The issue is not parking. The issue is that these cars remain on the road all day, creating congestion. Commuters are only clogging the roads during commutes. Thus “rush hour.”
If two people want to travel from the suburbs to the city and they have their own cars, two journeys are made.
If they travel by taxi there's only one car on the road - but the taxi has to do a third trip, going back from the city to the suburbs between passengers. That trip is likely to be made without a passenger - because in the morning rush hour, far more people want to go in one direction than the other.
Of course, in some cases taxis may help reduce congestion - transporting people to and from train stations, and allowing people who usually cycle to transport bulky items, might enable more car-free living.
Interestingly, I was introduced to the term "drayage" in another thread, but seems apt here. I think some kind of last mile car service at the train stations would improve transit overall. But the 8-ball is having that transit system in the first place. Replacing one kind of inefficient car transportation with another improves nothing.
In the late 90s, tuktuks would hang out outside of metro stations in Beijing to take people their last mile. For some reason, that isn't the case today.
The question is, what kind of parking? A lot of the available parking is in structures that cost to park in, and involve some overhead getting in and out, such as getting through a gate, wandering around the structure for an available space, etc. Not conducive to being used by an Uber or cabbie to wait for a call to go pick someone up. Finding on-street parking is much more dicey.
The commuter and residential parking doesn't free up for Uber drivers if it's not being used by its primary customers.
Disclosure: Extrapolating from how it works in my town.
Then I dare say there is not only one issue. Parking is also a huge disaster in many dense cities (and probably also results in a bunch of wasted driving time circling for parking!).
So then you make more parking which begets yet more cars.
Cities already have absolutely massive amounts of their real estate dedicated to parking. The answer to this problem is not and never will be “more of the stuff that’s causing the problem”.
