5 ms·

In Some US Cities, There Are Over Ten Times More Parking Spaces Than Households

31 points by laurex 8y ago

1123581321 8y ago
It doesn’t make sense to me that a city has too much parking if a parking structure is more lucrative than housing. What is distorting the market if this is happening? (For those who haven’t read the article yet, this is not a question about the ordinances that require retail to provide a number of free parking spaces.)
tzs 8y ago
This is one of those things that sounds surprising and important at first, but when you think about it a while it seems like it might be obvious.
- perl4ever 8y ago
  My immediate reaction is that some places have a lot more people visiting on a daily basis than live there.
timoth3y 8y ago
This is not really surprising since parking is designed for maximum capacity, not average capacity. Parking lots for stadiums and shopping malls are mostly empty most of the time. A city could have 10x the number of parking spaces as households and still not have nearly enough parking spaces available for, say, downtown parking.
garrettskj 8y ago
Obviously, not Portland
kartan 8y ago
Similar to "American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17530813 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17530813 > it’s more lucrative to operate a parking structure than a housing unit. This is great for landowners who are looking to make a big return on their investments, but it makes real estate markets inhospitable to new home buyers and renters. This is why public transportation is so important. The private car is a local maximum. Once everybody has one it is very expensive to create a cheap and efficient massive public transportation network. But if you have an efficient massive public transportation network, it is cheaper, healthier, and convenient than private cars. That is why Uber can operate at a loss. If New York, for example, losses its massive public transportation to cheaper at-a-loss car transportation they can raise prices afterwards without fear of massive public transport competition again, as it requires to jump over the local maximum to the optimal.
hinkley 8y ago
I’d like to invite anyone who thinks Seattle has twice as many parking spots as it needs to come to lunch with me downtown on a weekday. I’ll pay for the food, you pay for the parking. If you can find it, that is.
- prolikewh0a 8y ago
  I don't think Seattle has enough parking for it's current car intake, but I'll pay an hour of parking downtown for lunch as long as it's nowhere near Pike Market :) I'd like to see most parking gone and cars into the city banned (unless you reside downtown, or are a delivery vehicle/bus) or a high dollar toll on downtown exits. This would force public transit to get better and make people demand it get better. It would cut commute times significantly for the lower classes commuting every weekday.
  - hinkley 8y ago
    Well there are really only about 4 clusters of restaurants in downtown, (~6 if you count SLU but I don't, and that's as bad if not worse), and one is near Pike, one near the courthouse (both are lousy for parking). The ID isn't impossible but it's getting worse. The city taxes parking spaces pretty heavily. So 70 minutes in a garage (you're gonna have to walk back and forth to the garage), I'm still only paying for half to 2/3rds of that lunch even if we eat someplace decent. Personally I think we're just about right. Parking is tough but not quite impossible. But I'm also not averse to reducing car traffic in the core. Going east-west has always been impossible anyway. But I don't go downtown as much anymore except by bus because my SO -hates- the traffic and parking situation. The bus situation is getting worse because the city loses something like $1 on every bus trip, so they cut routes during the last job crunch instead of expanding them, leading to very crowded buses. If you aren't travelling during rush hour there may not be any buses near your house at all. Still twiddling my thumbs for the rail expansions to land. I'll be close to retirement (I think that's the first time I've typed those words and a little shiver went down my spine) by the ETA for my neighborhood, and I probably won't still be here by then anyway.
    - 8y ago

31 points by laurex 8y ago

It doesn’t make sense to me that a city has too much parking if a parking structure is more lucrative than housing. What is distorting the market if this is happening? (For those who haven’t read the article yet, this is not a question about the ordinances that require retail to provide a number of free parking spaces.)

tzs 8y ago

This is one of those things that sounds surprising and important at first, but when you think about it a while it seems like it might be obvious.

perl4ever 8y ago
My immediate reaction is that some places have a lot more people visiting on a daily basis than live there.

timoth3y 8y ago

This is not really surprising since parking is designed for maximum capacity, not average capacity. Parking lots for stadiums and shopping malls are mostly empty most of the time. A city could have 10x the number of parking spaces as households and still not have nearly enough parking spaces available for, say, downtown parking.

garrettskj 8y ago

Obviously, not Portland

kartan 8y ago

Similar to "American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17530813 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17530813 > it’s more lucrative to operate a parking structure than a housing unit. This is great for landowners who are looking to make a big return on their investments, but it makes real estate markets inhospitable to new home buyers and renters. This is why public transportation is so important. The private car is a local maximum. Once everybody has one it is very expensive to create a cheap and efficient massive public transportation network. But if you have an efficient massive public transportation network, it is cheaper, healthier, and convenient than private cars. That is why Uber can operate at a loss. If New York, for example, losses its massive public transportation to cheaper at-a-loss car transportation they can raise prices afterwards without fear of massive public transport competition again, as it requires to jump over the local maximum to the optimal.

hinkley 8y ago

I’d like to invite anyone who thinks Seattle has twice as many parking spots as it needs to come to lunch with me downtown on a weekday. I’ll pay for the food, you pay for the parking. If you can find it, that is.

prolikewh0a 8y ago
I don't think Seattle has enough parking for it's current car intake, but I'll pay an hour of parking downtown for lunch as long as it's nowhere near Pike Market :) I'd like to see most parking gone and cars into the city banned (unless you reside downtown, or are a delivery vehicle/bus) or a high dollar toll on downtown exits. This would force public transit to get better and make people demand it get better. It would cut commute times significantly for the lower classes commuting every weekday.
- hinkley 8y ago
  Well there are really only about 4 clusters of restaurants in downtown, (~6 if you count SLU but I don't, and that's as bad if not worse), and one is near Pike, one near the courthouse (both are lousy for parking). The ID isn't impossible but it's getting worse. The city taxes parking spaces pretty heavily. So 70 minutes in a garage (you're gonna have to walk back and forth to the garage), I'm still only paying for half to 2/3rds of that lunch even if we eat someplace decent. Personally I think we're just about right. Parking is tough but not quite impossible. But I'm also not averse to reducing car traffic in the core. Going east-west has always been impossible anyway. But I don't go downtown as much anymore except by bus because my SO -hates- the traffic and parking situation. The bus situation is getting worse because the city loses something like $1 on every bus trip, so they cut routes during the last job crunch instead of expanding them, leading to very crowded buses. If you aren't travelling during rush hour there may not be any buses near your house at all. Still twiddling my thumbs for the rail expansions to land. I'll be close to retirement (I think that's the first time I've typed those words and a little shiver went down my spine) by the ETA for my neighborhood, and I probably won't still be here by then anyway.
  - 8y ago