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Underground parking structures cost something on the order of 5x as much as aboveground parking structures. And aboveground parking structures are already ungo

by eqdw 8y ago

Underground parking structures cost something on the order of 5x as much as aboveground parking structures. And aboveground parking structures are already ungodly expensive. One example given from The High Cost Of Free Parking (which is an amazing book that everyone should read, or at least read a summary of) looked at a study of parking facilities and found that the amortized per-parking spot cost of building an above-ground parking facility, including construction, maintenance, and staffing, was $120,000 per spot. 5x that and you're looking at half a mil per spot for undergrounding it. Would you, personally, pay an additional $400,000 to put that parking underground? Do you think you could convince every single person in that housing complex to do that? I highly doubt it. If that apartment complex was condos, eg, it's likely in that case that each condo unit would be cheaper than the parking spot for it (keeping in mind that, given it's Texas, most units would probably have 2 or maybe even 3 parking spots). Even if you could actually get everyone on board to spend so much, you'd be so dramatically increasing the unit cost of housing in that facility that you'd start getting all the typical gentrification problems. Your typical middle class family can't afford an extra 1/2 million dollars on their mortgage, so if you add that extra 1/2 mil the only way you're getting paying customers is to target the luxury top of the market. ---- Pre-emptive rebuttal: one might say "well, if each parking spot already costs $120k, that argument applies just as well to the existing parking facility". I agree! Mandatory parking minima are an ungodly expensive tax on our society. If parking costs could be fully internalized and then each individual resident was presented with the option to forego the parking spot in exchange for taking that much off of their mortgage, I suspect that a _lot_ of them would forego the parking spot. But, by law, they are not allowed that option. This is doubly perverse when you realize that the cost of providing 2 marginal parking spots at an apartment complex is significantly _more_ expensive than the cost of providing 2 marginal parking spots at (eg) a suburban single family home, and yet the people who live in an apartment complex are significantly more likely to have good access to mass transit and so they're being made to pay much much more for something that they need somewhat less than the average perosn

amyjess 8y ago
> Would you, personally, pay an additional $400,000 to put that parking underground? Do you think you could convince every single person in that housing complex to do that? I highly doubt it. If that apartment complex was condos, eg, it's likely in that case that each condo unit would be cheaper than the parking spot for it (keeping in mind that, given it's Texas, most units would probably have 2 or maybe even 3 parking spots). Also, the picture here is from a mixed-use development, not just a housing complex (it's from the West Village in Uptown Dallas; I posted a Street View link in another comment if you're interested). There's retail on the ground floor. Nobody in Dallas is going to go shopping or out to eat if we can't drive there and find a place to park. I can't even count the amount of times my friends or family have said "eh, let's go somewhere else" or "we'll come back another day" just because we couldn't find a place to park. No parking spots means businesses go under. So not only do you need 2-3 parking spots per unit, you need parking for all the customers of the retail establishments on the ground floor.

by eqdw 8y ago

amyjess 8y ago

> Would you, personally, pay an additional $400,000 to put that parking underground? Do you think you could convince every single person in that housing complex to do that? I highly doubt it. If that apartment complex was condos, eg, it's likely in that case that each condo unit would be cheaper than the parking spot for it (keeping in mind that, given it's Texas, most units would probably have 2 or maybe even 3 parking spots). Also, the picture here is from a mixed-use development, not just a housing complex (it's from the West Village in Uptown Dallas; I posted a Street View link in another comment if you're interested). There's retail on the ground floor. Nobody in Dallas is going to go shopping or out to eat if we can't drive there and find a place to park. I can't even count the amount of times my friends or family have said "eh, let's go somewhere else" or "we'll come back another day" just because we couldn't find a place to park. No parking spots means businesses go under. So not only do you need 2-3 parking spots per unit, you need parking for all the customers of the retail establishments on the ground floor.