55 ms·
For parking lots it's a catch-22 of the car centric city design, they're required for businesses to function but you can't charge them the true value of the lan
by rtkwe 7y ago
For parking lots it's a catch-22 of the car centric city design, they're required for businesses to function but you can't charge them the true value of the land because making enough money to cover those property taxes would make parking prohibitively expensive. The real solution is proper public transit of course but that's hard and expensive so we get bandaids instead.
- WorldMaker 7y agoProper public transit wouldn't look as hard or expensive if the true value of the land was taxed on parking.
- rtkwe 7y agoIt's a phase change problem, on this side we're stable (ish) and on the other side we're stable but the transition period would take years and a lot of spending so we stay in the current state. Doing it slowly and safely requires patience from voters and a willingness to suffer the painful transition period where people in the city are paying more taxes without the problem being solved. Patience is a big issue with getting long term projects done in the US, there's always political hay to be made attacking any project with long term pay offs because of the delay between new laws/taxes/construction starting and it ending. Plus it's way more appealing to scrap and change the project to "put their stamp on it" so it's Mayor Bob's revitalization project not Mayor Alice's.