14 ms·

All of those properties you specify are very true, but they are also very clearly luxuries. If you want immediate travel to anywhere at any time in any conditi

All of those properties you specify are very true, but they are also very clearly luxuries. If you want immediate travel to anywhere at any time in any conditions, you should be expected to pay the cost of it - cities and property owners shouldn't have to bear the cost for you by subsidizing the costs of your travel and vehicle storage. If people are willing to pay the full costs of parking, the market should sort this problem out for itself as paid parking garages fill in the gap left behind by free parking. But what the article is saying is that in cities where parking is not free or not required by law, the market chooses to provide far fewer parking spaces that the minimum parking laws tend to require.

sokoloff 10y ago
Merchants in that city area might very well wish to bear those costs in exchange for having people who can afford the luxury of a private car be inclined to shop at that merchant instead of at another, more accommodating merchant area or online.
- bdhess 10y ago
  It shouldn't just be up to the merchants, though. It's a decision that has externalities. Providing space for parking, for example, limits the density of space available for other uses, which makes the whole area less pedestrian friendly.
  - pg314 10y ago
    Other externalities: more traffic, hence more noise, more pollution, more traffic accidents.
- wtvanhest 10y ago
  That is exactly what validating parking is for.
- rexf 10y ago
  Agreed, I live in LA (near downtown) and places that have some amount of easy/free parking will be patronized much more than other places (even if the latter has higher quality goods/services).
- imgabe 10y ago
  Then remove the regulation that requires developers to bear the cost of building parking spaces and simply let merchants choose to pay to build them if they want to. Some merchants may feel that the additional cost of a parking structure is worthwhile, others may not. The market will sort out which ones are correct.
  - saurik 10y ago
    (I am an elected politician on the Board of Directors of a special district, one power of which is related to residential parking permits, and am additionally on a community committee working on improving the parking situation in the business area; my job on this committee is to do the actual outreach to local businesses. Note also that I am someone who believes in decreasing the use of cars.) Your suggestion essentially turns into a game theory problem of "is it better to construct parking for my business or be located next to a business that was dumb enough to construct parking, as many of my customers who really would have wanted parking will end up just parking there, they will get the ire of anyone who actually gets towed, and that assumes they also have any good mechanism to decide who to tow anyway.
    - TJ-14 10y ago
      In my city it's common for large retailers to provide parking lots at a cost. If you buy something, the cashier gives you a stamp that nulls your parking charge. Anyone can park, but free for customers. There's ways to game it, but it seems a workable solution.
      - narrowrail 10y ago
        I've only seen parking validation for private garages. Are your parking spaces owned by the city, and retailers can still validate for downtown, on-street parking?
    - wbl 10y ago
      Parking lots can exclude people. It isn't a public good.
- rayiner 10y ago
  > Apple is building 11,000 parking spaces not because it wants to but because Cupertino, the suburban city where the new headquarters is located, demands it. Cupertino has a requirement for every building. They may well do so. But the point of this article is that municipal ordinances don't give property owners the choice: > Apple is building 11,000 parking spaces not because it wants to but because Cupertino, the suburban city where the new headquarters is located, demands it. Cupertino has a requirement for every building.
- celticninja 10y ago
  This is already the case with some places that provide free customer parking but most city centres still provide free or low cost parking for personal vehicles at a cost to the city which is effectively a subsidy for merchants in that city.
  - sokoloff 10y ago
    Yes, it's a subsidy to the merchants who, in turn, pay to the city property tax and sales tax. Merchants decide where to locate in part based on traffic counts (vehicle and pedestrian). Places that are more valuable to merchants are more valuable to the city (property taxes and sales taxes are higher). It's economically logical for the city to consider whether to offer this investment/subsidy.
    - narrowrail 10y ago
      I know that in Boulder (CO), the downtown parking spaces that are on the street are owned by the city, and merchants were paying people to feed people's meters b/c they felt parking tickets were driving people away. Edit: I should put this in context: The merchants felt the city (which collects sales tax revenue) would benefit by subsidizing parking, which allows for more traffic and theoretically leads to increased sales (more tax dollars). The city saw parking tickets as a greater source of revenue, and felt increasing enforcement was the better plan. The merchants paid meter-feeders selectively, so as to encourage locals who are a more consistent source of revenue.
  - ams6110 10y ago
    > most city centres still provide free or low cost parking Not sure about "most." Even in smaller cities free street parking is getting pretty rare. My town charges $1/hr for meters and it's clearly too cheap because it's still hard to find a spot most times. Certainly in urban centers like downtown Chicago there is no such thing as free parking, even at hotels and office buildings.
- sturp 10y ago
  People who arrive by car spend less, not more. Rather than reflecting the luxurious lifestyle of its owner cars are burdens to most people.
  - sokoloff 10y ago
    People who arrive by car spend more than people who never arrive to that merchant.
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    I don't know what is your basis for that claim. Looking at actual figures for different places where I live (Finland, which has many places with very good public transport options) shows that people who come by car spend substantially more money when they come shopping.
    - sturp 10y ago
      If that's true in Finland which I don't doubt I suggest that is a reflection of the very different built environment of that country compared to the USA. In the USA there have been several studies on the question and all have determined that arrival by car is associated with lower spending. Here is one: http://kellyjclifton.com/Research/EconImpactsofBicycling/OTRECReport-ConsBehavTravelChoices_Nov2012.pdf http://kellyjclifton.com/Research/EconImpactsofBicycling/OTR... Here is a roundup of numerous case studies. http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2015/03/the-complete-business-case-for-converting-street-parking-into-bike-lanes/387595/ http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2015/03/the-complete-busine...
    - Fricken 10y ago
      I think he got his first sentence backwards, his second sentence contradicts it.
  - IncRnd 10y ago
    I have no idea what part of the world you live, but near me cars are neither luxurious nor a burden to people. It seems like car angst could be a symptom of big city overcrowding. Overcrowding isn't a car problem. It's a problem of too many people in an area.
- Doctor_Fegg 10y ago
  I'm (inter alia) a merchant - chairman of a deli and cafe in a small town. Our whole district (West Oxfordshire, England) has free parking and it's killing us. People pass up shops they could walk or cycle to, like ours, in favour of shops they can drive to (in the nearest large town). There's no up-front cost to driving, and walking takes effort, so why not drive? The result of the local free parking policy has been that two large town centres in the district are thriving; everywhere else is dead; and the roads are clogged with traffic.
  - matwood 10y ago
    There is clearly more to the story than just free parking. My guess is those town centers have a larger variety of stores and possibly better prices.
eximius 10y ago
I very much enjoy my vehicle, so I am biased... BUT... Freedom of Movement is very much not a luxury. You might argue that lacking these 'luxuries' does not prevent you from going anywhere, but it is very much a restriction of otherwise freer movement Also, it ignores the inherent timeliness our society has developed which make lower variance delays much more desireable.
- notatoad 10y ago
  Freedom of movement is not a luxury, and i never said it was. But travelling in a personal vehicle is absolutely a luxury. If you truly believe that freedom of movement is a right that should be applied to everyone, you should be arguing in favour of improved public transit and any other solution that isn't a personal vehicle, because personal vehicles aren't accessible to everybody. In addition to being financially out of reach for many, they cannot be used by the visually impaired and by people with certain motor function impairments, the young, or the old. Something as important as freedom of movement should be serviced by something that is accessible to all.
  - oceanghost 10y ago
    You are grasping at straws.
    - drdeadringer 10y ago
      How?
  - scythe 10y ago
    Using disabled people as a bludgeon to deprive the middle class isn't sticking up for the little guy, it's abusive. Disabled people have problems on trains, too: elevators are often broken and it's hard to move in a crowd. There are simply disadvantages to being less able, which is not the same thing as being deprived of your ability to do something by someone who holds power over you. Insisting on the equivalence of such a thing brings to mind the character O'Brien from a certain dystopian fiction. Traveling in a personal vehicle affords drastically more freedom of movement (you are literally in control of your movement) than any form of public transport and while it's not necessarily a need that should be subsidized by the state it is nonetheless a curtailment on freedom when the state deliberately makes it less convenient than it had been.
plafl 10y ago
By that reasoning we should eliminate public mass transport and someone will fill the gap. However, I think it would be an error too.
- CalRobert 10y ago
  Well, if we did that in tandem with eliminating public roads we could see what happens. Public transportation does exist outside of the government-subsidized model; see the jitneys in New York for an example.
- notatoad 10y ago
  I think that if we were to follow that reasoning to the point of eliminating public transit, it would have to be eliminating all public transport subsidies: if all roads were toll roads and the tolls needed to cover the full cost of building and maintaining the roads, and there was no public parking, i think private mass transit would probably be successful. (not that i think going that far would be a good idea. But it's important to realize just how much public money is spent maintaining infrastructure for private vehicles. eliminating free parking would be a very small portion of the subsidy.)
- mahyarm 10y ago
  There is a lot of regulation preventing people from making their own public transport. Things like taxi medallions and a ban on dollar van lines.
platz 10y ago
> luxuries Well that's your opinion, at least I find the framing and connotations of that word problematic here, but I agree to let the market sort it out.
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  Except that the market isn't sorting it out. Do you think government regulations mandating free and abundant parking come from the market? It's amazing how many people in America think our car-dominant culture is just the result of market forces. The truth is that land use for transportation is zero sum enough to make market forces impossible to use in the way we expect for most consumer services. If you want choices, the best option is to support multi-modal transportation, which in most US cities means reallocating resources away from cars (who currently have almost all the resources) and towards walking, biking, and transit.
  - platz 10y ago
    I was claiming that markets should sort it out, not that they are sorting them out
    - pg314 10y ago
      What makes you think that markets would be any good at sorting things out? The externalities of car usage (such as air and noise pollution, traffic accident victims) are ignored by the free market. Furthermore, the 'traffic' market has a tendency towards monopolies: more people using cars means less people using public transportation making the latter less profitable, resulting in worse service, leading to even less people using it... Free markets need very specific conditions to lead to the optimal solution. I don't think the transportation market fits the requirements.
      - baddox 10y ago
        Air and noise pollution are probably reasonable examples, but I don't think traffic accident victims are.
taurath 10y ago
Those are luxuries like a cell phone is a luxury. There does come a point where there's no acceptable alternative - a 1 hour bus line I know through the city of Seattle takes 10 minutes by car. Why should the city and property owners have to subsidize cars? They shouldn't, but they need some way for people to get to them and flow people through the city, or they will cease to exist.
- plandis 10y ago
  I don't even own a car in Seattle. It's clearly not a necessity as I, my fiancé, and several of our friends are all careless and do just fine. If anything its drivers that do stupid stuff like block bus lanes, don't know how to merge, etc... that are a bigger problem to public transit.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    > It's clearly not a necessity as I, my fiancé, and several of our friends are all careless and do just fine. Please consider people living in other circumstances and with other responsibilities before making blanket statements for all based on the experience of yourself and your close social group. It's entirely possibly that you and your group do not encompass all the situations that may be found. For example, having a child makes not having a car extremely problematic. Being 30-60 minutes late to pick up you child is often unacceptable, and in many circumstances (such as childcare) may net you quite large fees if it happens often.
    - revelation 10y ago
      Yes, clearly it's a problem to not have a car when living a lifestyle designed entirely around a car. We get that, we can skip the 100 identical posts that have appeared and are yet to appear. The point is: what are you going to do about it? Because clearly city populations are growing and people are exceedingly unhappy with vastly subsidizing a shrinking minority that expects to drive door-to-door, or better yet, lives in a cheap suburb but expects city dwellers to sacrifice money and space for their daily commute. I think you will find in places that cater much less to cars people are very understanding if you miss a bus. Though likely they won't notice, because there are simply more buses and transit options around, so your delay won't be an hour. It seems getting rid of free parking, as suggested by the OP, is a good start, no?
Shivetya 10y ago
they are luxuries many can afford and based on watching emerging economies or those who gained economic freedom to own they are something many aspire too. costs in cities are artificially high and I doubt property and usage taxes would support many "affordable" high rise parking decks. the double whammy here is the less available parking in town means less chance of EV charging too. then again that has shown that where free you get the same issue if not worse (got to love people who disconnect your car for you)
aidenn0 10y ago
The problem is that if all other cities nearby provide a free luxury, and you don't, then you become a ghetto. In particular merchants with free parking nearby will do much better than merchants without free parking nearby, so eliminating free parking in just one area will put all of those merchants out of business (as people drive to other areas to shop).
dsfyu404ed 10y ago
A fast reliable Internet connection is also very clearly a luxury. What's your point?
Evolved 10y ago
I have paid for all those luxuries. Car = I paid for it out of the money I earned Roads = I pay for them with my taxes Parking = I pay for this either by being a customer of your business or, if you're a landlord, by paying you rent every month. Making free parking into pay parking or making pay parking into more expensive pay parking will serve to decrease traffic, but at what cost? Once you monetize it or make it more expensive than a reasonable price it practically begs to become corrupt. The end result is only incentives to increase parking costs via tools such as premium/VIP parking. Theoretically, a premium spot could pop up and would normally be a regularly priced spot when the inventory of other spots dwindles. The spot itself isn't actually any closer to the destination for the customer but is just more expensive. Sure, you could argue that this is how supply and demand works but that only really applies to supply of goods for which there are similar alternatives. If you raise prices on parking, why not raise prices on public transportation as well, and if you're raising those prices then who is going to stop the taxis and ride-hailing apps (Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, etc.) from raising their prices as well? You haven't actually solved any problems. You've just made more money.

sokoloff 10y ago

Merchants in that city area might very well wish to bear those costs in exchange for having people who can afford the luxury of a private car be inclined to shop at that merchant instead of at another, more accommodating merchant area or online.

bdhess 10y ago
It shouldn't just be up to the merchants, though. It's a decision that has externalities. Providing space for parking, for example, limits the density of space available for other uses, which makes the whole area less pedestrian friendly.
- pg314 10y ago
  Other externalities: more traffic, hence more noise, more pollution, more traffic accidents.
wtvanhest 10y ago
That is exactly what validating parking is for.
rexf 10y ago
Agreed, I live in LA (near downtown) and places that have some amount of easy/free parking will be patronized much more than other places (even if the latter has higher quality goods/services).
imgabe 10y ago
Then remove the regulation that requires developers to bear the cost of building parking spaces and simply let merchants choose to pay to build them if they want to. Some merchants may feel that the additional cost of a parking structure is worthwhile, others may not. The market will sort out which ones are correct.
- saurik 10y ago
  (I am an elected politician on the Board of Directors of a special district, one power of which is related to residential parking permits, and am additionally on a community committee working on improving the parking situation in the business area; my job on this committee is to do the actual outreach to local businesses. Note also that I am someone who believes in decreasing the use of cars.) Your suggestion essentially turns into a game theory problem of "is it better to construct parking for my business or be located next to a business that was dumb enough to construct parking, as many of my customers who really would have wanted parking will end up just parking there, they will get the ire of anyone who actually gets towed, and that assumes they also have any good mechanism to decide who to tow anyway.
  - TJ-14 10y ago
    In my city it's common for large retailers to provide parking lots at a cost. If you buy something, the cashier gives you a stamp that nulls your parking charge. Anyone can park, but free for customers. There's ways to game it, but it seems a workable solution.
    - narrowrail 10y ago
      I've only seen parking validation for private garages. Are your parking spaces owned by the city, and retailers can still validate for downtown, on-street parking?
  - wbl 10y ago
    Parking lots can exclude people. It isn't a public good.
rayiner 10y ago
> Apple is building 11,000 parking spaces not because it wants to but because Cupertino, the suburban city where the new headquarters is located, demands it. Cupertino has a requirement for every building. They may well do so. But the point of this article is that municipal ordinances don't give property owners the choice: > Apple is building 11,000 parking spaces not because it wants to but because Cupertino, the suburban city where the new headquarters is located, demands it. Cupertino has a requirement for every building.
celticninja 10y ago
This is already the case with some places that provide free customer parking but most city centres still provide free or low cost parking for personal vehicles at a cost to the city which is effectively a subsidy for merchants in that city.
- sokoloff 10y ago
  Yes, it's a subsidy to the merchants who, in turn, pay to the city property tax and sales tax. Merchants decide where to locate in part based on traffic counts (vehicle and pedestrian). Places that are more valuable to merchants are more valuable to the city (property taxes and sales taxes are higher). It's economically logical for the city to consider whether to offer this investment/subsidy.
  - narrowrail 10y ago
    I know that in Boulder (CO), the downtown parking spaces that are on the street are owned by the city, and merchants were paying people to feed people's meters b/c they felt parking tickets were driving people away. Edit: I should put this in context: The merchants felt the city (which collects sales tax revenue) would benefit by subsidizing parking, which allows for more traffic and theoretically leads to increased sales (more tax dollars). The city saw parking tickets as a greater source of revenue, and felt increasing enforcement was the better plan. The merchants paid meter-feeders selectively, so as to encourage locals who are a more consistent source of revenue.
- ams6110 10y ago
  > most city centres still provide free or low cost parking Not sure about "most." Even in smaller cities free street parking is getting pretty rare. My town charges $1/hr for meters and it's clearly too cheap because it's still hard to find a spot most times. Certainly in urban centers like downtown Chicago there is no such thing as free parking, even at hotels and office buildings.
sturp 10y ago
People who arrive by car spend less, not more. Rather than reflecting the luxurious lifestyle of its owner cars are burdens to most people.
- sokoloff 10y ago
  People who arrive by car spend more than people who never arrive to that merchant.
- ptaipale 10y ago
  I don't know what is your basis for that claim. Looking at actual figures for different places where I live (Finland, which has many places with very good public transport options) shows that people who come by car spend substantially more money when they come shopping.
  - sturp 10y ago
    If that's true in Finland which I don't doubt I suggest that is a reflection of the very different built environment of that country compared to the USA. In the USA there have been several studies on the question and all have determined that arrival by car is associated with lower spending. Here is one: http://kellyjclifton.com/Research/EconImpactsofBicycling/OTRECReport-ConsBehavTravelChoices_Nov2012.pdf http://kellyjclifton.com/Research/EconImpactsofBicycling/OTR... Here is a roundup of numerous case studies. http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2015/03/the-complete-business-case-for-converting-street-parking-into-bike-lanes/387595/ http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2015/03/the-complete-busine...
  - Fricken 10y ago
    I think he got his first sentence backwards, his second sentence contradicts it.
- IncRnd 10y ago
  I have no idea what part of the world you live, but near me cars are neither luxurious nor a burden to people. It seems like car angst could be a symptom of big city overcrowding. Overcrowding isn't a car problem. It's a problem of too many people in an area.
Doctor_Fegg 10y ago
I'm (inter alia) a merchant - chairman of a deli and cafe in a small town. Our whole district (West Oxfordshire, England) has free parking and it's killing us. People pass up shops they could walk or cycle to, like ours, in favour of shops they can drive to (in the nearest large town). There's no up-front cost to driving, and walking takes effort, so why not drive? The result of the local free parking policy has been that two large town centres in the district are thriving; everywhere else is dead; and the roads are clogged with traffic.
- matwood 10y ago
  There is clearly more to the story than just free parking. My guess is those town centers have a larger variety of stores and possibly better prices.

eximius 10y ago

I very much enjoy my vehicle, so I am biased... BUT... Freedom of Movement is very much not a luxury. You might argue that lacking these 'luxuries' does not prevent you from going anywhere, but it is very much a restriction of otherwise freer movement Also, it ignores the inherent timeliness our society has developed which make lower variance delays much more desireable.

notatoad 10y ago
Freedom of movement is not a luxury, and i never said it was. But travelling in a personal vehicle is absolutely a luxury. If you truly believe that freedom of movement is a right that should be applied to everyone, you should be arguing in favour of improved public transit and any other solution that isn't a personal vehicle, because personal vehicles aren't accessible to everybody. In addition to being financially out of reach for many, they cannot be used by the visually impaired and by people with certain motor function impairments, the young, or the old. Something as important as freedom of movement should be serviced by something that is accessible to all.
- oceanghost 10y ago
  You are grasping at straws.
  - drdeadringer 10y ago
    How?
- scythe 10y ago
  Using disabled people as a bludgeon to deprive the middle class isn't sticking up for the little guy, it's abusive. Disabled people have problems on trains, too: elevators are often broken and it's hard to move in a crowd. There are simply disadvantages to being less able, which is not the same thing as being deprived of your ability to do something by someone who holds power over you. Insisting on the equivalence of such a thing brings to mind the character O'Brien from a certain dystopian fiction. Traveling in a personal vehicle affords drastically more freedom of movement (you are literally in control of your movement) than any form of public transport and while it's not necessarily a need that should be subsidized by the state it is nonetheless a curtailment on freedom when the state deliberately makes it less convenient than it had been.

plafl 10y ago

By that reasoning we should eliminate public mass transport and someone will fill the gap. However, I think it would be an error too.

CalRobert 10y ago
Well, if we did that in tandem with eliminating public roads we could see what happens. Public transportation does exist outside of the government-subsidized model; see the jitneys in New York for an example.
notatoad 10y ago
I think that if we were to follow that reasoning to the point of eliminating public transit, it would have to be eliminating all public transport subsidies: if all roads were toll roads and the tolls needed to cover the full cost of building and maintaining the roads, and there was no public parking, i think private mass transit would probably be successful. (not that i think going that far would be a good idea. But it's important to realize just how much public money is spent maintaining infrastructure for private vehicles. eliminating free parking would be a very small portion of the subsidy.)
mahyarm 10y ago
There is a lot of regulation preventing people from making their own public transport. Things like taxi medallions and a ban on dollar van lines.

platz 10y ago

> luxuries Well that's your opinion, at least I find the framing and connotations of that word problematic here, but I agree to let the market sort it out.

TulliusCicero 10y ago
Except that the market isn't sorting it out. Do you think government regulations mandating free and abundant parking come from the market? It's amazing how many people in America think our car-dominant culture is just the result of market forces. The truth is that land use for transportation is zero sum enough to make market forces impossible to use in the way we expect for most consumer services. If you want choices, the best option is to support multi-modal transportation, which in most US cities means reallocating resources away from cars (who currently have almost all the resources) and towards walking, biking, and transit.
- platz 10y ago
  I was claiming that markets should sort it out, not that they are sorting them out
  - pg314 10y ago
    What makes you think that markets would be any good at sorting things out? The externalities of car usage (such as air and noise pollution, traffic accident victims) are ignored by the free market. Furthermore, the 'traffic' market has a tendency towards monopolies: more people using cars means less people using public transportation making the latter less profitable, resulting in worse service, leading to even less people using it... Free markets need very specific conditions to lead to the optimal solution. I don't think the transportation market fits the requirements.
    - baddox 10y ago
      Air and noise pollution are probably reasonable examples, but I don't think traffic accident victims are.

taurath 10y ago

Those are luxuries like a cell phone is a luxury. There does come a point where there's no acceptable alternative - a 1 hour bus line I know through the city of Seattle takes 10 minutes by car. Why should the city and property owners have to subsidize cars? They shouldn't, but they need some way for people to get to them and flow people through the city, or they will cease to exist.

plandis 10y ago
I don't even own a car in Seattle. It's clearly not a necessity as I, my fiancé, and several of our friends are all careless and do just fine. If anything its drivers that do stupid stuff like block bus lanes, don't know how to merge, etc... that are a bigger problem to public transit.
- kbenson 10y ago
  > It's clearly not a necessity as I, my fiancé, and several of our friends are all careless and do just fine. Please consider people living in other circumstances and with other responsibilities before making blanket statements for all based on the experience of yourself and your close social group. It's entirely possibly that you and your group do not encompass all the situations that may be found. For example, having a child makes not having a car extremely problematic. Being 30-60 minutes late to pick up you child is often unacceptable, and in many circumstances (such as childcare) may net you quite large fees if it happens often.
  - revelation 10y ago
    Yes, clearly it's a problem to not have a car when living a lifestyle designed entirely around a car. We get that, we can skip the 100 identical posts that have appeared and are yet to appear. The point is: what are you going to do about it? Because clearly city populations are growing and people are exceedingly unhappy with vastly subsidizing a shrinking minority that expects to drive door-to-door, or better yet, lives in a cheap suburb but expects city dwellers to sacrifice money and space for their daily commute. I think you will find in places that cater much less to cars people are very understanding if you miss a bus. Though likely they won't notice, because there are simply more buses and transit options around, so your delay won't be an hour. It seems getting rid of free parking, as suggested by the OP, is a good start, no?

Shivetya 10y ago

they are luxuries many can afford and based on watching emerging economies or those who gained economic freedom to own they are something many aspire too. costs in cities are artificially high and I doubt property and usage taxes would support many "affordable" high rise parking decks. the double whammy here is the less available parking in town means less chance of EV charging too. then again that has shown that where free you get the same issue if not worse (got to love people who disconnect your car for you)

aidenn0 10y ago

The problem is that if all other cities nearby provide a free luxury, and you don't, then you become a ghetto. In particular merchants with free parking nearby will do much better than merchants without free parking nearby, so eliminating free parking in just one area will put all of those merchants out of business (as people drive to other areas to shop).

dsfyu404ed 10y ago

A fast reliable Internet connection is also very clearly a luxury. What's your point?

Evolved 10y ago

I have paid for all those luxuries. Car = I paid for it out of the money I earned Roads = I pay for them with my taxes Parking = I pay for this either by being a customer of your business or, if you're a landlord, by paying you rent every month. Making free parking into pay parking or making pay parking into more expensive pay parking will serve to decrease traffic, but at what cost? Once you monetize it or make it more expensive than a reasonable price it practically begs to become corrupt. The end result is only incentives to increase parking costs via tools such as premium/VIP parking. Theoretically, a premium spot could pop up and would normally be a regularly priced spot when the inventory of other spots dwindles. The spot itself isn't actually any closer to the destination for the customer but is just more expensive. Sure, you could argue that this is how supply and demand works but that only really applies to supply of goods for which there are similar alternatives. If you raise prices on parking, why not raise prices on public transportation as well, and if you're raising those prices then who is going to stop the taxis and ride-hailing apps (Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, etc.) from raising their prices as well? You haven't actually solved any problems. You've just made more money.