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The Prophet of Parking: A eulogy for the great Donald Shoup
- cyberax 2y ago[flagged]
- dang 2y agoCould you please stop posting in the flamewar style? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, and we've had to ask you this already. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- davidw 2y agoOregon eliminated burdensome parking regulations in most larger cities and: it's fine. Many home builders still add parking to new projects because there is market demand for it - and they are also competing for tenants or buyers against existing housing which has parking. But there is now the flexibility to do some projects without parking, which really helps at the affordable end of the spectrum, and is a good fit for more walkable locations. BTW, Nolan Gray, cited as the author, has a book out himself that's really approachable and good reading if you're interested in cities: https://islandpress.org/books/arbitrary-lines https://islandpress.org/books/arbitrary-lines
- cyberax 2y ago[flagged]
- triceratops 2y agoPrices going up is a clear market signal of desirability.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- speed_spread 2y agoDesirability as housing or as investment? Because speculation has a tendency to overlook the little things that make a quality product.
- davidw 2y agoHousing as an investment is driven by scarcity. Commit to making housing abundant and it starts being a much less interesting investment.
- triceratops 2y agoIf the housing isn't desirable for housing, why would it go up as an investment?
- recursive 2y agoBecause your analysis indicates that many other people think it will go up even more later.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- davidw 2y agoOregon has a severe housing shortage: https://www.opb.org/article/2025/01/28/oregon-needs-to-build-29500-more-homes-each-year-chief-economist-says/ https://www.opb.org/article/2025/01/28/oregon-needs-to-build... That is the root cause of homelessness: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-about https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-... This video also does a good job of explaining it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQW4W1_SJmc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQW4W1_SJmc Eliminating costly parking regulations are quite helpful for building the kinds of housing that will help people get out of homelessness.
- cyberax 2y ago[flagged]
- davidw 2y agoThis is clearly why people pay less for housing in locales like New York or San Francisco with very efficient land use than, say, rural Oklahoma.
- Ajedi32 2y agoSan Fransisco housing is cheaper than rural Oklahoma? Source, please. San Francisco is notorious for being an extremely expensive place to live. In my experience, housing outside cities (suburbs or rural areas) is usually much, much cheaper per square foot than housing in metro areas.
- nayuki 2y ago> Homelessness is through the roof Allocating space for car parking does not help address homelessness. In fact, it hurts it a lot.
- cyberax 2y agoNope. Allocating space for cars and prohibiting the orgy of real estate densification improves the homelessness situation. It puts less stress on people to move into The Downtown, so they are more likely to stay in more reasonably-priced areas.
- howenterprisey 2y agoThe argument that density puts stress on people to move _towards_ that density seems to me to have the direction of causation reversed. People look at prices when they move, not density.
- cyberax 2y agoNo. I have the causality arrow correct. Density forces people to move, it acts as a black hole of misery. The _main_ reason people move ever closer to Downtowns is economic. They _have_ to do it, because that's where the high-paying jobs are.
- sandworm101 2y agoOften "flexibility" simply becomes providing less parking to make room for more units on a given lot, effectively outsourcing to the surrounding community. I lived in an area that allowed "senior" developments for 55+ people. As old people are all retired and so do not commute/drive, there were far fewer necessary parking spots and the development was deemed not to increase local traffic. Without the need to commute to work, upgrades to mass transit were deemed unnecessary. Total BS. All the care providers and visiting families ended up parking at the nearby mall. And retired people still drive. They don't commute to work but they don't sit still at home all day either. The whole pack of lies was simply a way to bypass parking regs and squeeze more condos onto the lot to the detriment of the surrounding community.
- davidw 2y agoMalls usually have huge, empty parking lots, so it sounds like it's a win: More people got a home to live in that costs less, and some formerly squandered land was better utilized. And if you start doing other things like legalizing corner stores and neighborhood businesses, rather than designing everything for the automobile Uber alles, maybe some of those people will find they don't need a car. Also, policy changes almost never happen in one nice tidy package where you do all the things at once, like eliminating expensive and arbitrary parking rules, adding a bunch of transit, re-legalizing neighborhood commercial, right-sizing roads, etc... so there are going to be fits and starts and bumps along the way. Still worth doing though.
- potato3732842 2y agoTo be fair, those mall parking lots were busy at one point in history.
- davidw 2y agoStrong Towns had people take pictures on 'Black Friday' of mall parking lots, just to see. Many of them still had a ton of excess capacity.
- m463 2y agoThere's gotta be some middle ground. I think of san francisco, where the streets are clogged with people circling the block and folks are double parked everywhere.
- joshlemer 2y agoThe solution, as Donald Shoup advocated, is to raise (or in some cases, lower, and in general, have it be dynamic) parking rates to market-clearing prices for parking spots such that there are is always one (but not too much more) free spot available on the block.
- immibis 2y agoHow does this benefit poor people who could barely afford their homes and can barely afford to commute to their job halfway across the city by car? If applied to an area that already is only middle-class people, then sure. Or resident parking permits.
- davidw 2y agoPart of what it allows is more housing (something that places like San Fran fail miserably at) because it's not constrained by having to provide 1.5 spots per bedroom or whatever arbitrary number. And more housing is what is needed to contain housing costs.
- vorador 2y agoMost poor people don't own their house and often don't have a car – if you do own both you're middle class.
- potato3732842 2y agoThat's true but I'm not really worried about them. I'm worried about the people who are doing everything right and about to not be poor. Increasing the cost of every rung of the ladder, like for example slogging out a shitty commute and parking situation for some time decreases the number of people who make it up the ladder. It's almost like a pseudo welfare cliff. Public policy should strive to avoid doing stuff like that. I'm of the opinion that when public goods are cheap enough to face shortages all the time the market economy steps up because better off people will spend more to save time/hassle. The problem is when things are expensive enough to kick out a lot of people, but not enough people actually alleviate shortage, which is basically how it currently goes with parking.
- AcerbicZero 2y agoMight be worth taking a drive through formerly "suburb" neighborhoods that are now a battle royal for street parking thanks to high density units with zero parking. I mean, it is portland, and they will do it wrong no matter what, but still; if you expect the people we've been mass producing to handle this well going forward, I've got bad news for you.
- davidw 2y agoPeople are the "big rocks" in cities. Housing and businesses for people is more important than storing automobiles. If there's not enough free street parking, charge more. That's part of what Shoup talked about.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mperham 2y agoPortland's problem is that they aren't charging enough (or at all) for curb parking.
- freddie_mercury 2y agoIf a city offers land for free, what incentive is there to pay for building parking on your property? Free is always going to outcompete non-free. The answer is to get rid of free on street parking.
- komboozcha 2y agoIf only there were other ways to get around in high-density areas that didn't necessitate a private vehicle. Could we all brainstorm some ideas?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pkulak 2y agoNear my house in Portland a 6-unit complex just went up on a lot that was vacant for at least a decade prior. Three blocks from there they are building at least twice as many units on what was an abandoned church and parking lot. Neither project provides any parking, and the units are cheap. Something like 320k for a brand new 1000 sq-ft build. It’s so amazing.
- davidw 2y agoThat's awesome! And, given current prices, a great opportunity for someone to own a home they otherwise might not have been able to. Here's an article about some of the other things happening: https://www.sightline.org/2023/06/30/parking-mandates-are-vanishing-across-oregon/ https://www.sightline.org/2023/06/30/parking-mandates-are-va...
- noja 2y agoDoes Portland have good public transport?
- 0_____0 2y agoIt's spread out but I found the bus system very usable when I visited.
- pkulak 2y agoHit and miss. Good for North America, horrible compared to Europe. Where these are located, it's a bit of a train desert, but the bus system is pretty good. There are three lines within short walking distance, and they go to pretty good destinations, and trains. But on the other end, there's still street parking, and it's plentiful. I'd say Portland is a good 1-car city, if you're a family. Lot's of stuff is one bus away, but you definitely get into situations where some appointment is 1:30 away by bus, 20 minutes by car, so it's nice to have options. If I was a bachelor, I'd be fine with no car, and using a bike or cab when needed.
- friendzis 2y agoHN on USian real estate / urban development: this experiment has been running for two weeks and it's fine. Also HN on USian real estate / urban development: everyone prefers this district developed two hundred years ago, because it was not fine.
- throw0101c 2y agoShoup passed away on February 6: * https://parkingreform.org/donald-shoup/ https://parkingreform.org/donald-shoup/ * https://cal.streetsblog.org/2025/02/08/streetsblog-mourns-the-passing-of-donald-shoup https://cal.streetsblog.org/2025/02/08/streetsblog-mourns-th... * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43004881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43004881 His book: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking * EconTalk podcast episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sgmw3jQcyc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sgmw3jQcyc
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dkarl 2y ago> Nor are minimum parking requirements even needed: developers have the knowledge and incentives to provide the appropriate amount of off-street parking. If a developer builds too little parking, she will struggle to attract tenants and command lower rents. This isn't entirely true. In cities where parking requirements are eliminated, many new businesses move into locations that would have previously been illegal, showing that many commercial tenants view parking requirements as excessive. In my city, judging by public comment, support for parking requirements comes not from business owners or developers but from voters who fear a lack of parking at the businesses they frequent and who fear that parking for nearby businesses or apartment buildings will overflow into their neighborhood (the horror.)
- triceratops 2y ago> from voters who fear a lack of parking at the businesses they frequent IOW they want a handout from the city (free parking) to support their lifestyles.
- Spivak 2y agoTo a cheesy jingle tune: public services paid by taxes aren't handouts. I don't know why this has caught on so strongly online that like water and gas hookups, electric, roads, and trash/yard waste pickups to single-family homes aren't supporting a specific lifestyle but public parking? Those evil suburbanites ruining everything. My hometown Columbus and the policy of mandatory parking is still working out great. New developments are building more parking than required of them and they're the hip trendy areas. The only places in the city where it's an issue is in and around "The Short North" where you can't fit any more parking and they moved to an app based pay system everyone hates. Whenever I'm home and want to go out with friends it's much easier to hit up Bridge Park or Franklinton because they have massive garages.
- triceratops 2y agoFree public parking is a handout. I use it myself, I love it, I circle the block multiple times for a free space than pay for parking. But it is a handout. Forcing private businesses to have parking, even if they make a business decision to not have it, is a tax on those businesses. And on all the businesses that would have been viable without that tax. I have no issue with paid public parking. It needs to exist. Or if we love free public services so much, we can talk about why public transport isn't free.
- regnull 2y ago> One survey of the literature suggests that drivers in the typical American city spend an average of eight minutes looking for parking at the end of each trip. Maybe it's just me, but this doesn't sound realistic at all. If there is a place where I would spend eight minutes looking for parking, I would rather not go. And that's average, meaning some people spending twice as much? 16 minutes to look for parking? Who would do that?
- Arainach 2y agoConsider how many people wait in line or drive a few miles further for "cheaper gas" without ever thinking of the value of their time, or the cost of gas and wear and tear on their vehicles they spend doing so, and that may make this theory more plausible for you. EDIT: An even better comparison is the number of people who will sit in a parking lot waiting for someone to vacate a spot rather than parking in plentiful available spots another 50-100 meters away
- pests 2y agoI don’t agree with your edit. In my area it’s freezing cold most of the year. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to wait a minute or two for a spot instead of literally walking an extra two football fields in harsh weather. Increased fall risk, etc.
- carmogger 2y agoNo such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. Seriously, 10,000 years of human history without cars and you're complaining about a little wind. Get a decent hat; most of the country would be absolutely fine.
- pests 2y agoNot complaining. Just other people might have other needs that or they might be in a rush or maybe they would rather be warm at home enjoying their hobbies opposed to trudging 200 meters through through feet of snow. For why? To not wait for two minutes? Are we really so impatient that waiting for 2 minutes is somehow seen as a waste?
- niemandhier 2y agoUnfortunately some cities forget to provide alternatives: If you drop parking lot requirements you need to provide people with access to a mode of transportation.
- bobtheborg 2y agoNope. The article is much more like "if you drop parking lot requirements, you need to demand price parking so there are always a couple of spots available, drivers have incentives to leave, etc."
- niemandhier 2y agoThat holds for shopping and recreational areas. In residential areas it does not work so well. The backbone of society is provided by moderately paid people: Health workers, construction workers, police officers, factory workers. We must enable these people to get to work. The solution so far was: enable them to own a car. We can choose to let the market handle that: people probably will negotiate for higher salaries if cost of living goes up, higher salaries will drive prices and the spiral continues.
- rcpt 2y agoNo you don't. Parking can exist just fine. The only ask is that the person parking their car pays for it (instead of everyone else paying).
- muttonhead 2y agoRemoving parking requirements doesn't ban parking, it just lets the market / builder / business owner decide how much parking to provide, instead of wildly over-estimated minimums.
- MisterTea 2y ago> In another city, nunneries must provide one parking space for every 10 nuns. What happened to church vans? Mocking this doesn't make sense. Ten nuns can fit into one van which takes up one parking spot. The van has to go somewhere.
- dudinax 2y agoImagine an eleven-nun nunnery. One nun gets to stay home, or else the nunnery makes special arrangements for the day. Point of the article is that the nunnery should decide for themselves whether to have one parking space or two.
- AlotOfReading 2y agoThis one's hilarious because it's such a non-issue. I refuse to believe there are American cities with enough nunnery construction that parking regulations to address overcrowding has become a priority for local planners. It's probably just the result of someone picking a number for every structure covered in some regulatory definition that happened to include nunneries.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bombcar 2y agoBoth that one and the gym one are obvious "exceptions with a rough analogue" - the nunnery is allowed less parking than would normally be required because of the assumption of communal living (the same reason one vehicle per household makes more sense than one vehicle per driver when dealing with residential units). And gyms are unlikely to make deeper pools, but longer/wider ones, which would support more customers. And when the regulations were written down, you'd only need one nunnery in development or existing or foreseen to make the exception appear.
- MisterTea 2y agoAh, well if it was humor it was lost on me. Oh well.
- maxwellg 2y agoThe High Cost of Free Parking is a wonderful book and I would recommend it to anyone. Parking - and car-centric development - shapes our day to day lives in tremendously powerful ways.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoAmerica is a bit strange with its excessive reliance on on-street parking. If you really want to reduce car traffic in a city, getting rid of on-street parking (or adding metered on street parking) would be the way to do that after getting rid parking requirements, cities could do it gradually, replacing a line of street parking with bike lanes or better pedestrian access.
- aidenn0 2y agoThere are also large swaths of America where not paying for parking is done on principle. I live in SoCal, and the paid public parking lots were (until recently) free for an hour, then $1.50 per hour after that. I would see things like a BMW 7-series circling the blocks looking for a free spot on the street. I ran the math and the lease on a 7-series at the time was nearly $1.50/hour!
- ge96 2y agoIf I go into a city I try not to drive/use Uber. On the other side of that doing driving gigs (delivery) I avoid driving in a city because can't find a place to park/don't want to get towed.
- asdff 2y agoWhat is crazy about socal is that it's also price insensitive to that sort of behavioral shifting one might expect from more expensive parking. These days, good luck parking around weho without just throwing your hands in the air and paying a valet $40 thanks to the byzantine web of local permit zones that has emerged in recent years, mostly in mid city and the west side for now. It hasn't lessened the amount of people going down santa monica blvd or anything, and people certainly aren't taking a bus to a $40 plate dinner. Just hurts the subset of people who have to get out there for whatever reason and can't easily stomach a valet hit in stride.
- Apes 2y agoI really liked Shoup's book. It contains a lot of practical advice what causes issues with parking, lays out bad designs that promote parking issues, talks through how to resolve these issues, and even covers how to sell it in a way that encourages people to buy into it. > San Francisco formally adopted demand-based pricing for curb parking in 2017. > The result was a rare win for San Francisco governance: We know from pilot areas that implementing demand-based pricing reduced congestion and parking citations while speeding up transit and increasing overall sales tax revenue. The program is now widely regarded as a model for parking management. The SFpark program was by all accounts a huge success, and the areas where it was implemented feel a lot better off - you can actually find parking when you need it, and traffic isn't as bad there. I would love to see it put in place in the Sunset and Richmond - those areas are almost entirely free parking, and have the worst parking in the city.
- gadders 2y agoIn the UK, councils often raise parking costs for high street on-street parking and car parks they own. Customers then vote with their feet (or wheels) and shop at out of town mega-supermarkets where the parking is free. The councils then complain that their high street is dying.
- lostdog 2y agoAre the parking lots at the high street full or empty? That's the easiest way to understand if they've got the price right.
- switch007 2y agoCouncils do tend to be pretty conservative at raising prices and seem to get it right in my experience My village is just about to introduce paid parking and I don't predict it'll lead to empty car parks. It just means those who don't want to pay will park further out and walk. Plenty of people willing to pay. Similar story all over the UK People like to blame car parking on the death of the high street but to me it seems online shopping, rents and business rates are far more contributors to it
- potato3732842 2y agoThat's just a roundabout wealth transfer from local business owners to the government. Kinda funny how the council is behaving like a medieval lord raising taxes but without the ability to tie people to the land it doesn't work all that well.
- matsemann 2y agoHow many customers does a street parking outside a business really provide? 1 customer an hour? And how many will park there and go somewhere else not even visiting the store with the curb parking? Cars don't visit shops, people do. From the amount of visitors a store in a street sees, vanishingly little of them comes from the few parking spots outside. Metro, buses, cycling however brings loads. Personally I avoid the shopping streets with car traffic. Feels hostile and noisy. I go to the shops in pedestrian areas.
- languagehacker 2y agoFor folks who don't want to read a tome like The High Cost of Free Parking, give Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar a shot. It's a lot of the same content, but punchier with a lot fewer facts and figures making much the same point.
- xnx 2y agoBetween "ride -share", delivery services (including Amazon), and self-driving vehicles, we're likely to experience a glut of parking space in the next 10 years.
- inglor_cz 2y agoThe city I live in (Ostrava) still has some gaps in downtown blocks caused by WWII bombing. One of the problems with filling them in? Burdensome parking regulations. Super-absurd, given that the public transport in Ostrava is considered one of the Czechia's best, and Czechia has, globally taken, very good public transport overall. In December 2024, parking regulations were significantly drawn down (to 16 per cent of the original), and there is hope that developers will finally start to build in the gaps. There are already some projects on paper.
- iambateman 2y agoI read the high cost of free parking last year and it permanently changed how I see the world. In particular...the book shows how supply and demand still affects behavior, even when we don't culturally like to believe that it does. If you have a say in the parking decisions in your city...please read the book. And if not, try to set the parking cost so there is, on average, one free space per block. Your city will be a better place if you do! Thanks professor Shoup...rest in peace.
- hollywood_court 2y agoWhen I moved to the Portland area, I was amazed by how convenient the public transportation system was. During my two years there, I drove my car fewer than 50 times. Yet, nearly every native Portlander I met thought I was crazy for relying on public transit. Many looked down on those who used it. I had moved from the Caribbean, where public transportation was nonexistent, and traffic and parking were a constant nightmare. To me, Portland’s transit system felt like a game-changer—but locals didn’t seem to see it that way.
- AcerbicZero 2y agoWho hated on the MAX? Other than it being a cattle car pre-covid and shutting down at like 10 or 11 everyone I knew liked it; There were more and more issues with the homeless, sure, but I don't know many portlanders who'd admit that was why they didn't like it.
- immibis 2y agoI think there's some kind of filter bubble effect going on. And a little classism. People who use public transit like it and think everyone likes it, and people who never use it hate it and think everyone hates it. My ex-boss never used public transit despite living right next to a train stop, because he was rich and trains are for poor people. He probably didn't know that's how I got to the office Christmas party (in that area).
- AcerbicZero 2y agoPerhaps, but from my experience, everyone in downtown PDX circa ~2015 rode the max to some degree. I am the least public transit friendly person in the world and even I rode it and loved it.
- hollywood_court 2y agoI left the area in October 2010, so maybe public transit became more popular after I was gone. I owned a home in SW Portland, about a 15-minute walk from the MAX station. That's a perfectly reasonable distance, even in the cold or rain. I never knew where my neighbors worked, but I never saw them walking to or parking at the MAX station. None of my coworkers used it either. For me, though, it was invaluable especially when I wanted to go out for a few drinks. And since it only ran until 10 or 11, it was the perfect excuse for not staying out too late.
- cobertos 2y agoEnding minimum parking requirements and paying for parking seem sound after reading this. However... I'm skeptical of demand-based parking pricing after a local entertainment company started using it. $5-$100 for parking depending on how close the lot is to the venue moderated by big TV screens on each lot. Proper demand measurement requires data and insight. Closeness to venue is a reasonable proxy for demand. But what if we could price the lot based on who's playing at the venue? An artist with wealthier clientele requires it's patrons pay more for parking? What if it could use your personal music tastes to upcharge? Or perhaps you used the cheap $5 lot for a different destination, should there be an upcharge then? The end game of demand-based parking, or any demand-based pricing results in more data extraction, for better insights, to extract exactly the highest amount of money each person is willing to pay. It gives power to those with the best data and puts more effort (labor/money) into figuring out better ways to get that data.
- recursive 2y ago> I'm skeptical of demand-based parking pricing after a local entertainment company started using it. $5-$100 for parking depending on how close the lot is to the venue moderated by big TV screens on each lot. So what's wrong with this? I think most people would opt for the $5. If that's the case, that's where people would park. As incentivized by the parking structure. I don't see a problem. The lot operator can change their algorithm, and parking consumers will respond according to their value curve.
- cobertos 2y agoThere are only so many lots within a few blocks of this venue. Most are owned by the single company. Parking price is not known ahead of time. The full price (including parking) of attending the event isn't know until you arrive, after a long drive into the city. Sure $5 is fine, but it's demand-based. There's nothing that prevents them from making the price floor $50 for a large name artist, and attendees would be caught in a lurch. The whole operation rubs me the wrong way.
- asdff 2y ago
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- worik 2y ago> When a good is unpriced, we naturally overconsume it. In pure economics terms, the demand for a good at a price of zero nearly always exceeds the supply No. In this case we are talking cars. They are expensive items and there are many incentives not to have more than you need. I get annoyed at mindless application of Econ 101 nostrums. His basic idea is correct, especially as density in cities gets higher, but it is not because of the "tragedy of the commons"
- recursive 2y agoCars are expensive. And they're even more expensive when you have to pay for parking. The total cost of ownership of a car includes the cost to operate it, including parking if that costs anything. If the parking cost component is "artificially" reduced or eliminated, the rest of the argument states.
- jeffbee 2y agoEvery publication in America is lionizing Shoup except here on HN a lot of confident Dunnings and Krugers are sure that they know more about the economics of parking, and they are ready to inform us.
- paganel 2y agoSo this is the guy I have to swear at for the very regression tax of paid parking. I would say some strong words against him, but then he's already dead, and the damage he has caused is already done. At least the gentrifying middle-classes are happy.
- nayuki 2y agoEvery aspect of owning and driving a car is regressive on the poor. https://cityobservatory.org/ten-things-more-inequitable-that-road-pricing/ https://cityobservatory.org/ten-things-more-inequitable-that...
- wonder_er 2y agoIt's funny (and sad) to me that people who are familiar with congestion-solving pricing schemes for something like AWS services act so unable to see parking and road networks as containing the same dynamics. I'm working on solving the problem because my life is actively being ruined by mismanaged parking. I think low enough of my own skills and capacities, and yet. https://josh.works/parking https://josh.works/parking Unfortunately 'parking' is just a component of a larger mobility network that, in America, is mismanaged to better accomplish ethnic cleansing. I wish I were kidding, I wish I were wrong. A book has been written titled: 'the slaughter of cities: urban renewal as ethnic cleansing' It sorta ruined my ability to function as peacefully as before in segments of society common in the greater united states. Edit: the 2nd of Donald shoup's 3 part fix was 'spend all collected money on the curb where it's collected'. This piece, mixed with the proper clearing price for maintaining a 10% availability of parking spaces means parking could possibly provide for really substantial and beautiful upgrades to the area. Feels like lots of times the conversation forgets that beautiful things will be added if parking gets managed rightly.
- ipdashc 2y ago> congestion-solving pricing schemes for something like AWS services act so unable to see parking and road networks as containing the same dynamics While I do see the irony, I think one of the differences is that nobody needs AWS, but a lot of poor or lower-middle-class people in America have no realistic choice but to drive to places. I'm not against paid parking, but like you said, there is something funny (and sad) about the solution effectively being "reduce demand for parking, unless you're rich enough to not care".
- wonder_er 2y agoThe solution isn't to reduce the demand for parking. It's to dynamically price the parking high enough that there is always ten percent of the parking available. When there is less or no demand, the price would fall. Just like AWS services that guarantee certain availability all the time. Sometimes the moment by moment utilization cost can go quite high to accommodate, and it's not to make aws rich, it's to mediate the demand. Shoup's parking fix would benefit the regular person far more directly than AWS does.
- arthurofbabylon 2y agoMy favorite excerpt, where rationale overcomes ideology: > Indeed, Shoup worked hard to make his ideas palatable across the political spectrum. Are you a conservative? People should pay for the services they consume. Are you a progressive? All this unnecessary driving can’t be good for the environment. Are you a libertarian? Clearly, the solution to scarcity is prices and markets. Are you a socialist? Let’s stop privatizing the public realm by turning it into a free parking lot. As a result, the typical shoupista gathering is an oasis of peaceful coexistence.
- mattmcknight 2y agoShoup did point out that we often don't charge enough for parking, which impedes the construction of things like parking lots and garages, because the free space is distorting the market. However, blindly advocating for less parking is not always the right answer either. There is often some sense in requiring parking to be built in cases where people want to free ride on parking created by others.