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?

  • xenspideyEnglish
    32·
    4 months ago

    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

      • xenspideyEnglish
        2·
        4 months ago

        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.