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Not true, at least not for most people anyway. People need cars to get to where they need to go. When the developer of an apartment complex has to provide parki

Not true, at least not for most people anyway. People need cars to get to where they need to go. When the developer of an apartment complex has to provide parking for its residents everyone has a place to put the cars they need. When those developers don't have to provide parking space anymore, people will still need cars, but will now have no place to put them at night. This will drive up the price of apartment complexes that provide parking, pricing many people out, while doing nothing to eliminate the need for their cars. You can't solve the problem of "I need a car" just by taking away the places people put them at night. The problem we have is built into the design of our cities from the ground up and it impacts every aspect of how they are structured and used. Eliminating parking spaces while the absolute need for cars continues to exist doesn't solve the problem at all. This is the kind of move that should be done selectively, and only after alternative options are created, if it's done at all.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> This will drive up the price of apartment complexes that provide parking, pricing many people out, while doing nothing to eliminate the need for their cars There is zero evidence for this. There is evidence for parking minimums raising housing prices. I’m curious about the overlap between off-street parking minimum requirement advocates and anti-development NIMBYs who don’t believe in supply and demand.
- autoexec 3y ago
  > There is zero evidence for this. When most people need something, and there is suddenly a much smaller supply of that thing, prices for the now scarce but still needed thing tend to increase. That's basically self-evident. If you have evidence that shows otherwise please feel free to provide it. I suspect that if examples showing otherwise exist at all they won't be remotely representative of the situation these cities will face.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > When most people need something, and there is suddenly a much smaller supply of that thing Yes. We have rising, elastic house and stable, inelastic paid parking prices [1[2]]. Due to these regulations, we cannot substitute limited space away from off-street parking towards e.g. housing. [1] http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/PricingParkingByDemand.pdf http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/PricingParkingByDemand.pdf [2] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Funnel-plot-for-the-price-elasticity-of-parking-volume-EPV-against-sample-size-for-SP_fig2_331443775 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Funnel-plot-for-the-pric...
    - autoexec 3y ago
      The research you link to discusses pricing for parking spaces, but nowhere does it state that eliminating parking spaces doesn't increase the price of what little parking is left. The idea that developers being responsible for providing adequate parking would mean that we can't have adequate space housing is a new argument, but not a compelling one. Clearly jacking up the prices for on-street parking means we'd have more money and more space for other things, but that doesn't solve the problem of there being too many cars on the road or eliminate the need for people to keep and drive cars. While the one paper you linked to suggests that higher prices could help reduce the demand for cars and driving, it also explicitly states that price of vehicle ownership is only one of many variables that has an affect those demands. The availability of viable alternatives to car ownership/use is the one being ignored here. If I will die unless I go to the hospital every week for 6 months for chemo treatment and the only way to get there is by driving, the amount they'll charge me for parking isn't really a factor until it becomes so high that I can't afford to get the treatment I need. The fact that I also can't get to work, the grocery store, the doctor's office, the pharmacy, my kid's school, or the homes of my friends family without a car means that I'm still going to need to own (and still need a place to park) my car even if I could afford to uber my cancer-ridden body to and from the hospital every single week. (this is purely an example, I'm not, to my knowledge, cancer-ridden) You simply can't solve the problem of people needing to own and park cars by only reducing the number of available parking spaces. Reducing the number of parking spaces is something that should be done only once viable alternatives are established.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > When most people need something, and there is suddenly a much smaller supply of that thing, prices for the now scarce but still needed thing tend to increase. No one is arguing against the idea that eliminating parking requirements increases (in short-run, first-order analysis) the market clearing price of parking spaces. The contentious part is that the presence of the freedom to build housing without parking requirements (enabling, e.g., housing plus commercial spaces to be built in a space that would otherwise have the same housing plus parking) does nothing to reduce the demand for autos.
    - autoexec 3y ago
      > The contentious part is that the presence of the freedom to build housing without parking requirements does nothing to reduce the demand for autos. Why would it? Without alternatives to cars as a means to get people to where they need to go, people will still require cars. As long as people are required to own and drive cars not having enough available parking does nothing to help reduce the amount of cars being owned/driven. In fact, we know that it increase the number of cars on the road. That's how we end up with statistics like "30% of all traffic in urban areas come from people circling around looking for places to park". You can't solve the problem of people needing cars by not addressing the reasons people need cars, and only reducing the number of parking spots for the cars people already need.
      - dragonwriter 3y ago
        > Why would it? Because it would both enable and incentivize development patterns where people need cars less. > Without alternatives to cars as a means to get people to where they need to go, people will still require cars. Dense mixed-use development puts more of the places people need to go in places that don't require cars to get to them. (It also mass transit to other places more viable.) Your focussed on alternatives ti cars to get to a fixed set of locations, but a big point of dense mixed-use development is to provide alternative locations. > You can't solve the problem of people needing cars by not addressing the reasons people need cars The reason people need cars is that the places they need to be a far away because of development patterns; one of the key features of development patterns that causes this is...the space use created by parking requirements.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> When those developers don't have to providing parking space anymore, people will still need cars but now have no place to put them at night. If they have no place to put them, they won't have them, and if they don't have them, then either (1) they won't live there at all, or (2) they don't actually need them. > This is the kind of move that should be done selectively No, having parking requirements should be done selectively, if at all. If there is sufficient market demand, the requirements will be unnecessary to get developers to include them, if not, then the requirements are most often a harmful constraint that limits housing supply.
- autoexec 3y ago
  > If they have no place to put them, they won't have them This is demonstrably false. People still need cars to get to where they need to go, like work, or their doctor's office, or the grocery store. There are no alternatives. Public transportation doesn't get them there. Ubering everywhere is more expensive than owning a car. Until alternatives exist, not having a car isn't an option. If you've been to cities where there isn't enough street parking to meet demand you'd know that even when people have no place to park their cars they still keep cars. They just go to extremes to find/keep/make parking wherever and whenever they can and often have to spend long periods of time driving on streets/circling blocks to find a spot. They block traffic to wait for someone they think might be leaving soon, they walk great distances to get from where to park to where they need to be, they park in illegal or dangerous places. There are many negative consequences to this behavior which impact everyone around them, but people can't help but do it because they're left with no alternatives. Examples of this abound. I've seen statistics like 30% of all traffic in urban areas are just people looking for places to park. (some studies have found that number to be as high as 75%!) or that the average amount of time drivers spend per year looking for place to park is 17 hours! > No, having parking requirements should be done selectively, if at all. That means the same thing. > If there is sufficient market demand, the requirements will be unnecessary to get developers to include them That's not how markets work. If it will make developers more money to not give people the amount of parking they need, then developers will not give people enough parking. All other negative externalities be damned. None of it means there will be fewer cars on the road.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> This will drive up the price of apartment complexes that provide parking, pricing many people out, while doing nothing to eliminate the need for their cars There is zero evidence for this. There is evidence for parking minimums raising housing prices. I’m curious about the overlap between off-street parking minimum requirement advocates and anti-development NIMBYs who don’t believe in supply and demand.

autoexec 3y ago
> There is zero evidence for this. When most people need something, and there is suddenly a much smaller supply of that thing, prices for the now scarce but still needed thing tend to increase. That's basically self-evident. If you have evidence that shows otherwise please feel free to provide it. I suspect that if examples showing otherwise exist at all they won't be remotely representative of the situation these cities will face.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > When most people need something, and there is suddenly a much smaller supply of that thing Yes. We have rising, elastic house and stable, inelastic paid parking prices [1[2]]. Due to these regulations, we cannot substitute limited space away from off-street parking towards e.g. housing. [1] http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/PricingParkingByDemand.pdf http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/PricingParkingByDemand.pdf [2] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Funnel-plot-for-the-price-elasticity-of-parking-volume-EPV-against-sample-size-for-SP_fig2_331443775 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Funnel-plot-for-the-pric...
  - autoexec 3y ago
    The research you link to discusses pricing for parking spaces, but nowhere does it state that eliminating parking spaces doesn't increase the price of what little parking is left. The idea that developers being responsible for providing adequate parking would mean that we can't have adequate space housing is a new argument, but not a compelling one. Clearly jacking up the prices for on-street parking means we'd have more money and more space for other things, but that doesn't solve the problem of there being too many cars on the road or eliminate the need for people to keep and drive cars. While the one paper you linked to suggests that higher prices could help reduce the demand for cars and driving, it also explicitly states that price of vehicle ownership is only one of many variables that has an affect those demands. The availability of viable alternatives to car ownership/use is the one being ignored here. If I will die unless I go to the hospital every week for 6 months for chemo treatment and the only way to get there is by driving, the amount they'll charge me for parking isn't really a factor until it becomes so high that I can't afford to get the treatment I need. The fact that I also can't get to work, the grocery store, the doctor's office, the pharmacy, my kid's school, or the homes of my friends family without a car means that I'm still going to need to own (and still need a place to park) my car even if I could afford to uber my cancer-ridden body to and from the hospital every single week. (this is purely an example, I'm not, to my knowledge, cancer-ridden) You simply can't solve the problem of people needing to own and park cars by only reducing the number of available parking spaces. Reducing the number of parking spaces is something that should be done only once viable alternatives are established.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > When most people need something, and there is suddenly a much smaller supply of that thing, prices for the now scarce but still needed thing tend to increase. No one is arguing against the idea that eliminating parking requirements increases (in short-run, first-order analysis) the market clearing price of parking spaces. The contentious part is that the presence of the freedom to build housing without parking requirements (enabling, e.g., housing plus commercial spaces to be built in a space that would otherwise have the same housing plus parking) does nothing to reduce the demand for autos.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    > The contentious part is that the presence of the freedom to build housing without parking requirements does nothing to reduce the demand for autos. Why would it? Without alternatives to cars as a means to get people to where they need to go, people will still require cars. As long as people are required to own and drive cars not having enough available parking does nothing to help reduce the amount of cars being owned/driven. In fact, we know that it increase the number of cars on the road. That's how we end up with statistics like "30% of all traffic in urban areas come from people circling around looking for places to park". You can't solve the problem of people needing cars by not addressing the reasons people need cars, and only reducing the number of parking spots for the cars people already need.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > Why would it? Because it would both enable and incentivize development patterns where people need cars less. > Without alternatives to cars as a means to get people to where they need to go, people will still require cars. Dense mixed-use development puts more of the places people need to go in places that don't require cars to get to them. (It also mass transit to other places more viable.) Your focussed on alternatives ti cars to get to a fixed set of locations, but a big point of dense mixed-use development is to provide alternative locations. > You can't solve the problem of people needing cars by not addressing the reasons people need cars The reason people need cars is that the places they need to be a far away because of development patterns; one of the key features of development patterns that causes this is...the space use created by parking requirements.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> When those developers don't have to providing parking space anymore, people will still need cars but now have no place to put them at night. If they have no place to put them, they won't have them, and if they don't have them, then either (1) they won't live there at all, or (2) they don't actually need them. > This is the kind of move that should be done selectively No, having parking requirements should be done selectively, if at all. If there is sufficient market demand, the requirements will be unnecessary to get developers to include them, if not, then the requirements are most often a harmful constraint that limits housing supply.

autoexec 3y ago
> If they have no place to put them, they won't have them This is demonstrably false. People still need cars to get to where they need to go, like work, or their doctor's office, or the grocery store. There are no alternatives. Public transportation doesn't get them there. Ubering everywhere is more expensive than owning a car. Until alternatives exist, not having a car isn't an option. If you've been to cities where there isn't enough street parking to meet demand you'd know that even when people have no place to park their cars they still keep cars. They just go to extremes to find/keep/make parking wherever and whenever they can and often have to spend long periods of time driving on streets/circling blocks to find a spot. They block traffic to wait for someone they think might be leaving soon, they walk great distances to get from where to park to where they need to be, they park in illegal or dangerous places. There are many negative consequences to this behavior which impact everyone around them, but people can't help but do it because they're left with no alternatives. Examples of this abound. I've seen statistics like 30% of all traffic in urban areas are just people looking for places to park. (some studies have found that number to be as high as 75%!) or that the average amount of time drivers spend per year looking for place to park is 17 hours! > No, having parking requirements should be done selectively, if at all. That means the same thing. > If there is sufficient market demand, the requirements will be unnecessary to get developers to include them That's not how markets work. If it will make developers more money to not give people the amount of parking they need, then developers will not give people enough parking. All other negative externalities be damned. None of it means there will be fewer cars on the road.