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Free Parking Comes at a Price

104 points by rafaelc 16y ago

akgerber 16y ago
As blogger Matthew Yglesias is fond of pointing out, one of the most insane things about minimum parking requirements is that bars have them.
dotcoma 16y ago
wonderful article, thanks for sharing!
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
gamble 16y ago
There are two problems with charging people to park: one is enforcement, which isn't free, and the other is that customers strongly prefer to shop where free parking is available. Even if prices are lower at the shop that charges for parking, people will prefer the shop with free parking. If you restrict parking availability in an area, you'd have to be prepared for customers to go elsewhere unless there are no other options.
- philwelch 16y ago
  Since parking spaces are mandated by the government already, it isn't even an economic choice yet. Once it becomes an economic choice, stores will have to work out the cost-effectiveness of each marginal square foot of parking lot instead of taking a given quantity of free parking space as a given.
- maigret 16y ago
  Living in Europe, I can see free & paying parkings. In bigger cities, most shops haven't free parking an it's not apparently keeping customers away. When you go in the land though, most parking is free. Interesting enough, I've seen the opposite effect to the one you've described - in a city where all street parking was costly, a supermarket had to make his parking paying for non-customers and customers who took more that one hour.
- w00pla 16y ago
  > which isn't free, and the other is that customers strongly prefer to shop where free parking is available. It is not just that. The mere act of shopping at most stores requires a car. In Japan for example all fairly big items (such as chairs, etc...) gets delivered. You do not buy 24 cans of coke and a liter of mayonnaise and take it on the train with you. You buy one ridiculously small can of coke at a small (and expensive) convenience store near you. So, I wouldn't be as quick as to require all people shopping to not come with a car. Living in the suburbs has its advantages - cheap storage space, etc... So you can actually buy in bulk.
  - jrockway 16y ago
    I buy in bulk (from Amazon) and live in the city center. Food does not take up that much space.
- ugh 16y ago
  Well, this article doesn’t really argue for charging people to park, it only argues that providing parking space shouldn’t be a requirement for businesses.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  If the gains due to free parking outweigh the costs, stores will provide free parking themselves. If they do not outweigh the costs, stores will not do so. No one is advocating restricting parking. If a store wishes to provide underground parking, for instance, they should be permitted to do so.
bugsy 16y ago
These sorts of articles are transparently engineered propaganda. Someone sat around "How can we increase taxes and wealth for ourselves?" "What about a parking tax! $1 each time you park anywhere nationwide, that would be billions each year!" "No one would accept that." "Oh yes they will, I know a guy at the NYT we have worked with before. I will have him write an article. He can spin anything into gold." "Do it."
- philwelch 16y ago
  Don't attack someone's reputation without basis. Tyler Cowen's an economist with if anything an excessively libertarian bias. If you have evidence he's been paid off by someone hoping a New York Times column arguing for more paid parking and less government-mandated free parking requirements for private business will generate public support for a parking tax scheme that wasn't even mentioned in the column to begin with, present it. (You'll need a lot of evidence, because it's a pretty ridiculous claim.)
  - bugsy 16y ago
    What a tool.
will_critchlow 16y ago
I didn't realise that zoning and regulations governed parking spaces attached to houses in the US. I always assumed that would be something perfectly well decided by the market. Does anyone know the failure that requires regulation there?
- sokoloff 16y ago
  Living in Cambridge, MA and having read the zoning by-laws here, I believe the intent is two-fold: 1. To control density of housing to preserve the character of the various neighborhoods. We have very high-density housing areas (small triple-deckers with minimal yards) as well as other neighborhoods with large single family detached housing and large (for a city) yards. The former has much lower off-street parking requirements than the latter, and I think for good reason. A city should ideally have housing stock suitable for a range of income and wealth levels, and putting the onus of providing off-street parking onto the inexpensive housing drives up the cost. Let that stock optimize for less convenient but more affordable and "force" the more expensive housing stock to provide some or all of its own parking demand on-site. Absent this regulation, you might find less expensive housing projects without on-site parking being proposed next to expensive SFH sites and you'd start to lose the appeal [and value] of the old neighborhoods with their single-family homes. (Think of a restaurant with every other table as the smoking section.) 2. Indirectly, this regulation slows the growth rate of demand for on-street parking, which can be tremendous in some of our neighborhoods. Suppose that you were a long-time resident of an established neighborhood with moderately tight parking. Would you prefer that the new condo high-rise a block away be required to provide on-site/off-street parking, or would you happily back the project knowing that an extra 100 cars would be coming to your neighborhood once completed? The regulations are largely a codification of the above, as the voters are the incumbent residential property owners and not the land developers. (As a libertarian, I will also observe that there doesn't need to be a market failure to create regulation, but in this case even I have to admit that some good comes from the regulation, even though I now have to waste time reading the by-laws to determine what type of garage structure I'm permitted to build on my own property.)
  - cabalamat 16y ago
jdietrich 16y ago
There is a much steeper cost to parking - the effects on public space. The provision of surface-level parking reduces urban density, making cities less walkable, bringing with it an array of other social problems. In the parts of Europe where people walk and cycle, there has necessarily been an aggressively anti-car policy. In London there is a daily charge of $12 just to drive into the city. This congestion charge has strong public support due to the obvious and substantial quality-of-life improvements it has brought. A well-located car park can easily charge $70 a day. In denser parts of London, residents are charged fees by the local government for the right to park in front of their own houses, many people lease out driveway space and a single car garage in the most prestigious areas can sell for as much as $300,000. Many towns and cities in Italy have completely banned non-essential motor vehicles from the city centre - often the old city walls form a natural division. Of course, gasoline in most of Europe has cost in excess of $6 a gallon for years. I'm not arguing that this is a superior way of running things, it is simply a difference in priorities, but the costs of car use are far greater than I think most Americans would recognise. To many of you, our high gas prices, expensive parking and restrictive regulations must be quite shocking. Our small towns must seem almost unreal in their quaintness, in the age of their infrastructure, in their density. Most of us drive vehicles of comically small proportions. By the same token, many of us find cities like LA and Houston to be frightening, Ballardian places. We are shocked at the priority given to cars, at the lack of sidewalks and the sheer sprawl of such cities. By the standards of most European governments, the average American city is practically uninhabitable and would be torn down and started anew. We both pay a steep price for our cars; The price we pay is more obvious to you, but the price you pay is more obvious to us.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- altano 16y ago
  Parking and also other infrastructure, mainly highways and larger roads that cut up the city. The largest benefactors of the Big Dig in Boston (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig) were not those driving on the newly improved road or those benefiting from the reduced traffic, but rather those who could now enjoy the green way, those living in or visiting the North End (hey I can walk there now!), those benefiting from the improved air quality of having a filtered highway, etc.
dillydally 16y ago
I'm really excited about SFPark. It's mentioned briefly in the article, but the idea is this: parking meters that can sense when a car is present and dynamically set its rate. The meters will be set so that parking is (almost) always available anywhere in the city -- at a price. This will include parking garages and other pay-to-park places. If they do it right it will remove all the guesswork out of determining where to park. Should I go for that garage, or drive around the block five more time? I could have an iPhone app that can show me the cheapest parking spot within 2 blocks. This solves the problem someone else here brought up, which is that people prefer to shop where parking is free. In this model parking is only expensive where the demand is high to begin with!
adriand 16y ago
The book "The High Cost of Free Parking" has been out for a few years now. Here's a good review from around when it was published: http://www.raisethehammer.org/article/072 http://www.raisethehammer.org/article/072
teilo 16y ago
This entire article is predicated on the premises that 1) Cars are bad, and 2) social engineering (as distinct from punishing crime) is a legitimate function of government. I deny both and have two other premises: 1) Cars = freedom. 2) The more governments intervene with regulation and taxation, the more they impose upon our freedoms. Let the market determine how much parking there is. Holding up New York as a virtuous example because parking there is expensive ignores the fact that New York has the highest cost of living of any city in the US, and is also the most heavily taxed and regulated.
- philwelch 16y ago
  As the article points out, local governments already engage in social engineering, in the form of requiring public businesses to provide parking spaces. In fact, the article didn't advocate any government action at all, other than perhaps deregulating how private businesses are allowed to use their real estate. I don't think you understand Tyler Cowen's background, much less the article itself, if you think he takes social engineering by the government as a premise. Also, I dare say your premises themselves are contradictory. Cars are only useful, and only provide freedom, where there are copious paved streets and freeways; there are only copious paved streets and freeways where governments in the 20th century redesigned the landscape around the automobile, all but requiring its use for most Americans whether they want it or not. The amount of regulation and taxation required to keep the infrastructure functional for motorists and all but useless for everyone else gets in the way of our freedom and safety, to say nothing of the other negative externalities. Your right to operate a vehicle ends at your property line. Past that, it's a privilege--and in my opinion, one which has been abused.
  - kiba 16y ago
    When you have 300 million people, the privilege tends to get abused.
  - ergo98 16y ago
    >local governments already engage in social engineering, in the form of requiring public businesses to provide parking spaces. That's reflective rather than manipulative. Most municipalities have long knowledge of transportation patterns, and they know that when an establishment has insufficient parking, it causes grief for neighbours. People end up circling the area indefinitely, or they park illegally on neighbouring grounds, etc. The real social engineering are articles like this that are, as someone else mentioned, essentially propaganda pieces. There are places where vehicles aren't appropriate or as usable -- dense urban centres -- and in those places most people don't drive. Most New Yorkers don't own a car. People living in downtown TO condos don't own a car. That is great, but that density and very expensive mass transit system doesn't carry forth to the suburbs, exurbs, or rural areas, so save the rhetoric.
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
I hate to rain on anybody's parade, but this is awful tripe. (I hope I couched that diplomatically enough) Most of America is rural. Having an open space for your mode of travel has been de rigeur since the days people rode horses around. Most poor people, really poor people, can barely afford a car and the mandatory insurance now. Jacking up gas and parking taxes has terrible consequences to theses folks. No matter how precious the goal you are trying to accomplish. Look, I'd love a world without gasoline-powered cars, but when it's an hour to town, I'm going to be going in something. And that something is going to need to park somewhere. I increasingly see a vast difference between urbanites and suburbanites/rural America. It's a shame they seem at cross-purposes so much. The United States is simply nowhere near as dense as Europe is, where things like this might make more sense. EDIT: Just to be clear that I am directly addressing the author's point: The fact that the cost of land (and to society) for free parking has risen over the last few decades is not germane. Everything has risen in cost. Providing parking for others has always been a cost of having a residence or doing business in the city. I see nothing new in this article except a new look at those costs. The reason for them hasn't changed at all. Nor their justification.
- Retric 16y ago
  It would be far more efficient to implement the tax and give the money directly back to everyone. At which point you would see people using that money for other things, which would let you reclaim parking spaces for other uses, and or build more based on supply and demand. PS: I pay to park most places around me, and I take slightly fewer trips because of this. The net effect of which is I spend less money on my car and buy more stuff when I do go out.
  - DanielBMarkham 16y ago
    I know I'm being downvoted for political reasons, but this seems a clear-cut case where you can reason your way around here. Please explain. Let's use my circumstances for an example. I live an hour from any city. I do well enough financially, so parking taxes will not effect me one way or the other (neither would a gasoline tax). Within an mile of where I live, there are probably another 100 families. Most of them do not do so well. I live in a very rural and poor area. One family I know is a single mom and teenage daughter. While their housing is provided by family, each of them makes minimum wage and have to drive to the city to work. They barely keep one car running and the lights on at home. Now I believe you are saying we should tax them for parking in the city. Then give everybody the money back from the tax. Perhaps at the end of the year when they file their taxes. This would be devastating to these folks. Sure, you'd cut down on car use, but at what cost? For every middle-income person who took a few less trips, how many low-income people did you just kick out of work? Did I understand that correctly? And please, no "but those folks are living the wrong way!" comments. These people are living as best as they can. One social engineering event per conversation, please. The point is to defend, explain, or analyze the article in question. The essay seemed to me to be the kind of pontificating that looks good from the ivory tower living in the city, but has very limited real application to the rest of the country, aside from hurting people for a noble cause.
bd_at_rivenhill 16y ago
After living in New York for a while, I came to the conclusion that one good way to improve quality of life would be to simply ban on-street parking everywhere in Manhattan and in the denser areas of the boroughs. The only people allowed to stand or park should be certain official vehicles (police, ambulance, etc) and vehicles with a valid delivery permit that would need to be purchased. Anybody else would be ticketed and towed. This would free up extra space for traffic on most roads, reduce the number of vehicles in circulation in the city, and eliminate economically stupid outcomes like UPS trucks constantly getting tickets from fleet-footed traffic officers while they are making deliveries.
- araneae 16y ago
  What about the handicapped?
  - jules 16y ago
    Wheelchair?
    - araneae 16y ago
      Not all handicapped have wheelchairs. I have a friend who has to drive for long distances, but they use a cane for short distances.
  - bd_at_rivenhill 16y ago
    I thought about this for a while, and I can't remember ever seeing a parking place on the street that was reserved for handicapped. At most garages, you hand over your keys right after you drive in so I don't think garage parking would be too bad for handicapped people.
Zak 16y ago
I was expecting pedestrian-utopian drivel here, but the author actually makes a good point. Why should there be zoning laws mandating parking at houses[0], apartment buildings or stores? In every case, there are market incentives for the developers and owners of these properties to have parking. Stores with too little parking won't get as much business. Houses and apartments with too little parking are harder to sell and/or rent. It does seem that there's a subsidy being mandated by local governments and paid by property owners, and I can't think of much justification for that. [0]In the case of houses, overuse of street parking might be a good argument.
- dennisgorelik 16y ago
  If cities force neither "free parking" nor "mandatory paid parking" on businesses then it would probably work just fine. To answer your question, here are possible reasons why city might want to demand free parking from businesses: 1) If there are two neighboring businesses, one with parking and one without, then customers of business without free parking may start parking on free parking of neighboring business. Then business that provides free parking would suffer. 2) With no parking available drivers start parking on the streets, which causes traffic jams.
  - Zak 16y ago
    These both sound like business opportunities for a towing company.
nzmsv 16y ago
Trying to make the world better by banning things often has the opposite of the intended effect. Look at how well prohibition worked out, time after time, in various places around the world. To see a possible outcome of restricting the availability of parking, look at modern-day Russia. The streets and parking there were designed for a very small number of cars, since most people were expected to use transit. Then public transit failed, and cars became affordable for a lot of people. But there is still no parking, so people must not use cars, right? No, now there are major traffic jams and problems with illegal parking in every city. There has to be a viable alternative to cars (good public transit, walkable cities).
- lunchbox 16y ago
  The author is not proposing a ban. Just the opposite, he is proposing that we deregulate parking by having people pay for the parking spots they use, rather than forcing someone else to subsidize them.
  - nzmsv 16y ago
    Not a ban, but an attempt to reduce driving by changing regulations. It's not necessarily bad, it's just that there will be unforeseen consequences, and it's nowhere near as straightforward as "raise the price of parking -> driving decreases". As far as I know, Russia has no requirements on parking for new construction either. So developers building shopping centres in expensive areas opt to minimize parking space. The result is not clean pedestrian-friendly cities, it's traffic jams and stores going out of business, because as someone else commented here, people will prefer the store with parking, even if it is an extra half an hour away. I think this problem is better solved by offering functional transit, but it's somewhat chicken and egg. How do you justify spending on transit when everyone drives? How do you not drive when taking the bus multiplies the trip time by a factor of 5?
    - lunchbox 16y ago
      Why would a developer minimize parking space if it will put his building's stores out of business?
EricButler 16y ago
Two great resources about urban livability for HNers in Seattle: Seattle Transit Blog (http://seattletransitblog.com/ http://seattletransitblog.com/) HugeAssCity (http://www.publicola.net/category/column/hugeasscity/ http://www.publicola.net/category/column/hugeasscity/)
Empact 16y ago
A number of the comments confuse removing artificial subsidies of driving with applying artificial fees to driving. These are existing artificial subsidies, which force non-drivers and marginal drivers to pay heavy costs on behalf of drivers: * Drivers don't directly pay for the full cost of roads, e.g. through a gas tax * Minimum parking mandates force non-drivers to include parking for their home * On-street parking is often far cheaper than the market would demand You could ask, what's the problem with these subsidies? They change behavior in a systematic way which leads to bad results (sprawl & congestion). For example, for someone who has access to public transit, the mandatory construction of a personal garage via minimum parking requirements becomes a sunk cost, which I don't have to consider between the two options, whereas a market decision would include that substantial cost in the calculation. You could address the bulk of Cowen & Shoup's points by simply: * Raising the gas tax to cover the cost of road construction and maintenance * Removing the mandatory minimums on parking spaces for new developments * Charging closer to market value for existing meter parking These measures aren't social engineering - they're in support of the idea that the real costs of driving ought to be borne by the driver themselves, and that non-drivers should be unburdened by the imposition of driving costs.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Drivers don't directly pay for the full cost of roads, e.g. through a gas tax We already pay gas taxes, and car registration fees, and license fees. I'd be interested to hear how the road construction budget compares to the amount of money brought in by these. they're in support of the idea that the real costs of driving ought to be borne by the driver themselves, and that non-drivers should be unburdened by the imposition of driving costs I'm okay with that, as long as we also support the idea that the cost of public schools should be supported entirely by those who send their children to public schools, and the cost of Medicaid is supported entirely by those who benefit from Medicaid. But it seems that social engineers only ever want to implement user-pays solutions for things that rich people use. They think that the costs of services used by rich people should be borne by rich people, and the costs of services used by poor people should also be borne by rich people.
  - 16y ago
flatulent1 16y ago
Silence is valuable. People take for granted not paying for that audio-frequency near-field modulated air pressure bandwidth. Why shouldn't that spectrum be sold? Shouldn't we be paid to have people talk to us or make noise? It's time to buy audio pollution credits. And if you're poor, don't even think about farting.
Ras_ 16y ago
http://www.islandia.is/lhm/images/parking-houston.jpg http://www.islandia.is/lhm/images/parking-houston.jpg (from 1980s) More here (eg. aerial pictures of Hartford pre and post Interstate): http://theoverheadwire.blogspot.com/2010/02/parking-bombs.html http://theoverheadwire.blogspot.com/2010/02/parking-bombs.ht...
tptacek 16y ago
Worth reading Tyler Cowan's take on this: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/08/the-economics-of-free-parking.html http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/08... * It's going to be hard to properly price all that parking, and if you do it wrong, you wind up shifting the problem around (from K-Mart's parking lot to neighborhood streets). * The same externality might be addressed better with a lump-sum tax (Tyler Cowan is not exactly a tax fanatic, by the way). * If urban congestion and land use are the problems, you can address them with satellite lots on the outskirts and mass transit. * The effect on "poor people" is probably salubrious: many of them don't own cars to begin with, and without parking lots vying for land, land prices will go down).
- lunchbox 16y ago
  Tyler Cowen is the author of the article :)
  - tptacek 16y ago
    Go me!
- flatulent1 16y ago
  "* The effect on "poor people" is probably salubrious: many of them don't own cars to begin with, and without parking lots vying for land, land prices will go down)." Who was the politician that said "poor people don't need to drive"? You sound a bit like him. You're half right in a twisted way though. Not having cars helps poor people into a new place to live - ON THE STREET!

104 points by rafaelc 16y ago

As blogger Matthew Yglesias is fond of pointing out, one of the most insane things about minimum parking requirements is that bars have them.

dotcoma 16y ago

wonderful article, thanks for sharing!

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

gamble 16y ago

There are two problems with charging people to park: one is enforcement, which isn't free, and the other is that customers strongly prefer to shop where free parking is available. Even if prices are lower at the shop that charges for parking, people will prefer the shop with free parking. If you restrict parking availability in an area, you'd have to be prepared for customers to go elsewhere unless there are no other options.

philwelch 16y ago
Since parking spaces are mandated by the government already, it isn't even an economic choice yet. Once it becomes an economic choice, stores will have to work out the cost-effectiveness of each marginal square foot of parking lot instead of taking a given quantity of free parking space as a given.
maigret 16y ago
Living in Europe, I can see free & paying parkings. In bigger cities, most shops haven't free parking an it's not apparently keeping customers away. When you go in the land though, most parking is free. Interesting enough, I've seen the opposite effect to the one you've described - in a city where all street parking was costly, a supermarket had to make his parking paying for non-customers and customers who took more that one hour.
w00pla 16y ago
> which isn't free, and the other is that customers strongly prefer to shop where free parking is available. It is not just that. The mere act of shopping at most stores requires a car. In Japan for example all fairly big items (such as chairs, etc...) gets delivered. You do not buy 24 cans of coke and a liter of mayonnaise and take it on the train with you. You buy one ridiculously small can of coke at a small (and expensive) convenience store near you. So, I wouldn't be as quick as to require all people shopping to not come with a car. Living in the suburbs has its advantages - cheap storage space, etc... So you can actually buy in bulk.
- jrockway 16y ago
  I buy in bulk (from Amazon) and live in the city center. Food does not take up that much space.
ugh 16y ago
Well, this article doesn’t really argue for charging people to park, it only argues that providing parking space shouldn’t be a requirement for businesses.
yummyfajitas 16y ago
If the gains due to free parking outweigh the costs, stores will provide free parking themselves. If they do not outweigh the costs, stores will not do so. No one is advocating restricting parking. If a store wishes to provide underground parking, for instance, they should be permitted to do so.

bugsy 16y ago

These sorts of articles are transparently engineered propaganda. Someone sat around "How can we increase taxes and wealth for ourselves?" "What about a parking tax! $1 each time you park anywhere nationwide, that would be billions each year!" "No one would accept that." "Oh yes they will, I know a guy at the NYT we have worked with before. I will have him write an article. He can spin anything into gold." "Do it."

philwelch 16y ago
Don't attack someone's reputation without basis. Tyler Cowen's an economist with if anything an excessively libertarian bias. If you have evidence he's been paid off by someone hoping a New York Times column arguing for more paid parking and less government-mandated free parking requirements for private business will generate public support for a parking tax scheme that wasn't even mentioned in the column to begin with, present it. (You'll need a lot of evidence, because it's a pretty ridiculous claim.)
- bugsy 16y ago
  What a tool.

will_critchlow 16y ago

I didn't realise that zoning and regulations governed parking spaces attached to houses in the US. I always assumed that would be something perfectly well decided by the market. Does anyone know the failure that requires regulation there?

sokoloff 16y ago
Living in Cambridge, MA and having read the zoning by-laws here, I believe the intent is two-fold: 1. To control density of housing to preserve the character of the various neighborhoods. We have very high-density housing areas (small triple-deckers with minimal yards) as well as other neighborhoods with large single family detached housing and large (for a city) yards. The former has much lower off-street parking requirements than the latter, and I think for good reason. A city should ideally have housing stock suitable for a range of income and wealth levels, and putting the onus of providing off-street parking onto the inexpensive housing drives up the cost. Let that stock optimize for less convenient but more affordable and "force" the more expensive housing stock to provide some or all of its own parking demand on-site. Absent this regulation, you might find less expensive housing projects without on-site parking being proposed next to expensive SFH sites and you'd start to lose the appeal [and value] of the old neighborhoods with their single-family homes. (Think of a restaurant with every other table as the smoking section.) 2. Indirectly, this regulation slows the growth rate of demand for on-street parking, which can be tremendous in some of our neighborhoods. Suppose that you were a long-time resident of an established neighborhood with moderately tight parking. Would you prefer that the new condo high-rise a block away be required to provide on-site/off-street parking, or would you happily back the project knowing that an extra 100 cars would be coming to your neighborhood once completed? The regulations are largely a codification of the above, as the voters are the incumbent residential property owners and not the land developers. (As a libertarian, I will also observe that there doesn't need to be a market failure to create regulation, but in this case even I have to admit that some good comes from the regulation, even though I now have to waste time reading the by-laws to determine what type of garage structure I'm permitted to build on my own property.)
- cabalamat 16y ago

jdietrich 16y ago

There is a much steeper cost to parking - the effects on public space. The provision of surface-level parking reduces urban density, making cities less walkable, bringing with it an array of other social problems. In the parts of Europe where people walk and cycle, there has necessarily been an aggressively anti-car policy. In London there is a daily charge of $12 just to drive into the city. This congestion charge has strong public support due to the obvious and substantial quality-of-life improvements it has brought. A well-located car park can easily charge $70 a day. In denser parts of London, residents are charged fees by the local government for the right to park in front of their own houses, many people lease out driveway space and a single car garage in the most prestigious areas can sell for as much as $300,000. Many towns and cities in Italy have completely banned non-essential motor vehicles from the city centre - often the old city walls form a natural division. Of course, gasoline in most of Europe has cost in excess of $6 a gallon for years. I'm not arguing that this is a superior way of running things, it is simply a difference in priorities, but the costs of car use are far greater than I think most Americans would recognise. To many of you, our high gas prices, expensive parking and restrictive regulations must be quite shocking. Our small towns must seem almost unreal in their quaintness, in the age of their infrastructure, in their density. Most of us drive vehicles of comically small proportions. By the same token, many of us find cities like LA and Houston to be frightening, Ballardian places. We are shocked at the priority given to cars, at the lack of sidewalks and the sheer sprawl of such cities. By the standards of most European governments, the average American city is practically uninhabitable and would be torn down and started anew. We both pay a steep price for our cars; The price we pay is more obvious to you, but the price you pay is more obvious to us.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
altano 16y ago
Parking and also other infrastructure, mainly highways and larger roads that cut up the city. The largest benefactors of the Big Dig in Boston (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig) were not those driving on the newly improved road or those benefiting from the reduced traffic, but rather those who could now enjoy the green way, those living in or visiting the North End (hey I can walk there now!), those benefiting from the improved air quality of having a filtered highway, etc.

dillydally 16y ago

I'm really excited about SFPark. It's mentioned briefly in the article, but the idea is this: parking meters that can sense when a car is present and dynamically set its rate. The meters will be set so that parking is (almost) always available anywhere in the city -- at a price. This will include parking garages and other pay-to-park places. If they do it right it will remove all the guesswork out of determining where to park. Should I go for that garage, or drive around the block five more time? I could have an iPhone app that can show me the cheapest parking spot within 2 blocks. This solves the problem someone else here brought up, which is that people prefer to shop where parking is free. In this model parking is only expensive where the demand is high to begin with!

adriand 16y ago

The book "The High Cost of Free Parking" has been out for a few years now. Here's a good review from around when it was published: http://www.raisethehammer.org/article/072 http://www.raisethehammer.org/article/072

teilo 16y ago

This entire article is predicated on the premises that 1) Cars are bad, and 2) social engineering (as distinct from punishing crime) is a legitimate function of government. I deny both and have two other premises: 1) Cars = freedom. 2) The more governments intervene with regulation and taxation, the more they impose upon our freedoms. Let the market determine how much parking there is. Holding up New York as a virtuous example because parking there is expensive ignores the fact that New York has the highest cost of living of any city in the US, and is also the most heavily taxed and regulated.

philwelch 16y ago
As the article points out, local governments already engage in social engineering, in the form of requiring public businesses to provide parking spaces. In fact, the article didn't advocate any government action at all, other than perhaps deregulating how private businesses are allowed to use their real estate. I don't think you understand Tyler Cowen's background, much less the article itself, if you think he takes social engineering by the government as a premise. Also, I dare say your premises themselves are contradictory. Cars are only useful, and only provide freedom, where there are copious paved streets and freeways; there are only copious paved streets and freeways where governments in the 20th century redesigned the landscape around the automobile, all but requiring its use for most Americans whether they want it or not. The amount of regulation and taxation required to keep the infrastructure functional for motorists and all but useless for everyone else gets in the way of our freedom and safety, to say nothing of the other negative externalities. Your right to operate a vehicle ends at your property line. Past that, it's a privilege--and in my opinion, one which has been abused.
- kiba 16y ago
  When you have 300 million people, the privilege tends to get abused.
- ergo98 16y ago
  >local governments already engage in social engineering, in the form of requiring public businesses to provide parking spaces. That's reflective rather than manipulative. Most municipalities have long knowledge of transportation patterns, and they know that when an establishment has insufficient parking, it causes grief for neighbours. People end up circling the area indefinitely, or they park illegally on neighbouring grounds, etc. The real social engineering are articles like this that are, as someone else mentioned, essentially propaganda pieces. There are places where vehicles aren't appropriate or as usable -- dense urban centres -- and in those places most people don't drive. Most New Yorkers don't own a car. People living in downtown TO condos don't own a car. That is great, but that density and very expensive mass transit system doesn't carry forth to the suburbs, exurbs, or rural areas, so save the rhetoric.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

I hate to rain on anybody's parade, but this is awful tripe. (I hope I couched that diplomatically enough) Most of America is rural. Having an open space for your mode of travel has been de rigeur since the days people rode horses around. Most poor people, really poor people, can barely afford a car and the mandatory insurance now. Jacking up gas and parking taxes has terrible consequences to theses folks. No matter how precious the goal you are trying to accomplish. Look, I'd love a world without gasoline-powered cars, but when it's an hour to town, I'm going to be going in something. And that something is going to need to park somewhere. I increasingly see a vast difference between urbanites and suburbanites/rural America. It's a shame they seem at cross-purposes so much. The United States is simply nowhere near as dense as Europe is, where things like this might make more sense. EDIT: Just to be clear that I am directly addressing the author's point: The fact that the cost of land (and to society) for free parking has risen over the last few decades is not germane. Everything has risen in cost. Providing parking for others has always been a cost of having a residence or doing business in the city. I see nothing new in this article except a new look at those costs. The reason for them hasn't changed at all. Nor their justification.

Retric 16y ago
It would be far more efficient to implement the tax and give the money directly back to everyone. At which point you would see people using that money for other things, which would let you reclaim parking spaces for other uses, and or build more based on supply and demand. PS: I pay to park most places around me, and I take slightly fewer trips because of this. The net effect of which is I spend less money on my car and buy more stuff when I do go out.
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  I know I'm being downvoted for political reasons, but this seems a clear-cut case where you can reason your way around here. Please explain. Let's use my circumstances for an example. I live an hour from any city. I do well enough financially, so parking taxes will not effect me one way or the other (neither would a gasoline tax). Within an mile of where I live, there are probably another 100 families. Most of them do not do so well. I live in a very rural and poor area. One family I know is a single mom and teenage daughter. While their housing is provided by family, each of them makes minimum wage and have to drive to the city to work. They barely keep one car running and the lights on at home. Now I believe you are saying we should tax them for parking in the city. Then give everybody the money back from the tax. Perhaps at the end of the year when they file their taxes. This would be devastating to these folks. Sure, you'd cut down on car use, but at what cost? For every middle-income person who took a few less trips, how many low-income people did you just kick out of work? Did I understand that correctly? And please, no "but those folks are living the wrong way!" comments. These people are living as best as they can. One social engineering event per conversation, please. The point is to defend, explain, or analyze the article in question. The essay seemed to me to be the kind of pontificating that looks good from the ivory tower living in the city, but has very limited real application to the rest of the country, aside from hurting people for a noble cause.

bd_at_rivenhill 16y ago

After living in New York for a while, I came to the conclusion that one good way to improve quality of life would be to simply ban on-street parking everywhere in Manhattan and in the denser areas of the boroughs. The only people allowed to stand or park should be certain official vehicles (police, ambulance, etc) and vehicles with a valid delivery permit that would need to be purchased. Anybody else would be ticketed and towed. This would free up extra space for traffic on most roads, reduce the number of vehicles in circulation in the city, and eliminate economically stupid outcomes like UPS trucks constantly getting tickets from fleet-footed traffic officers while they are making deliveries.

araneae 16y ago
What about the handicapped?
- jules 16y ago
  Wheelchair?
  - araneae 16y ago
    Not all handicapped have wheelchairs. I have a friend who has to drive for long distances, but they use a cane for short distances.
- bd_at_rivenhill 16y ago
  I thought about this for a while, and I can't remember ever seeing a parking place on the street that was reserved for handicapped. At most garages, you hand over your keys right after you drive in so I don't think garage parking would be too bad for handicapped people.

Zak 16y ago

I was expecting pedestrian-utopian drivel here, but the author actually makes a good point. Why should there be zoning laws mandating parking at houses[0], apartment buildings or stores? In every case, there are market incentives for the developers and owners of these properties to have parking. Stores with too little parking won't get as much business. Houses and apartments with too little parking are harder to sell and/or rent. It does seem that there's a subsidy being mandated by local governments and paid by property owners, and I can't think of much justification for that. [0]In the case of houses, overuse of street parking might be a good argument.

dennisgorelik 16y ago
If cities force neither "free parking" nor "mandatory paid parking" on businesses then it would probably work just fine. To answer your question, here are possible reasons why city might want to demand free parking from businesses: 1) If there are two neighboring businesses, one with parking and one without, then customers of business without free parking may start parking on free parking of neighboring business. Then business that provides free parking would suffer. 2) With no parking available drivers start parking on the streets, which causes traffic jams.
- Zak 16y ago
  These both sound like business opportunities for a towing company.

nzmsv 16y ago

Trying to make the world better by banning things often has the opposite of the intended effect. Look at how well prohibition worked out, time after time, in various places around the world. To see a possible outcome of restricting the availability of parking, look at modern-day Russia. The streets and parking there were designed for a very small number of cars, since most people were expected to use transit. Then public transit failed, and cars became affordable for a lot of people. But there is still no parking, so people must not use cars, right? No, now there are major traffic jams and problems with illegal parking in every city. There has to be a viable alternative to cars (good public transit, walkable cities).

lunchbox 16y ago
The author is not proposing a ban. Just the opposite, he is proposing that we deregulate parking by having people pay for the parking spots they use, rather than forcing someone else to subsidize them.
- nzmsv 16y ago
  Not a ban, but an attempt to reduce driving by changing regulations. It's not necessarily bad, it's just that there will be unforeseen consequences, and it's nowhere near as straightforward as "raise the price of parking -> driving decreases". As far as I know, Russia has no requirements on parking for new construction either. So developers building shopping centres in expensive areas opt to minimize parking space. The result is not clean pedestrian-friendly cities, it's traffic jams and stores going out of business, because as someone else commented here, people will prefer the store with parking, even if it is an extra half an hour away. I think this problem is better solved by offering functional transit, but it's somewhat chicken and egg. How do you justify spending on transit when everyone drives? How do you not drive when taking the bus multiplies the trip time by a factor of 5?
  - lunchbox 16y ago
    Why would a developer minimize parking space if it will put his building's stores out of business?

EricButler 16y ago

Two great resources about urban livability for HNers in Seattle: Seattle Transit Blog (http://seattletransitblog.com/ http://seattletransitblog.com/) HugeAssCity (http://www.publicola.net/category/column/hugeasscity/ http://www.publicola.net/category/column/hugeasscity/)

Empact 16y ago

A number of the comments confuse removing artificial subsidies of driving with applying artificial fees to driving. These are existing artificial subsidies, which force non-drivers and marginal drivers to pay heavy costs on behalf of drivers: * Drivers don't directly pay for the full cost of roads, e.g. through a gas tax * Minimum parking mandates force non-drivers to include parking for their home * On-street parking is often far cheaper than the market would demand You could ask, what's the problem with these subsidies? They change behavior in a systematic way which leads to bad results (sprawl & congestion). For example, for someone who has access to public transit, the mandatory construction of a personal garage via minimum parking requirements becomes a sunk cost, which I don't have to consider between the two options, whereas a market decision would include that substantial cost in the calculation. You could address the bulk of Cowen & Shoup's points by simply: * Raising the gas tax to cover the cost of road construction and maintenance * Removing the mandatory minimums on parking spaces for new developments * Charging closer to market value for existing meter parking These measures aren't social engineering - they're in support of the idea that the real costs of driving ought to be borne by the driver themselves, and that non-drivers should be unburdened by the imposition of driving costs.

hugh3 16y ago
Drivers don't directly pay for the full cost of roads, e.g. through a gas tax We already pay gas taxes, and car registration fees, and license fees. I'd be interested to hear how the road construction budget compares to the amount of money brought in by these. they're in support of the idea that the real costs of driving ought to be borne by the driver themselves, and that non-drivers should be unburdened by the imposition of driving costs I'm okay with that, as long as we also support the idea that the cost of public schools should be supported entirely by those who send their children to public schools, and the cost of Medicaid is supported entirely by those who benefit from Medicaid. But it seems that social engineers only ever want to implement user-pays solutions for things that rich people use. They think that the costs of services used by rich people should be borne by rich people, and the costs of services used by poor people should also be borne by rich people.
- 16y ago

flatulent1 16y ago

Silence is valuable. People take for granted not paying for that audio-frequency near-field modulated air pressure bandwidth. Why shouldn't that spectrum be sold? Shouldn't we be paid to have people talk to us or make noise? It's time to buy audio pollution credits. And if you're poor, don't even think about farting.

Ras_ 16y ago

http://www.islandia.is/lhm/images/parking-houston.jpg http://www.islandia.is/lhm/images/parking-houston.jpg (from 1980s) More here (eg. aerial pictures of Hartford pre and post Interstate): http://theoverheadwire.blogspot.com/2010/02/parking-bombs.html http://theoverheadwire.blogspot.com/2010/02/parking-bombs.ht...

tptacek 16y ago

Worth reading Tyler Cowan's take on this: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/08/the-economics-of-free-parking.html http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/08... * It's going to be hard to properly price all that parking, and if you do it wrong, you wind up shifting the problem around (from K-Mart's parking lot to neighborhood streets). * The same externality might be addressed better with a lump-sum tax (Tyler Cowan is not exactly a tax fanatic, by the way). * If urban congestion and land use are the problems, you can address them with satellite lots on the outskirts and mass transit. * The effect on "poor people" is probably salubrious: many of them don't own cars to begin with, and without parking lots vying for land, land prices will go down).

lunchbox 16y ago
Tyler Cowen is the author of the article :)
- tptacek 16y ago
  Go me!
flatulent1 16y ago
"* The effect on "poor people" is probably salubrious: many of them don't own cars to begin with, and without parking lots vying for land, land prices will go down)." Who was the politician that said "poor people don't need to drive"? You sound a bit like him. You're half right in a twisted way though. Not having cars helps poor people into a new place to live - ON THE STREET!