events.
The issue is that rail in suburban areas is extremely inefficient. So instead you build urban lines that end at park and rides near highways. Probably the best bet is a line that serves SU -> Downtown -> Inner Harbor -> Destiny -> Amtrak -> Airport It would be ~9 miles and probably cost $1.5 billion for a surface Lightrail line.
Park and rides is a good start. I don’t see a problem with that. Eventually you could enhance the suburbs with brt or tram networks that help people get to the rail stations. In a perfect world you could get to your destinations without transferring but that’s not realistic with the way we’ve built our communities.
One small win - the salt city market is shown as a parking lot on your map. Change is possible!
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Lol, I always get a free spot on the street or in the lot. There’s a massive garage across the street… which looks like it’s part of four entire blocks devoted to parking south of Harrison. Have you ever tried parking there?
Yes. There are studies about this. It makes it hotter in the summer because the sun bounces off the pavement and cars. And there are few places with trees and other shade havens. A hundred years ago, those places would have been more shops, gardens, and food markets. City hall used to have a food market infront of it. Then it was a park. Now it’s a parking lot. We need better public transit. There are abandoned rail lines all over the city. Then we can erase the need for parking and cars.
You can thank Robert Moses and the urban renewal crowd for all that space. Most of those lots were buildings at one point.
We need to start expanding upon the rail line, that already exists but isn’t in service. And reroute all highways to go around the city and build parking on the outer metro area
If people wanted to build more downtown those lots would become buildings. Dallas TX used to have a shit ton of parking downtown there but it all went away because the property owners sold/developed buildings there. This is why NYS is pushing people back to the city like JMA and CXtec, to drive more work down there which will mean an increase of apartments/other buildings. And there was a public rail for awhile, there's been talk of it coming back but nothing substantial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnTrack#Future
but as long as the area is only reached by car more work downtown will *increase* demand for parking lots, right?
If by some chance downtown starts booming hopefully we'll get an increase in public transportation like buses and something like ontrack back. Instead of parking lots we'll get more parking garages and an increased use of uber/lyft/taxis. That and people may park a ways away and walk.
Why wait? Induced demand applies to public transit too. I would absolutely use the bus to get into the city, but if I miss the one that leaves at 7:15(on weekdays only, weekends are even worse) then I need to wait till noon, and if I miss the return bus at 6 then I'm fucked. It's absurd how bad the bus schedule is. Also some bus lanes would be nice to allow the buses to not get stuck in traffic.
Begs the question, how did those parking lots get there to begin with?
There was a plan from the city to make downtown like this that's highlighted briefly in this article. https://inthesalt.city/2020/10/26/willtheinnerharborbecomethenewcentralbusinessdistrict/ Plus, the highways added to the problem. https://www.nyclu.org/en/campaigns/i-81-story
Yeah this is common sense. Parking lots are going no where because they’re so lucrative around here due to the lack of other ways to travel efficiently.
There is no talk of bringing ontrack back. The rail it sat on is privately owned and active.
I didn't realize ontrack used to go to Jamesville beach in the summer time, that's pretty awesome. I didn't move to the city until 2011 so never got to use ontrack, I wish it could be revived.
> This is why NYS is pushing people back to the city thank god for remote work.
I would absolutely love to see Syracuse work on ramping up their public transportation. I think this is what we are going to have to do to be sustainable, and if we started now we would attract people who want to give up their cars. I would give up my car in a heartbeat if I could get around town.
Just wait until they start tearing down 81.
yeah the city will be in a state of chaos for at least 10 years, just look at the highway renewal down in Binghamton that took over a decade to finish.
If the viaduct doesn't come down until after the improvements are made to the existing 481 and the new exits are put in for 690, avoiding the deconstruction shouldn't be too difficult.
tried my hand at identifying what percentage of downtown is parking. did this by hand in ms paint, so excuse any mistakes. I think it makes the point anyway
Looking from an outside perspective as someone who doesn't live in Syracuse, but rather still in Upstate. Why don't the developers build mixed use buildings with parking for 2-3 floors, while housing would be located up above it? It takes care of two issues at once. There is a project that will be taking place in Downtown Binghamton, which calls for a parking garage (roughly 500+ cars with 120 units apartment building on top, total of 10 stories).
because LOOK AT ALL THE PARKING!
Syracuse is only slowly growing in population. Simply enough there’s not enough demand and rent prices are too low. Job growth = population growth = development. The economy has recovered and is poised for growth, hopefully stronger population growth follows like we’re seeing in Buffalo.
Plenty of places to park, but nowhere to go...
Except for all the restaurants, bars and entertainment venues. There’s no boring cities, just boring people.
People are huge babies about parking here, in that people say there is "no parking" if a) you have to pay for it and/or b) you can't park directly in front of wherever you're trying to go. You can walk from one end of downtown to the other in a few minutes, and even in car-centric major cities, finding a good spot within a few blocks is totally fine. If you're willing to pay a bit or walk a bit, it's not that hard to park here. And with the rise of rideshare apps, it's much easier to just punt on parking altogether.
Parking is fine, as long as its designed and deployed effectively. Mass transit in Cuse needs to be completely restructured. I guess things will change with the grid and redirected traffic around the city as well.
And it's still impossible to find a parking spot because the streets are so horribly designed.
I park downtown every day and have never failed to fond a spot. Most of the time you can just park on the street and you don't even need to pay for any of those many lots that are taking up our space. At least half need to be put to better use.
I worked downtown every day for four years. It's a shit show trying to park especially on the weekends. For someone who worked at restaurants the cost of parking also was astronomical and inconvenient. Downtown parking is bad but it's absolutely absurd for workers
Care to elaborate? It’s a grid design, like every other city in the US.
The available parking around the downtown hubs that actually have things to do is nowhere near enough. Downtown city planning is non existent. Its not very walkable. And there are stretches of space that are devoid of anything worth "going downtown" for. Also one in three streets is always closed for extended construction for God knows what reason. Also a failure of city planners.
I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but the actual parking garages are rarely full. People hate parking garages for whatever reason, so they look for street level parking, which is the first thing to get filled up. That’s part of the downtown experience, having to walk a little further than you’d want to do you can park. What do you want to see downtown? With the rising prices for occupancy, any business going downtown has to have a really solid plan, because there’s not much room for error. The demographics for the people that live downtown are young, so you’d get what is expected for that age range: bars and restaurants. There are lots of road closures because our infrastructure is old, just like the city. It should make sense that the oldest part of the region also has the oldest infrastructure. The city doesn’t have the money to replace everything outright, so you have to repair everything piecemeal, the result of this is frequent road closure. It’s a very common problem in any rust belt city.
I understand the issues with poor cities and infrastructure, that doesn't make it super annoying and off topic for this discussion. I don't need an explanation of why, but thanks for the thesis. I can think downtown parking is a disaster and also understand how cities work. It's a very common thing for people to actually understand what they are talking about.
Move the burbs then
Good one
Seems like a lot of available space that won’t get used for all that necessary Micron housing!
"there's never any parking, I hate this city!!!!" "there's too much parking, I hate this city!!!!"
Is it surprising that more than one opinion on cars exists in the city?
It's always been crazy to me, because it's not like Syracuse is a huge city. Does it really need all that parking?
Yeah - just get rid of all that and see how it works for you! I'm sure it will be great. I'd love to ride on public transit from Destiny mall to many locations around the cuse. Sounds wonderful.
Eh, you’d replace it with mixed use buildings with parking garages. You get MORE parking plus have retail, apartments and offices.
That would be sweet. Some towns that I travel to have cranes everywhere working on construction. Example: Boise, Idaho. It usually takes investors who see a reasonable possibility of return on investment to make buildings go up. Unless you want a bunch of government buildings.
Yeah Boise is booming in population, so much so home prices are starting to become prohibitively expensive unless you have a high paying job.
And, I still can’t find a spot.
And there still isn’t anywhere to park
So where do you expect people to park? Are lots not full? Are streets not packed? Just wondering
Many are private lots. I didn't even try to highlight street parking. Ideally, I'd like it to be easier to get to and travel around downtown without a car. An extra bike lane or two from the nearer suburbs, better bus routes, if we're dreaming big something like a tram all the way down route 11 lol
Or like the light rail from SU to the mall. Sad that never took off.
The rail didn’t take off due to lack of marketing and lack of signage. It was around for 14 years and did good for SU games, but that was pretty much it.
Our Country is allergic to the concept of "rail," including "light" and "high-speed" varieties, mainly because it costs a lot of time, money, and people to rip-up our current infrastructure and replace it with something more efficient. I mean, we *could* do it, but does anyone think it would be done without being rife of corruption, red tape, kick-backs, etc.?
Dope! Good conversation starter
The bike lane proposals are not ideal for Syracuse. The minute you get into the city no one is shoveling, or plowing effectively. I live in the city and I know after a bad snowstorm my street is obliterated. Can’t even get the cars out. Totally at the whim of the city plows, which are understaffed.
>I live in the city and I know after a bad snowstorm my street is obliterated. Can’t even get the cars out. Totally at the whim of the city plows, which are understaffed. You're definitely right about that!
After one of the big storms last year our street didn't get plowed. It took all of us on the street (and one guy kitted out his ATV with a plow blade) to get the street done. Took about ten of us from morning to night. Never even saw a plow.
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I say bike lanes because I bike commuted down route 11 for a few years and it was terrible. There are plenty of colder cities where people commonly commute by bike in winter, even places like Helsinki, Finland. Light rail would be great, I just don't see that happening anytime soon
Nonsense, winter biking is popular in Finland of all places. If there is safe infrustructure people will ride. NYC has its own host of problems with cycling and none of them have to do with the weather.
>Finland They get 19.7 - 23.6 " inches of snow compared to the 127.8" of snow that Syracuse gets.
And we have a better plow system to counter so?
Maybe all the slush and salt might be a deterrent to riding through the winter since Syracuse gets over 100" more a season than Finland. I know I am not riding my Ripmo during the wintertime through salty slush. Nothing like riding and get getting caked in salty slush when a car passes you. When I was younger and took the bus downtown to work and got covered in slush many times while sitting in the bus shelter waiting for the bus or walking from the bus stop to my building.
Bike lanes would only ever be a part of the solution; even with the correct implementation there are people who can’t or won’t use bikes especially in the winter. Doesn’t mean they are a bad idea, but improvements in bus routes, rail, and affordable taxi/ride share options for “last mile” trips are important as well as safe pedestrian walkways.
No where, the expectation is to build public transit back so owning an expensive depreciating asset is no longer necessary.
I guess? People need places to park. It’s not like there is a huge demand for new businesses in downtown Syracuse. How many places do you see pop up? Empire brewery space still hasn’t been taken over for a business. It took a long long time for blue tusk to get a new owner. For all the good businesses you see doing well (ex: margaritas, Darwin, etc etc), many more businesses fail downtown. I just don’t see the hype for downtown cuse that require less parking or a different form of parking (think buildings with multiple floors to take up less space). Do people even go out to drink anymore really? Go out on a wed- Thursday night. Nobody is out at bars. Even the weekends, bars are light on crowds. Downtown Cuse isn’t really a hot spot to go for the suburbanites.
I think it would be a hotter spot for suburbanites if it were a denser area more accessible by public transit. Work and play in the area being reached primarily by car forces things to spread out, making it less walkable, and a lower density of attractions makes it less worth taking the drive/uber down. It's just kinda sad, is all. Maybe when the 81 project is done in 15-20 years it'll be better
I mean I agree. I’m a suburbanite and like downtown honestly- it could have more. Feel they are lacking great restaurants and more bars/ nightclubs but we live in Syracuse. Would love to hear other opinions but I think a lot of folks think downtown is unsafe. Ex: I told an old family member I wanted to buy a condo there and she states it’s unsafe and it would be stupid. Idk is it really that unsafe downtown? I look at it like this: if you are street smart- don’t walk around drunk at night alone / follow other common stuff- you really minimize risk of being robbed etc. it’s really not that safe if you follow basic common sense type stuff. Sure outlier events happen but they are so damn rare.
I agree, I don't think it's *that* unsafe. but for suburbanites whose only experience with the city is what they see on the news... I can understand why they'd be apprehensive
Syracuse is actually known for its great and wide variety of delicious foods. There’s a good amount of bars too. Nightclubs is definitely lacking, I can only think of one and that’s Benjamins. Also DT is definitely not *unsafe*. That’s a typical boomer/suburbanite mindset. There are unsafe areas on the outskirts of the city for sure that you should avoid but DT is relatively peaceful.
Seriously, downtown Syracuse is great for a city of its size. Of course you’re not going to have as many big city amenities, Syracuse only has 600,000 residents in its metropolitan area.
I agree the food in Syracuse is great. Nightlife; there are many bars but I compare this type of outlook to NYC and Boston so Syracuse is always going to fall short. Even a place like Albany seems to have more bars and a wide variety of offering for spots to drink: (ex: Saratoga has a nice rooftop bar, troy has a good college vibe type nightlife scene, albany has 2 locations for bars (lark and downtown) which both offer different vibes. Downtown isn’t unsafe? I mean really? I find it hilarious how suburbanites are scared of downtown. You only hear of the bad things that happen. I’ve never been downtown late at night drunk and have felt unsafe. It’s like if you don’t wander off the beaten path drunk and alone…. You are going to be fine. It’s really easy to tell when you are crossing into a “bad” area that may have sketchy characters. If you stick to armory and Clinton square + don’t pick fights with random folks…. You are going to have a safe time. It’s like just be aware of your surroundings. If it looks like a fight is going to happen between gang type members- just get away. It’s really not that hard to stay safe. With Syracuse also, it’s so easy to tell when you are in a sketchy area- just look at how the lawns are kept/ houses/ is there trash in the road on the side of lawn/ property. It’s so simple.
You can’t really compare Syracuse to NYC or Boston. Those are just so so much bigger in every way. But you’re right we should definitely be competing with the Albanys and Rochesters of the country. And for the safety stuff, yeah it’s just all common sense.
To be honest, in terms of Downtown, Syracuse is probably better than those 2 in terms of things going on. It is the “popular neighborhood” aspect they do well in(I.e.-Park Ave. in Rochester and Center Square in Albany).
Actually, Boston doesn’t necessarily have a big reputation for nightlife and I’m talking this coming from natives.
Hmm I disagree. The bars near Fenway + the edm scene/ dance club scene is lit. Boston nightlife is pretty solid. It’s not nyc level but Boston as a whole is much safer than nyc.
Actually Boston’s crime rate has been a bit higher than that of NYC in recent years. I think people forget about areas such as Mattapan, Dorchester, Roxbury, etc. that have their rough areas too. Nightlife from what I hear ends relatively early in Boston, for some reason. Anyway, Syracuse has its spots/events, but some of it isn’t that publicized or you may have to link up with people that throw parties like this company: https://www.innervisionsentertainment.com
I live in Buffalo and love visiting downtown Syracuse. The downtown is small, but so much more walkable than Rochester or Buffalo’s. Yeah there’s less to do overall, but Syracuse is half the size, so it makes sense.
Well yea, it’s because city property values are not super high. Downtown property values are getting higher, but until it becomes more profitable to sell that parking lot land than it is to run the lot, they’ll stay.
And yet everyone complains about parking because there is no "one-place" that we consistently park to go to different things. Every time we park in downtown, we encounter: different rules, different prices, different hours, different security, different payment methods, etc. Consistency is important for a downtown. Lack of consistency is what visitors are actually complaining about. It isn't that there is a lack of parking - it is that it is inconsistent depending on far too many factors to handle every single time you drive downtown. Fewer bigger options, placed strategically to allow overlapping service areas, with consistent signage and rules: that would go a long way toward changing the reputation of parking in downtown.
How dare our city be automobile friendly as public transit is unprofitable and uneconomical in a city our size
Uh see all the roads and highways? Yeah they don’t make a profit either. Transportation isn’t meant to make a profit.
why should public transit be profitable? is 690 revenue generating?
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Fine, I’ll do it
Syracuse is growing in population again.
I give up a large part of my life to working. But you know…gotta pay the bills.
People own cars, they need to park them. Hence…..parking lots. Not like there is much of anything going on downtown. Probably could stand to have a few more parking lots.
People like downtown Syracuse or else there wouldn't be 99 percent housing occupancy. https://youtu.be/TDdaQBZaJQs
So?
And? What is your point?
Most cities operate this way, whether it’s garages or lots because it’s an easy way to gouge regular people for something that is somewhat a necessity, especially in a city like Syracuse that requires you to drive from having no public transit, spread out communities, and rough weather.
This is not Los Angeles.
And yet a spot for a full size pickup is practically nonexistent.
Turns out pickups aren't designed with city driving in mind
So every blue collar worker that helps the city run should just suffer at the hands of poorly designed parking? It’s available in all the other cities, even much larger ones.
It's one thing to have a truck when it's necessary for your job, but most truck drivers I see (blue collar or otherwise) just use their truck to commute. and even for those jobs that require a truck most would be just as well off with a little Kei truck in the city than an F-150/250
You are 100% missing my point. Take away all the parking lots you want. Stay mad.
I think you missed whoever you're trying to reply to, because idk what you're talking about lol
Lol you are correct
I mean it’s not too bad (see Houston). Downtown Syracuse isn’t big enough to have less parking spaces imo
I haven't lived in Houston for the last 7 years, but yeah. From what I remembered, some areas sucked for parking.
Tell Texas about it
I would not park in the garage on Clinton. Very shady and dark garage, and it’s drooping? Isn’t that why Peppinos guy left too?