
Free parking isn’t free: Parking mandates hurt America’s cities (2013) - jseliger
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/07/free_parking_isn_t_free_parking_mandates_hurt_america_s_cities.html
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fennecfoxen
Hmm. Pretty sure I read about this from the libertarians in _Reason_ at least
a decade ago. Amusing to see a few people catching up. :P While we're at it,
here's some other fun transportation/planning policy articles from that group
that might be relevant to the HN demographic:

Why New Urbanism Doesn't Work: [https://reason.com/archives/2013/06/07/why-
new-urbanism-does...](https://reason.com/archives/2013/06/07/why-new-urbanism-
doesnt-work) \- "Urban elitists don’t recognize that their policies helped
create the “sprawl” that they disdain. It’s not as if middle-income San Jose
workers would choose to live over the mountain ranges in places such as Tracy"

Self-driving cars could destroy fine-based city government!
[https://reason.com/blog/2015/07/15/self-driving-cars-
could-d...](https://reason.com/blog/2015/07/15/self-driving-cars-could-
destroy-fine-bas) \- "What's the downside? Increasing automation limits the
ability of authorities to profit off human error."

~~~
JesperRavn
Libertarians don't have a monopoly on free market thinking. Most mainstream
(non-libertarian) economists would have said the same 50 years ago.

~~~
dllthomas
_" Libertarians don't have a monopoly on free market thinking."_

Right, otherwise they'd underproduce...

------
jstanley
I think the problem with building houses with nowhere to park is that people
will just park on the street.

The purpose of the law is probably to prevent the streets from being overrun
with parked cars.

~~~
kijin
Yeah, simply reducing the number of parking spaces per residence is not a free
lunch. The article is forgetting the negative externality of making people
park elsewhere.

Every time someone drives around a block to find somewhere to park, their car
is unnecessarily burning fuel and spewing exhaust into the air. That means
more pollution, more wasted time, lower productivity, and more accidents on
residential streets because all those drivers looking for somewhere to park
are not paying enough attention to what's in front of them.

This looks like just another of those naive proposals that assume that people
will suddenly change their lifestyles given the right regulations. That's not
realistic, especially when we're talking about car ownership in the United
States of Automobiles.

What we need is actual data on car ownership trends, and a model to translate
that data into the number of parking spaces that will be needed in a given
city over the next couple of decades. Battery-powered and self-driving cars
should also feature somewhere in that calculation. Only then can we ask how
many parking spaces we should have.

~~~
simoncion
> This looks like just another of those naive proposals that assume that
> people will suddenly change their lifestyles given the right regulations.

Days before I moved to SF, I sold my car. I thought once about it, looked at
the cost to park it, then sold it. Had parking in the city been
_substantially_ cheaper, I would have thought a couple of dozen times about
selling the thing, and may _very_ well have ended up keeping it, despite the
fact that I would have almost never used it.

There are _several_ 2D (ie. just-a-layer-of-blacktop, rather than a multi-
story garage) parking lots in my area of the city. It's _obvious_ that they
would make more money as non-rent-controlled housing. It's somewhat clear that
regulations in the city are keeping those lots open, and _very_ clear that
city regulations caused me to sell my car and use public transportation. :)

~~~
citiguy
Those 2d lots are probably owned by someone trying to acquire air rights. This
happens in New York City all the time. Once the conditions are right you'll
see a building pop into existence.

------
Tiquor
Seems to me like a false flag by someone claiming a libertarianianish ideal
when the real goal is to make cars more difficult to own.

~~~
jacobolus
What? Matthew Yglesias is not “libertarianish” by any stretch of the
imagination, and does not claim anything of the sort. He states outright that
the goal is to reduce the extremely expensive (in land, money, etc.) parking
subsidy that we currently provide to cars, which obviously makes cars more
difficult to own.

~~~
Natsu
I wonder what their response will be when low income people are the hardest
hit by the lack of well-developed public transport? "Sucks to be you?" is what
it's sounding like, but I hope that's wrong.

~~~
jacobolus
Yglesias argues for guaranteed basic income,
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/02/17/guaranteed_ba...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/02/17/guaranteed_basic_income_the_real_alternative_to_the_minimum_wage.html)

But he also argues for increased spending on public transit, universal
healthcare, more worker-friendly labor laws, and so on.

------
x5n1
This is soon to be a non-issue thanks to automated cars. I hate parking
companies like Impark, and I can't wait until 10 years passes to see them die
a quick death when their services are no longer needed. It will free up a lot
of space that I guess will be turned into more commercial buildings.

~~~
dalke
At 4am, when most people are sleeping and few need a car, what do all of the
unused cars do?

Won't they park somewhere, and if so, who do you think will run the parking
facility?

~~~
tzs
Let's assume we do automated cars right, so that the cars have a wireless
connection to some central traffic planning system that coordinates traffic
for an entire city.

As traffic dies down in the evening and overnight, fewer lanes are needed.
Some lanes could be deallocated from traffic use and allocated to parking use
to hold cars overnight, and then put back to traffic use in the morning.

~~~
dalke
"some central traffic planning system that coordinates traffic for an entire
city"

That would be impressive uptime for both power and wireless connections. I was
under the impression that autonomous vehicles would be more autonomous than
that. Else what happens should something like
[http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/01/chicago...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/01/chicago-
storm-flooding-power-outage/11884545/) occur?

In any case, we're starting from the position that there are commercial
parking services.

For your proposal to work, as a way to get rid of "companies like Impark" we
have to assume that either that 1) street parking as you suggest will be free,
ie, subsidized by the tax base as a whole, or 2) the city does not
contract/sell operation of the central traffic planning system to companies
like Impark.

Chicago (to mention it again), leased out its meters to a foreign corporation
for 75 years.

~~~
Retric
If the cars can read signs then all it takes is a sign that says parking lane
2am - 5am.

~~~
dalke
Which is my option (1), free parking subsidized by the city.

If we wanted that now, we could nationalize all of the commercial parking
systems. We instead often see the desire to find more revenue sources.

BTW, it won't be as simple as having a sign. Some areas already are free
parking between given times, except during a declared snow emergency, or
during hurricane evacuation. I'm not saying it can't be solved, only that it's
not simple.

