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It sounds like the parking was underpriced. EDIT I am rate-limited so can't reply, but this part: "If you have 200 cars" This is only the case if the demand

by _dain_ 3y ago

It sounds like the parking was underpriced. EDIT I am rate-limited so can't reply, but this part: "If you have 200 cars" This is only the case if the demand for parking / driving is perfectly inelastic, which would be quite extraordinary. Empirically, when you charge for parking or institute toll roads, traffic tends to fall, in some cases sharply (because many journeys are low value). I repeat: if the parking spaces are still congested, the price should be raised until they're not. Assuming the number of cars would stay the same is like the lump-of-labour fallacy. Lump of metal fallacy? Then there's the supply side: guess what, that's not inelastic either! If it's profitable to provide parking, someone will build dedicated facilities for it and charge for their use. This may be an alien concept for some of you, but only because parking minimums cause such oversupply that they can't be run profitably. In cities where parking is priced sanely, it's unremarkable to see this. "Cars will just overflow into adjacent neighbourhoods" okay, so charge for parking there too, until they don't. Duh. I don't see why cars should get to sit somewhere rent-free but a human being can't. Urban land is valuable; if you want to occupy it, pay what it costs, ya fuckin welfare queens. my language is harsh but it's hard not to be when I see so many americans (it's always americans) confidently claiming that life is impossible without free parking. but I live in a city without free parking and things work just fine. I can literally just look out of my window and it disproves all the doomsaying. every commute and trip to the supermarket is uneventful and not ruined in the slightest by a lack of free parking. you pay for parking and it's fine. it's literally just fine. I went to virginia one time, I saw literal acres and acres and acres of empty parking space, oceans of asphalt; nobody seemed to think anything of it but I thought it was mad, like some kind of braindead economic allocation fuckup from a communist country that we'd all laugh about. I wanted to shout: you are being terraformed by asphalt-based lifeforms! why do I have to explain to americans how a free market price mechanism works? on a forum for people to shill their california startups? I shouldn't need to tell you this!

close04 3y ago
Raising the price would just extract more value for the owners from a very limited resource. But the resource stays just as limited. If you have 200 cars and 50 parking spaces there's no price point at which the 200 cars can park simultaneously. The overflow ends up clogging the surrounding neighborhoods, on top of the outcome described by OP. Edit. @pc86, both points you make are valid but neither addresses or fixes the problem being discussed. They are an interesting, albeit completely parallel discussion.
- pc86 3y ago
  > Raising the price would just extract more value for the owners from a very limited resource. Yes. If you own a limited resource it's your right to make money from that. I know we like to pretend people making money from things they own is somehow evil but it's how all of civilization has been built and is an objectively good thing. > If you have 200 cars and 50 parking spaces there's no price point at which the 200 cars can park simultaneously. No, but is a point where 50 can park simultaneously and nobody who wants to park there and can afford to is denied that ability.
  - close04 3y ago
    Both points you made are valid but neither fixes or even touches on the problem being discussed: there are more cars than parking spots and this causes problems. The economic theory is an interesting, albeit completely parallel discussion. Price is just about who gets to have one. Effectively you'll still have 150 cars that cannot be parked next to the owners' residence, that get dumped on the street elsewhere probably in the next lower cost neighborhood, and with the additional issues OP mentioned. Put it another way, if you want to solve the housing crisis and I tell you "owners can set whatever price they want for the house to extract maximum value and nobody who can afford that will be denied the house" am I wrong? But did I solve the problem?
  - autoexec 3y ago
    > No, but is a point where 50 can park simultaneously and nobody who wants to park there and can afford to is denied that ability. That sucks for the people who are denied the ability to park there because they can't afford it though. Telling people that they need to walk miles to get to a doctor or a grocery store and that only the wealthy deserve to have access to 90% of the city doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > only the wealthy deserve to have access to 90% of the city There parking minimums drive up housing costs. They’re why that person has to drive longer to get to that place. Perhaps why they need to make a car payment at all.
foxyv 3y ago
Parking, Roads, Gasoline, Pollution, etc... We so heavily subsidize people's cars for no reason. For the cost of all of it we could have free healthcare and amazing public transportation then lower taxes with the left over money.
- njarboe 3y ago
  Um... Just US healthcare spending is 17.3% of GDP. $4.5 Trillion per year. No way this works.
  - brewdad 3y ago
    Cut out the middle man (insurance companies and their profits) and you can get this number dramatically lower.
    - BillTheDuck 3y ago
      Simple solutions do NOT exist. There is a litany of "middlemen"; Drs, Corporations, Hospitals, Insurance, Pharmacies, Drug Companies, marketing, Lawyers ... ALL have a stake in something.
  - foxyv 3y ago
    A large part of that is inflated health care costs. US citizens have to pay more than twice as much on average. Some services such as ER visits can cost 10x as much. US spends twice as much per capita than UK but get much less from it. Also keep in mind that the amount spent on roads is only a fraction of the total cost of cars in the USA.
autoexec 3y ago
jacking up the prices for parking spaces due to artificially induced scarcity will mean that cars are still every bit as essential to get around, but now only the wealthy will be able to afford to park them, screwing over the population least able to arrange/afford alternatives. I guess it's somehow better if the increasing number of poors in the US have to park miles away from their jobs (if they're lucky enough) and have to walk/run the rest of the way. Like it or not, our cities are already built to make cars a necessity and pricing people out of access to the majority of places within a city isn't a solution to the design of public transportation or roads.
- kilotaras 3y ago
  > artificially induced scarcity How is *not requiring* parking to be provided inducing scarcity artificially?
  - autoexec 3y ago
    Because before developers were required to ensure that when they built something adding parking spaces to handle the demand they were introducing to an area was their responsibility. Now developers can (and will) push that externality onto the public at zero cost to them. The city has a very limited amount of parking spaces it can provide at any cost which means that removing that requirement will suddenly make parking much more expensive and harder to obtain.
    - kilotaras 3y ago
      But that's not what artificially inducing means. London for example have buildings which are prohibited of having parking (or getting street permit). Providing an option not pay for parking space when buying an apartment is not that.
      - zdragnar 3y ago
        The externality is already accounted for there.
doctorpangloss 3y ago
I'm not sure why you are being downvoted. The reason people keep buying cars after prices rise 57% in a decade: the extra $10,000 amortized over 10 years is less than living even 1 year near the things you drive to. Things you drive to includes your parking space! It doesn't make any sense to own a car and live in a dense urban development. What more needs to be said? Live in the suburbs if you have a car. Fortunately bridge and toll community members are insensitive to these changes. They see no problems with 2 hours of schlepping, $16 of tolls and $25 parking to drink $0.50 of vodka priced at $17 at a downtown bar. If they were sensitive to these issues, that behavior would have ceased much sooner than a pandemic-induced shock to their routines. That said, I don't see anything wrong with the suburban lifestyle, I am a product of it. Instead of focusing on issues like parking costs, which cities can never beat suburbs at because suburbs have essentially infinite land, cities should fix their education systems, because they can realistically beat suburbs on the concentration of human capital. My community would be far more appreciative of that than bullshit about parking spots.
- tomatocracy 3y ago
  > It doesn't make any sense to own a car and live in a dense urban development. Public transport can be good but it's never that good. I live in zone 1 (ie very centrally) in London and there are still many journeys where it is quicker and cheaper for me to drive than to take any kind of public transport. This is true for longer journeys (going outside London) especially but surprisingly it's also true for quite a few short journeys (even going a couple of miles) - it depends a lot on the layout of the public transport network and the roads, and this is before considering journeys where I might want to bring bulky or heavy things with me which are basically impossible to do by public transport. I end up driving enough that the cost of car ownership vs short term rentals makes sense in pure economic terms but the convenience difference of ownership vs short-term rental is also pretty big.

by _dain_ 3y ago

close04 3y ago

Raising the price would just extract more value for the owners from a very limited resource. But the resource stays just as limited. If you have 200 cars and 50 parking spaces there's no price point at which the 200 cars can park simultaneously. The overflow ends up clogging the surrounding neighborhoods, on top of the outcome described by OP. Edit. @pc86, both points you make are valid but neither addresses or fixes the problem being discussed. They are an interesting, albeit completely parallel discussion.

pc86 3y ago
> Raising the price would just extract more value for the owners from a very limited resource. Yes. If you own a limited resource it's your right to make money from that. I know we like to pretend people making money from things they own is somehow evil but it's how all of civilization has been built and is an objectively good thing. > If you have 200 cars and 50 parking spaces there's no price point at which the 200 cars can park simultaneously. No, but is a point where 50 can park simultaneously and nobody who wants to park there and can afford to is denied that ability.
- close04 3y ago
  Both points you made are valid but neither fixes or even touches on the problem being discussed: there are more cars than parking spots and this causes problems. The economic theory is an interesting, albeit completely parallel discussion. Price is just about who gets to have one. Effectively you'll still have 150 cars that cannot be parked next to the owners' residence, that get dumped on the street elsewhere probably in the next lower cost neighborhood, and with the additional issues OP mentioned. Put it another way, if you want to solve the housing crisis and I tell you "owners can set whatever price they want for the house to extract maximum value and nobody who can afford that will be denied the house" am I wrong? But did I solve the problem?
- autoexec 3y ago
  > No, but is a point where 50 can park simultaneously and nobody who wants to park there and can afford to is denied that ability. That sucks for the people who are denied the ability to park there because they can't afford it though. Telling people that they need to walk miles to get to a doctor or a grocery store and that only the wealthy deserve to have access to 90% of the city doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > only the wealthy deserve to have access to 90% of the city There parking minimums drive up housing costs. They’re why that person has to drive longer to get to that place. Perhaps why they need to make a car payment at all.

foxyv 3y ago

Parking, Roads, Gasoline, Pollution, etc... We so heavily subsidize people's cars for no reason. For the cost of all of it we could have free healthcare and amazing public transportation then lower taxes with the left over money.

njarboe 3y ago
Um... Just US healthcare spending is 17.3% of GDP. $4.5 Trillion per year. No way this works.
- brewdad 3y ago
  Cut out the middle man (insurance companies and their profits) and you can get this number dramatically lower.
  - BillTheDuck 3y ago
    Simple solutions do NOT exist. There is a litany of "middlemen"; Drs, Corporations, Hospitals, Insurance, Pharmacies, Drug Companies, marketing, Lawyers ... ALL have a stake in something.
- foxyv 3y ago
  A large part of that is inflated health care costs. US citizens have to pay more than twice as much on average. Some services such as ER visits can cost 10x as much. US spends twice as much per capita than UK but get much less from it. Also keep in mind that the amount spent on roads is only a fraction of the total cost of cars in the USA.

autoexec 3y ago

jacking up the prices for parking spaces due to artificially induced scarcity will mean that cars are still every bit as essential to get around, but now only the wealthy will be able to afford to park them, screwing over the population least able to arrange/afford alternatives. I guess it's somehow better if the increasing number of poors in the US have to park miles away from their jobs (if they're lucky enough) and have to walk/run the rest of the way. Like it or not, our cities are already built to make cars a necessity and pricing people out of access to the majority of places within a city isn't a solution to the design of public transportation or roads.

kilotaras 3y ago
> artificially induced scarcity How is *not requiring* parking to be provided inducing scarcity artificially?
- autoexec 3y ago
  Because before developers were required to ensure that when they built something adding parking spaces to handle the demand they were introducing to an area was their responsibility. Now developers can (and will) push that externality onto the public at zero cost to them. The city has a very limited amount of parking spaces it can provide at any cost which means that removing that requirement will suddenly make parking much more expensive and harder to obtain.
  - kilotaras 3y ago
    But that's not what artificially inducing means. London for example have buildings which are prohibited of having parking (or getting street permit). Providing an option not pay for parking space when buying an apartment is not that.
    - zdragnar 3y ago
      The externality is already accounted for there.

doctorpangloss 3y ago

I'm not sure why you are being downvoted. The reason people keep buying cars after prices rise 57% in a decade: the extra $10,000 amortized over 10 years is less than living even 1 year near the things you drive to. Things you drive to includes your parking space! It doesn't make any sense to own a car and live in a dense urban development. What more needs to be said? Live in the suburbs if you have a car. Fortunately bridge and toll community members are insensitive to these changes. They see no problems with 2 hours of schlepping, $16 of tolls and $25 parking to drink $0.50 of vodka priced at $17 at a downtown bar. If they were sensitive to these issues, that behavior would have ceased much sooner than a pandemic-induced shock to their routines. That said, I don't see anything wrong with the suburban lifestyle, I am a product of it. Instead of focusing on issues like parking costs, which cities can never beat suburbs at because suburbs have essentially infinite land, cities should fix their education systems, because they can realistically beat suburbs on the concentration of human capital. My community would be far more appreciative of that than bullshit about parking spots.

tomatocracy 3y ago
> It doesn't make any sense to own a car and live in a dense urban development. Public transport can be good but it's never that good. I live in zone 1 (ie very centrally) in London and there are still many journeys where it is quicker and cheaper for me to drive than to take any kind of public transport. This is true for longer journeys (going outside London) especially but surprisingly it's also true for quite a few short journeys (even going a couple of miles) - it depends a lot on the layout of the public transport network and the roads, and this is before considering journeys where I might want to bring bulky or heavy things with me which are basically impossible to do by public transport. I end up driving enough that the cost of car ownership vs short term rentals makes sense in pure economic terms but the convenience difference of ownership vs short-term rental is also pretty big.