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Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car
- ww520 10y agoFire code make everything more expensive. Why have them?
- snrplfth 10y agoBecause if your building catches on fire, the people inside could die and it could spread to other buildings. Classic externality problem. Nobody is going to die because the owners of buildings get to choose how much parking their building needs, any more than they will if they get to decide how many bathrooms their house has.
- samtoday 10y agoThere is a more in depth interview about this subject in podcast form, if that's what you prefer: http://www.maximumfun.org/adam-ruins-everything/episode-10-parking-donald-shoup-dogg-shoup http://www.maximumfun.org/adam-ruins-everything/episode-10-p...
- refurb 10y agoI don't disagree with the analysis on how free parking makes things more expensive, but if you carry that argument forward, it gets kind silly. Credit cards make everything more expensive when the poor often can't use them due to bad credit. Putting grocery stores in really upscale areas makes the groceries cost more (across all stores), even though the poor don't shop at the fancy stores. I'm sure what this article is arguing for.
- xphilter 10y agoI think the argument is that city planners (the State) requires a minimum amount of parking for all structures, thereby raising the price of all goods. It's not that expensive things are bad, but that maybe the State should focus on affordable housing for the poor.
- sfall 10y agoenacting the regulations has no direct cost to the public. Public housing is a line item on the government budget. Some towns purposely dont want to vary from the public standard b/c if something where to happen they would not have to justify them altering the standard.
- xphilter 10y agoHow could that possibly be the case? Suppose the regulation states every new unit needs 10 parking spots--now that single unit must carry the cost of those additional parking spots.
- snrplfth 10y agoI think sfall means "cost to the public purse". It's like any minimum requirement that the government sets - it imposes costs, but doesn't require the raising of taxes, so it's easier to do politically.
- paulmd 10y agoDing ding ding. Under the modern American consensus, regulations on residential/commercial development are acceptable but public spending on housing is "socialism". Public housing is all downsides but the costs of urban sprawl are distributed among the community and commercial development costs primarily affects developers (and it's a lot cheaper to build parking lots than subway service at a reasonable density per unit area).
- pessimizer 10y ago> Credit cards make everything more expensive when the poor often can't use them due to bad credit. This makes sense. > Putting grocery stores in really upscale areas makes the groceries cost more (across all stores), even though the poor don't shop at the fancy stores. This does not. You've transitioned to talking about averages for some reason.
- grapehut 10y agoThey're not arguing against free parking, just against regulations that require certain amounts of parking to be built
- wvenable 10y agoUnfortunately insufficient parking is also a big issues; one in which these regulations are an attempt to solve. One could prevent less parking to be built but that would put more pressure on public roads. If you've ever been to an area with insufficient parking, it's pretty horrible. More so for people with cars but it affects those without cars as well.
- stuartaxelowen 10y agoIs it, really? Or is cars as the default transportation the problem? Come to Tokyo, you'll see how well things work with effectively no parking in general.
- zanny 10y agoIts an American problem, but it isn't one you just solve banning cars or something. Post-war US built up all its major metro areas on the hype for the automobile. Where European and Asian cities are walkable, American ones are not, and to try to retrofit car cities into public transit / bike / foot traffic is insanely expensive. Add to that America has a systemic car culture (there is a reason cars are all bigger in the US, and why it is pretty much the only market for pickup trucks) and you will never be in a position politically to transition elsewhere without destroying your favorability.
- geomark 10y ago"... pretty much the only market for pickup trucks" I thought, huh? 'cuz where I live it's pickup trucks as far as the eye can see. Turns out that my country has the highest per capita ownership of pickup trucks [1] [1] http://wardsauto.com/industry/pickup-trucks-reign-thailand http://wardsauto.com/industry/pickup-trucks-reign-thailand
- CalChris 10y agoCredit cards make everything more expensive Full stop. Credit cards provide a service and that service isn't free. It gets factored into prices. https://www.merchantmaverick.com/the-complete-guide-to-credit-card-processing-rates-and-fees/ https://www.merchantmaverick.com/the-complete-guide-to-credi... I'll add that Visa charges 1.43% - 2.4% of the transaction. I'd be curious to know what the cost of a cash transaction is as a percentage of the transaction. I doubt it climbs that high.
- trentmb 10y agoHandling cash ain't free. At a minimum, a certain amount must be kept on hand to make change. Then theres insurance on that cash. Then theres the safe (and registers) you have to buy to store the cash. Then theres the transport of the cash to the bank. Also, better hope your cashiers never make a mistake or accept a forged bill.
- thatcat 10y agoThese aspects also have some advantage - being handled on site means having employees that spend that money locally. All the credit card fees are effectively removed from the local economy.
- Godel_unicode 10y agoSo you think that companies who only take cash will pay higher wages thus keeping that money locally? I would assume that lower cost would lead to lower prices rather than higher wages.
- thatcat 10y agoNo, I think they would pay a net higher local labor cost and lower remote processing fees.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Thane 10y agoBezos owns WP. He doesn't like the fact that the city forces him to build built-in parking for his imported drones so they're not clogging the locals' ability to live in their own city.
- gohrt 10y agoSeattle locals are opposed to parking for exactly the reason the WaPo explains -- it's a subsidy paid by non-drivers to support drivers. Locals would do better if parking lanes were gone and buses had those lanes.
- TulliusCicero 10y ago> Credit cards make everything more expensive when the poor often can't use them due to bad credit. Does the government force businesses to accept credit cards? > Putting grocery stores in really upscale areas makes the groceries cost more (across all stores), even though the poor don't shop at the fancy stores. Does the government require this? > I'm sure what this article is arguing for. Leaving parking mostly up to the market, because there's no compelling public interest in forcing businesses or individuals to subsidize driving.
- andrewfromx 10y agoi can't wait for http://www.seasteading.org http://www.seasteading.org to take off and live where there are no cars. Or maybe http://freedomship.com http://freedomship.com is what I need as long as it has free wifi.
- 7Z7 10y ago>as long as it has free wifi. "You may pay for the cost of free-wifi even if you never go online"
- chunsj 10y agoYes, it can embed the cost. However the problem solving approach should be social one; more tax from who can afford, which means in this case, the car owners. Without social, community based approach, the solution surely become less protective and more discrimitive to poor people.
- dsfyu404ed 10y agoI don't disagree with the numbers but you could make this same argument for literally any feature of a business that has the affect of making that business more attractive to customers with Y quality (where Y is not something all customers have). Let's imagine that the parking lots of Walmart, $localSupermarketChain and other stores is cut to 1/4 it's present size. What happens then? I suspect the inability to draw wealthier customers from further away (because "why shop somewhere you can't find parking") would cause a price increase.
- choward 10y agoExactly. Let the businesses decide.
- tonmoy 10y agoThey specifically talk about the fact that cities require a minimum number of parking to be built for businesses and residences. Now, if this requirement wasn't present then economical forces would take over, places without parking would be ideal for less wealthy people because the prices would be lower.
- tzs 10y ago> Now, if this requirement wasn't present then economical forces would take over, places without parking would be ideal for less wealthy people because the prices would be lower. On the other hand, wouldn't those places tend to have fewer customers because people who are not willing or able to get their without driving will go someplace with more parking, and so would have to charge more per customer to cover fixed costs?
- snrplfth 10y agoMaybe, maybe not. But isn't that for the businesses to decide, depending on their needs? As it stands, large numbers of businesses (and residences, etc.) are required to have more parking than they ever need at any point. How does that make sense? Why can't the owners of a property determine how much it's worth to them?
- OJFord 10y agoI haven't read the actual study, but I don't really buy this on the basis of the article alone. Allocated parking that you're not using? Let it out. Abundant parking at supermarkets? Pfft - only in locations with an abundance of space anyway. At least in the UK, I'd argue that supermarkets with plenty of parking have lower prices than those without - since they're not in city centres.
- snrplfth 10y agoThe problem is that the requirements are so high, and demand the creation of so much parking (indeed, parking lots for commercial uses are generally required to be larger than the buildings they serve) that the price for parking is driven down to $0. Most parking lots in the suburban US fill up either never, or on a single day per year. The point is that forcing businesses to have excess parking imposes a real cost on them that they make up with prices increased over what they otherwise would have been.
- OJFord 10y agoOkay, I think I might retract my comment then, on the basis that this seems to be US-centric issue due to specific regulations. Definitely sounds odd, why is it that way? (I generally believe that even the maddest of regulations had sound reasoning at some point in time or for some circumstance, even if hypothetical!)
- snrplfth 10y agoWell, a lot of it originated around street parking. When cars were becoming very popular and common, they would generally be parked on the street. Of course, since most street parking spaces were not metered (that is, free parking) this meant that parking was constantly scarce. Huge parking congestion, conflict over spaces, etcetera. Even where the parking was metered, the price was usually set too low (since it was owned by municipalities, with no incentive to maximize revenue). So street parking was still congested everywhere, but the straightforward solution of just raising the price of street parking was too unpopular for most cities. This led, mostly post-1940s, to urban planners requiring homes, businesses and offices to have a minimum amount of parking. However, the way they usually determined the "appropriate minimum" was to estimate the maximum probable use: measuring the busiest day of the year at a shopping mall, or requiring one parking space per bedroom in a house, etcetera. This basically ensured that, no matter where you go, there's almost always parking available. However, this also means that most parking is never used. The secondary effect of this means that everything becomes surrounded by large amounts of parking, causing everything to be further apart, making driving much more appealing. Also, people become very accustomed to free parking, so anywhere that there is a parking shortage, they demand not better pricing, but more mandatory supply. In the US at least, you will typically only pay for parking in areas built before 1940. But it's not necessarily US-centric. While the US tends to have the most extreme parking minimums, they're common all over the world, from England to Malaysia.
- jedberg 10y agoThere was a study a while back that showed that the USA has eight times as many parking spaces as it has cars. At first that seems crazy, but it makes sense if you think about the fact that all the places you go in a day need to have enough parking to meet their peak demand all year, so places like malls have huge empty lots most of the year until Christmas rolls around. And then there is the spot your car is in at work that's empty at night and the spot you park in at home that's empty during the day. Another nice benefit of self driving cars that are shared is the major reduction in the need to all this excess parking.
- makecheck 10y agoThere is also the concept of “ground cover” in some places. I have seen office buildings create gigantic parking lots just to “occupy” all their land so that the land cannot be taken away later. If land is completely undeveloped then it can be reclaimed in some situations, e.g. someone decides they want to build a railway.
- honkhonkpants 10y agoBuilding a parking lot will in no way save you from the imminent domain powers of people who want to build roads and railroads. This strikes me as some kind of urban legend. Every place I've lived has mandated some ratio of parking to floor space in new office buildings, which is why office buildings are surrounded by parking.
- vadskye 10y agoPedantic correction: The term is "eminent domain". In fairness, if someone exercises the power of eminent domain, the domain will imminently be theirs, but that's neither here nor there.
- enraged_camel 10y agoThat said, under eminent domain the government is required to pay you the fair market price of the land it is taking from you. That's why it's in companies' best interest to not let their land sit undeveloped.
- pcr0 10y agoParking shouldn't be free. If it's to entice customers at a store/shopping mall, they can be provided an hour of parking for every x dollars spent. Under-utilised parking spots should be leased or sold. (They sell for 80-300k where I live)
- Keverw 10y ago80-300K for 1 parking spot or a whole lot?
- PebblesHD 10y agoFor reference, a single car space in Sydney sold for over $100k[0]... [0] - http://www.domain.com.au/news/kirribilli-car-spot-sells-for-120000-at-auction-20150613-ghn50z/ http://www.domain.com.au/news/kirribilli-car-spot-sells-for-...
- Keverw 10y agoOh wow. That is insane. I actually agree with houses including parking. Just seems like a common sense thing to do. Don't drive, use your garage for a startup, a gym or game room I guess.
- bbcbasic 10y agoIts no good unless it's negatively geared.
- pcr0 10y agoIt's crazy, but that's actually the typical price of a single space in Hong Kong. A single space here sold for 620k last month.
- pmiller2 10y agoAccording to http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2014/06/09/how-much-is-a-parking-spot-worth-in-s-f/ http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2014/06/09/how-much-is-a-p... depending on the location, a parking spot in SF can be worth anywhere from 25-100K. Anecdotally, this makes sense, since I've heard of parking spots costing $250-300/month to rent, which would be roughly the payment on a 30 year mortgage for 50-80K.
- drcode 10y ago1. Stores that offer free parking have more customers 2. Stores that have more customers can offer better prices to all their customers (including poor people) due to greater sales volumes
- kylec 10y agoI never shop anywhere I can't park at
- op00to 10y agoI only step foot in the mall when I must. I much prefer to walk to the corner grocery store or take the train to a downtown shopping district. I suppose we cancel each other out.
- s0rce 10y agoYou probably live in a walkable city with good public transit, the parent poster probably lives in the other 95% of the USA.
- TulliusCicero 10y agoAnd the reason transit sucks and cars are way more convenient in 95% of the USA is exactly what we're discussing: mandates from the government that prioritize cars over other modes.
- gbrs 10y agoI think the problem is that to transition to a public transit model would require the transportation to be built first. It would also require the public transit to operate at a loss for a decade or two while buildings and people transition to this new mode of transportation. Many people are against this in the US because it's expensive and nobody likes tax hikes. Also people love their cars.
- Thane 10y agoIf you can't see this article by the Bezos-owned Washington Post as a propaganda piece to push aside obstacles he faces in his redevelopment of Seattle, then you need to brush up on your critical thinking skills. Bezos gives fuck-all about the poor unless they're buying his products.
- h4nkoslo 10y agoMinimum parking requirements are also a mechanism to prevent businesses from declining to build parking and free-riding on their neighbors. They also effectively ensure maximum density, which in some areas is an explicit government policy objective.
- employee8000 10y agoI'm getting really sick of these media companies pushing their anti-rich agenda. Blaming rich people for parking that causes costs to rise for poor people is just insulting. I didn't believe in much liberal bias in the media until this election. This is simply another extent of it, it's really eye opening.
- gohrt 10y agoDo you have any reasoning to accompany your emotion? The news media of course has a an anti-status-quo bias. The status quo isn't news.
- employee8000 10y agoThey most definitely do not have an anti-status quo bias. They have an anti-right bias.
- cldellow 10y agoThe argument isn't blaming rich people for parking that causes costs to rise for poor people. The argument is: * mandatory parking is imposed by urban planners * mandatory parking raises costs for all people * poor people are less able to absorb the increased costs Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking goes into a lot of detail and approaches it from the point of view of planning theory. It's a good read, I recommend it.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoAlso, traffic lights, fire stations, rural mail deliver.... everything makes society expensive to some degree.
- jschwartzi 10y agoThe difference is that fire stations have some tangible benefit, like a form of mandatory insurance that pays out before your house and everything you own burns down.
- kazinator 10y ago> pay more for their groceries to ensure that richer people can park free when they drive to the store. That seems to assume that the richer people just park there "for free" and then don't buy anything. How much volume would that store move without those customers, and what would that do to the prices? Hard to say. On the one hand, there would be lower demand. On the other, worse economy of scale. Heaven fucking forbid that the poor pay even a tiny share for for something that doesn't directly benefit them. Paying for this and that which doesn't benefit oneself: isn't that squarely the job of the working class? Don't foist that onto the poor, or the rich.
- badsock 10y agoThe trucks that deliver the goods that poor people buy (and carry away the waste) are hard as hell on roads - you could say that the car drivers are subsidizing (through gasoline taxes) the massive infrastructure costs of maintaining a road network. I don't know how the numbers would balance out, but I'd bet that the benefits of that subsidy are greater than the costs incurred from free parking.
- op00to 10y agoYou're right and you're wrong - trucks generally don't pay the true cost of their road usage, but neither do motorists, at least through gas taxes and tolls. Much of our road funding comes from other sources like sales taxes and such. Which seems really funny when public transportation is constantly expected to pay for itself, but far more inefficient private motor vehicles don't have to pay their fair share.
- badsock 10y agoHere in Canada that's generally not the case: http://globalnews.ca/news/907665/ontario-motorist-fees-taxes-cover-majority-of-road-costs-study/ http://globalnews.ca/news/907665/ontario-motorist-fees-taxes... "The report released Thursday found Ontario road users driving cars, minivans, SUVs and light pickup trucks are paying 70 to 90 per cent of the costs of the road through fuel taxes, vehicle registration fees and tolls, to the tune of $7.5 billion a year." But the OP is a US article, so point taken!
- op00to 10y agoGreat point. Curious if that figure is talking about construction costs, maintenance costs, or a combination.
- dionidium 10y agoIn the U.S. most of a state's transportation budget comes from the U.S. government, but the largest state-level source in my state is fuel taxes: Source: http://www.modot.org/about/documents/FinancialSnapshot.pdf http://www.modot.org/about/documents/FinancialSnapshot.pdf (See the chart on page 3.)
- cobbzilla 10y agoI'm wondering what are the myriad other ways that low-income folks are silently taxed? higher interest rates, housing codes, regulatory compliance (leading to higher prices), and possibly even the minimum wage come to mind (I'm sure there's much more), thus always keeping "the basics" expensive enough to be out of reach.
- losteverything 10y ago<low-income folks are silently taxed? I worked at a hotel and a woman asked to use the phone. She said she was robbed earlier and has no money. She called the local priest to get a ride. It was to the motel where she lived that night. I drove her there and found out she worked at McDonald's. (Near the hotel). When I talked to the priest he said she was homeless. That she had a network of people that help her. That one instance made me realize how transportation especially a car was essential. Then - she uses same day places to cash her check. Keeps cash with her always since she has no bank. Has no phone number or address. How many silent taxes on her hurt entry back into my familiar society?
- snrplfth 10y agoAll of those things are substantial factors. Building codes are another big one - most of them have little to do with safety or health, but rather "buildings must be of such-and-such minimum niceness, and if you can't afford that, too bad, go somewhere else." And everybody standardizes on the same building codes, and pretty soon there is no "somewhere else" to go to.
- skrap 10y agoMy city just passed a bond measure which includes $36MM for a 300 space parking garage for the high school and city hall, literally meters from where a new light rail stop will be built. 25% of the city's families don't own a car. I have trouble not seeing this as a forced, direct subsidy for the lifestyle of the employees of the city. And this is supposedly one of the most transit-friendly cities around (in the US). But this is an enormous cost, for the benefit of so few... plus it will add 600 trips per day to some of our busiest local roads. Free parking has all sorts of problems, and when government gets in on the game it only raises more questions, in my mind. [edited to clarify that the city in question is in the USA]
- hackuser 10y agoA reasonable concern, but a few thoughts: * Increasing use of public transit benefits everyone, including by reducing greenhouse gas emissions * Almost everything government does benefits some citizens more than others. Police help some more than others; some make more use of the water system, fire department, the courts, health care, other forms of transit, Social Security, etc. I want my society to provide those services to those who need them; I need some services myself some days.
- CalRobert 10y ago"Increasing use of public transit benefits everyone, including by reducing greenhouse gas emissions" Which would be a good reason to put housing and amenities near the station instead of parking...
- dsfyu404ed 10y agoThat does nothing to help existing residents utilize the rail station.
- skrap 10y agoIn this case, the city is only 4.3 square miles, and there's enough homes within walking distance to saturate the new transit stop. The garage isn't a commuter rail parking lot. Rather, it's a parking lot for people working at the school and city hall, on the presumption that they won't want to take the light rail to work.
- zensavona 10y agoAnd you know what? In countries with free healthcare the healthy pay for the care of the sick, even when they are healthy. Doesn't make it a bad system.
- jschwartzi 10y agoSo are you saying that the poor are like healthy people, and the wealthy are like sick people who need the help of the poor?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- vondur 10y agoHere in my part of the greater Los Angeles area, in the poorer areas, you will see most houses with more than a few cars in each house. In my area we have some people who have more than five cars/household for houses that are probably no larger than 1500 sq. ft.
- tn13 10y agoSo in principle WaPo or anyone else willing except that it is immoral to create regulations about X where people who do not benefit from X end up paying for it ? Will WaPo argue the case to abolish things like college education subsidies where people who never even go to college end up subsidizing those who do ? While WaPo is absolutely right in stating the facts it may or may not be bad for the poor people. I live in Sunnyvale and prefer to work around Sunnyvale precisely because of the ample parking spaces everywhere. If the regulations don't exist for those spaces I might consider moving to some other place where they have more parking space. Poor people benefit by having well off people living around them for many number of reasons.
- tn13 10y ago*accept
- TulliusCicero 10y ago> So in principle WaPo or anyone else willing except that it is immoral to create regulations about X where people who do not benefit from X end up paying for it ? No, it's a given that subsidies happen all the time. But there needs to be (or should be, rather) a compelling public interest in doing so. For forcing businesses to build parking all over the place, there isn't one; to the extent that their customers desire parking, businesses will build it so that they can get those customers. Requiring parking just means that in cases where they don't need to build parking, they still do, which is a waste.
- readme 10y agoImplicitly, the author assumes that a car would be the last thing this hypothetical poor person would purchase. There are in fact, many impoverished homeless people who live in cars. In this case, they might find themselves parking in one of those abundant spaces. I wonder when the last time she walked by a walmart was.
- jschwartzi 10y agoIt's a catch-22, because they have to buy the car to get anywhere, and now that they have the car they can't afford to live anywhere, and because everyone else owns a car nobody will build places that don't require a car.
- TulliusCicero 10y agoThe irony in this post is tremendous. The whole reason so many poor people in the US still own cars is precisely because of these kinds of pro-car regulations! In western Europe, a poor person owning a car is much less common, because transit works well enough that they don't really need it, and driving is an expensive activity.
- snrplfth 10y agoThat's how these kinds of regulations frequently get ratcheted up. A: "It's nice to have lots of parking available everywhere! Let's make it mandatory." B:"But now everything is far apart, and I need a car to do anything." A:"Hm, good point. Well, then we will make sure there's even more parking than anybody ever needs, so it doesn't cost you anything to park anywhere." B:"What about letting the market decide?" A:"The market? Why do you hate the poor?!"
- JDDunn9 10y agoThis topic is discussed at length in the book, "Green Metropolis". It's part of a bigger issue of always putting cars first. You can't build a large building without first doing a traffic study. If you bring too much traffic, you can't build it. Never mind that traffic is about the only cost in America that you can increase to make public transportation more appealing. Generally U.S. building codes include a maximum building height, and require minimum parking spaces. Many European cities have maximum parking spaces, and minimum building height. The latter produces higher population densities which make public transportation possible. We need to push back against suburban sprawl and the car-first design. No required parking, no free curbside parking, and a carbon tax on gasoline. Once cities get a population density >7 people per acre, public transportation becomes viable. Population density follows a logarithmic curve with miles traveled per person, so you get as much of a reduction from moving from 2 to 20 people per square acre, as from 20 to 200.
- closeparen 10y agoI propose a fundamental principle that should be obvious, but apparently isn't. Public policy should aim to improve average quality of life in the short, medium, and long terms. We live in low-population-density areas because we get more, higher quality housing for less money, shorter lines, less crowded public places. We drive instead of taking transit because we get where we're going faster and more comfortably, sitting down, with our personal space bubbles intact. Everything is tradeoffs. You can already make these tradeoffs for yourself by moving to SF or Manhattan, which is generally ill-advised unless you make so much that the astronomical housing costs don't hurt too badly. Why should the rest of us be required to make these tradeoffs? What are we getting in return? 'Cause it sure isn't better commutes or better homes. If your argument is long-term sustainability, we have electric cars now and we've had nuclear power for quite some time, and a public policy kick in that direction is, I'd argue, critical to long-term quality of life.
- jschwartzi 10y agoPart of the purpose of a public place is for people to be around other people. Considering that, isn't it counterproductive to actively work to make them less crowded?
- spectrum1234 10y agoThis is pretty obvious right? A few years ago in the US there was talk about requiring the 1st checked airline bag to be free. This is the same thing. The bill was put forward by a respected politician. These are the types of issues that make me think educating the public on this stuff is incredibly important.
- pmiller2 10y agoCome on, now, why was the title changed? The originally submitted title, "Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car," is the title of the article, and it's true, not click bait at all.
- dang 10y agoBecause the 'poor people' angle is a red herring and thus arguably misleading, and perhaps clickbait as well since it makes the story more sensational. Those are the two reasons why titles should be changed on HN, as described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. The article's actual argument is that free parking forces people who don't drive to subsidize those who do. That's a sentence from the article, so it could make a legit title, but in this case we picked another representative sentence, from the article's second paragraph. Either of those seems fine to me. Edit: ok, since we got other complaints and this is a borderline call anyhow, we've restored the "Poor people..." title.
- pmiller2 10y agoSorry, but no. Although the sequence of words "You may pay for the cost of parking...." does appear in the article, it is at best a trite gloss of the article's thesis. And as for the 'poor people' angle, the article runs 426 words according to the word count facility in OpenOffice Writer, of which ~100 are devoted to the effects on the poor. The article's title is neither misleading nor clickbait.
- upofadown 10y agoBut the poor people thing is the main thrust of the article. >"People who are too poor to own a car," Shoup writes in the University of California's ACCESS Magazine, "pay more for their groceries to ensure that richer people can park free when they drive to the store." You could argue that the article is in itself overly sensational but the title is accurate.
- sfifs 10y agoMost of the commenters on this thread don't appear to have lived in a country with the opposite problem. Consider what happens when development and car ownership expands in a country without adequate government parking mandates. You routinely find at least two road lanes blocked by parked traffic because buildings don't have adequate parking. This leads to very slow bumper to bumper traffic (try Bangalore, Mumbai, Cairo, Manila), higher air pollution leading to a public health crisis, waste of time, higher green house emissions etc. When calculating "rental increases", articles like these conveniently forget externalities that would result from jot providing for parking.
- nopinsight 10y agoA factor rarely mentioned is heat. People in tropical climate do not enjoy walking even relatively short distance because of its hot and humid weather during most of the year. Middle-class people in dense tropical cities with traffic problems still buy a car as soon as they can afford it. Coupled with barebone funding for and low quality of public transportation, the traffic problem gets worse and worse as people become more affluent and cities get denser. Bangkok was a legendary example, where its skytrain only recently helped mitigate the problems for those rich enough to afford a place to stay close to one of its stops.
- gambiting 10y agoIt works the other way around too. In countries where the temperatures drop down to -20C, you really don't want to be standing outside waiting for a bus or a tram, even if it's "only" 30 minutes. Any shitty old car is better than waiting outside.
- adrianN 10y agoHere in Berlin most buses run every 5-10 minutes.
- 6t6t6t6 10y agoI'm afraid that you are comparing pears and oranges. If you want to be fair, compare American cities with European cities. In Barcelona or the center of Copenhagen, there are not free parking spaces. And I can assure you that there are not the traffic issues that you are mentioning in your comment... It's quite on the contrary, actually.
- _Codemonkeyism 10y agoEverything there is to know "The High Cost of Free Parking" by Donald Shoup
- briandear 10y agoSo we could argue that drivers are subsidizing the cost of mostly unused handicapped parking spaces as well. I'll see a parking lot with dozens of these spaces almost chronically unused, but since the ADA requires a certain (arbitrary) number of handicapped spots, businesses are forced to build an excess capacity of these spots despite many of them sitting unused, except occasionally by the Jaguar owner who is friends with a doctor. A strange thing is that you have handicapped parking requirements yet the NYC subway is still not even close to being Accessible for those in wheelchairs. A suburban Target is required to have something like 90 handicapped spaces (obviously I'm exaggerating,) but the NYC subway still has huge swatches of stations that are accessible only by stairs. How NYC gets away with this is beyond me -- they can force businesses to bend over backwards to accommodate the disabled, but they themselves don't do much of anything to improve the public transportation situation for the disabled. (or even moms with strollers and kids.) If anyone wants to know why public transportation isn't a bigger thing for families -- it's because going to a grocery store with a kid(s) in a stroller via the subway is a nightmare. -- not even talking about carrying your purchases home. Buying a weeks worth of groceries and then carrying all that home on a crowded bus or train with a kid in tow? No thanks.
- TulliusCicero 10y ago> So we could argue that drivers are subsidizing the cost of mostly unused handicapped parking spaces as well. Sure, and we do this because there's a compelling public interest in requiring businesses to cater to the handicapped, where market incentives alone would probably not work. What compelling public interest is there in forcing businesses to cater to all drivers that market incentives wouldn't work for?
- edblarney 10y agoBuild wicked fast trains and tons of subways and people will use them when they make sense to use them. A high speed along DC-Boston corridor that stopped in downtown of major cities would be full all day, every day.
- mseebach 10y agoYes, heavy-handed government regulations (to which planning belongs) means that you pay, directly or indirectly, for a lot of things you never use.
- tjic 10y agoMeh. You also pay for the cost of public parks even if you never use them. You pay for the cost of government elementary schools even if you homeschool your kids. etc. Now, I'm an anarchocapitalist and would love to see all of these costs unbundled, so that we each pay only for what we use. ...but the other 99.9% of folks in our society think that it is reasonable to have one-size-fits-all solutions, where a single basket of goods is created and handed to everyone, regardless of whether they want it or not. To say "yes, I still want that policy, but I want EXACTLY the bundle of goods that I want forced on everyone, not some other basket of goods" seems like special pleading.
- languagewars 10y agoI find this a little different than your examples since it is government forcing your actions within the private market, not forcing you to pay for its bundle of services. There is no cost to the system to stop doing this one, it just would make car drivers as frustrated as dog owners when they shop for an apartment in a metro area. Given how much funding already goes to roads I would say enough is enough. But there is a risk of more long distance commuters, and it is hard to claw back the subsidies that make them.
- ue_ 10y ago>Now, I'm an anarchocapitalist and would love to see all of these costs unbundled, so that we each pay only for what we use. Anarchocapitalism isn't anarchistic, as capitalism necessarily entails the establishment of at least two classes: the proletariat and bourgeoisie, defined in terms of the relationship to the means of production. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/daibhidh-anarcho-hucksters-there-is-nothing-anarchistic-about-capitalism https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/daibhidh-anarcho-huc...
- jessaustin 10y agoThat seems unrelated to the discussion. If GP had said, "I'm a blueberry muffin and would love to see all of these costs unbundled...", could you have responded differently?
- mac01021 10y agoThe same phenomenon applies to credit cards, for which all the merchants bake the processing fees into the prices of goods and services whether you pay with a card or not. I'm not sure which instance of this phenomenon incurs the greater cost for most people, though.
- majewsky 10y agoSome shops in Germany require cash below a certain threshold (anywhere between 3€ and 10€) because of card transaction fees (which are in the 5-10 cent range as far as I'm told).
- zdragnar 10y ago...And I pay for public schools even though I do not and will not have children. I'm not complaining, mind you, but of the problems we could be trying to solve, this seems like a relatively low priority. My state also passed a sales tax (you know, the regressive kind) intended to preserve natural resources and cultural heritage, and most of the money has gone to art projects in the major metropolitan area that are mostly unappreciated. The point here is, yes, governments waste money, but making parking easier is hardly the worst offense.
- snrplfth 10y agoBut it's a large deadweight on the economy. It requires the production of considerable amounts of parking that is never, or almost never, used or needed by anybody. It makes parking easier only by hiding the cost of parking in everything else, in a wholly regressive way. And it's not a "commons problem" like air pollution - it's just the government deciding that a particular private good is nice, and everybody should be forced to provide it. It's silly.
- zdragnar 10y agoThat precisely describes the example I gave (sales tax that funds pointless art projects noone likes), except the cost to the economy, and the impact on the poor, is readily quantifiable, unlike hypotheses of various opportunity costs regarding parking. Saying all parking is funded the same way and has the same externalities is both reductionist and absurd. Furthermore, what value empty lots provide is entirely up to the people who control them; several around here are used for farmers markets and other activities outside of peak time usage. We've got light rail and buses where I live; one of the light rail lines was poorly planned and is now subsidised somewhere around $20-30 per passenger per trip. Another was promised to ease traffic congestion and revitalize several neighborhoods along the path; it has done neither and has arguably made both worse (traffic has to stop when it goes by, and the horns contribute significant noise pollution) and driven down property values to a certain degree. Basically, costs are relative, and arguing over parking is far less productive than what we could be working on in our communities.
- eat_your_potato 10y agoIf you have an empty parking space in your apartment, well just rent the spot
- jessaustin 10y agoSince excess parking is required by law, everyone will just park somewhere else rather than renting my spot.
- calvinbhai 10y agoI used to believe this for a long time, but now I dont. Here's why: If there was a Walmart that had zero parking lots, only those without cars would do business with that Walmart. That'd probably be 1/10th or 1/100th the revenue compared to that of a Walmart with a parking lot. Its because people with cars come in and purchase more and larger stuff, revenue goes up. The increased revenue justifies the cost of building such a parking lot or a structure. Now, this argument holds true, only if there's a Walmart that has a huge parking lot and is always empty. fwiw: I think these are the types of articles paid for by TNCs like Uber and Lyft, to popularize the idea of getting rid of parking everywhere so that their market expands. (I'm not judjing, but this is my observation).
- andy_ppp 10y agoThe canonical opposite example of this is a nationalised healthcare system. Rich people pay for a healthcare system that they don't use. Due to economies of scale the NHS in the UK costs less than half the money the American systems costs and has better outcomes. The government in the UK being very right wing are slowly trying to destroy the service. Numerous mostly Tory MPs are paid cash by private healthcare providers! [1] http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/selling-nhs-profit-full-list-4646154 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/selling-nhs-profit-full... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/03/healthcare-companies-links-tories-nhs-contracts https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/03/healthcare-...
- nsgi 10y agoThought the title was saying poor people buy parking to alleviate their feelings of not being able to afford a car. Seemed like an interesting sociological phenomenon.
- pc2g4d 10y agoI'm feeling more attuned than usual to the fact that I inhabit a filter bubble. Thus I observe the preponderance of anti-car posts on Hacker News and wonder, what's the other side of this issue? What are the arguments in favor of sprawl and car-first development? Surely it's more complicated than just "cars are evil, why don't we change this!?"
- chiefalchemist 10y ago1) Any economist will tell you, NOTHING is "free." 2) Like it or not, one hand subsidizing the other is the DNA of any social contract. In a perfect world, it would be ideally otherwise. We don't live in a perfect world.