3 ms·

1) Can anybody answer how much car storage and parking is optimal? 2) I'm open to a contrary opinion and good argument, but it seems like cities are in no rush

• eesmith 4y ago
  BTW, this is from 2018. There were 291 comments at the time at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17530813 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17530813 . 1) No. There are different factors for what makes "optimal." Someone with a car might say "optimal" is to always have a parking spot by the entrance of wherever the driver wants to go. Another someone might say that a 5 minute walk after finding parking is fine. Yet another might want to rent out parking stops because public street parking is subsidized. (eg, "first hour free"), so thinks there is too much parking. Still another might think there's an ideological love of cars, and wants less of the city center dedicated to cars. 2) Do you think there is not enough parking? Or too much? The article says "In Seattle, the parking occupancy rate downtown is 64 percent" and "In Des Moines at mid-day, one publicly-funded parking garage is just 8 percent full. Outside downtown Seattle, occupancy rates are as low as 43 percent." Don't those sound like there's rather more parking than is needed? There's also 3) do the planning methods used to establish parking requirements make any sense? Why not let the market decide what "optimal" means?