8 ms·

The 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 p

The 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 ago
How 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 ago
  Part 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 ago
  Most 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 ago
    That'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.
    - komboozcha 2y ago
      The market economy has solved none of these problems, and I suggest looking up just how socioeconomically mobile people in the US really are (it's not great).
    - wat10000 2y ago
      Price parking at the market rate. Demand for other forms of transportation increase substantially. Provide it. Poor people can now take cheap buses and trains instead of expensive cars. If you're worried about the transition, subsidize other forms of transport and build that out first, but forcing poor people to own cars just to make it to work is not a good way to help them.
      - rob74 2y ago
        Price parking at the market rate. Political competitor criticizes you for being an "eco-dictator" and promises a return to free parking. You lose the next election. Sorry for the cynicism, I'm actually for increasing the price of parking, but recent political events have robbed me of any illusions that environmentally friendly policies have a future. When they have a choice between the environment and paying less money (short-term), most people will choose paying less money.
    - lmm 2y ago
      > 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. No, it's the opposite. A city built around everyone having a car makes car ownership a cliff. Normalising not having a car (and a reliable bus service - like the kind you get by turning street parking spaces into bus lanes - helps with that) makes the ladder gentler. If people are late for work because they couldn't find a parking spot just as often as people are late because the bus was late or didn't show, maybe there will be fewer horror stories of people getting fired because their car broke and they couldn't afford to get it fixed.
  - rpcope1 2y ago
    > most poor people don't have a car Outside of maybe a couple urban areas like NYC, that's patently untrue in the United States. It would not surprise me if the poor frankly had more and older/rougher cars than their more wealthy counterparts.
- harryh 2y ago
  The solution to poor people not having enough money is to give them more money (if you really want to help them). It's not to make random consumer goods like parking free for all. If you do this, most of the goods will be used by people who are not poor, so it's very inefficient at helping you achieve your goal of helping poor people. In addition, many poor people won't want the thing you are making free. In the case of parking that could be because they don't own a car, so this plan doesn't help a portion of the population you are trying to help. Even more inefficient! When people think we should have free parking to help the poor, it's mostly just status quo bias at work. Most people would never say that we should make bread free. Or that we should make milk free. Parking isn't any different.
  - RealityVoid 2y ago
    I know this probably doesn't add a lot to the conversation but for me it articulated and cleared some inconsistencies I was failing to square up in my mind. So, nice, thanks. Do you have any books or articles that helped you in your analysis, I wonder?
    - harryh 2y ago
      You're welcome! The topical book to recommend here is obviously The High Cost of Free Parking. https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193...
      - davidw 2y ago
        It's quite a big book. Henry Grabar's book, mentioned elsewhere, is apparently more approachable.
        ryantgtg 2y ago
        It’s big, but it’s very clearly written and you can likely understand the entire premise after a few chapters.
  - 2y ago
- joshlemer 2y ago
  It benefits the poor by allocating resources as efficiently as possible. If there is someone who is poor enough that they need help from society/the government, it would be much more effective to transfer money directly to the, rather than very very poorly (probably regressively in fact) target that help by having the public subsidize parking on their block. They would rather have the $100 in efficient redistribution rather than the government spend $100 so that they can benefit by $1.
- spamizbad 2y ago
  You can't means-test a parking space. You could, in theory, set parking prices based on the value of the land its by.
  - lmm 2y ago
    You can means-test a parking permit. It's dumb, but some cities do.
    - Gigachad 2y ago
      Rather than implementing all these complex and weird rules, you can just ensure everyone has enough money to afford the essentials.
- jonstewart 2y ago
  One of the ways it benefits them is by reducing traffic congestion so buses can get through. A significant amount of traffic in parking-contested areas is from cars looking for parking.
ajmurmann 2y ago
That's a necessity, but I'd also add legalizing construction of dedicated parking structures in more places. Land is at a premium in any desirable place and street parking is a lot less efficient usage of that than a multi-level parking structure. As a driver I also prefer them. Circling around blocks is a waste of time and annoying and my car is safer in a dedicated building that typically has some cameras
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  This is not really because parking lots are not legalized (they are, and in fact are often required) but because structured parking is so expensive to build; $25-35k per space in an above ground garage and $35-50k per space underground. https://dcplm.com/blog/cost-of-building-a-parking-garage/ https://dcplm.com/blog/cost-of-building-a-parking-garage/ The only place I'm aware of that bans new parking garages in the US is Manhattan, which has a general parking cap; but providing enough spaces for the actual car travel demand to Manhattan would necessitate leveling the whole island and then some, so the policy is there to get people to stop driving to a narrow, congested island.
  - ajmurmann 2y ago
    I am pretty sure that most areas here in Portland affected by the shortage of parking aren't zoned to allow building a parking structure. I haven't looked this up though. Edit: It's not downtown here that has this problem, but smaller, hip neighborhoods where you have a shopping street surrounded by an ocean of SFHs If high cost is the issue, it seems like people are complaining about lack of parking but don't want it enough to pay the real, unsubsidized price. So why should everyone else pay for them?
    - lmm 2y ago
      > it seems like people are complaining about lack of parking but don't want it enough to pay the real, unsubsidized price. That's exactly what it is. The normalization of "free" street parking does a lot of damage here.
  - 2y ago
boogieknite 2y ago
my solution is to look both ways before flipping the windshield wipers up on a double parked villain
emmelaich 2y ago
The other part is to make public transport more appealing.
- n4r9 2y ago
  And cheaper! A roundtrip 10 min bus ride into town costs my family £6. That's more expensive than driving in and parking for 3-4 hours.
  - Ekaros 2y ago
    Is there at least seats available? As shouldn't public transport too be market clearing. So price should be high enough that there is always empty room in busses and the busses fully pay for themselves.
    - n4r9 2y ago
      Usually yeah. London has buses every 10 mins on most routes. It can get very crowded at rush hour or school run time though. Several groups (OAPs, kids, disabled people...) get discounted or free bus passes which I wouldn't want to change. Don't get me wrong - London public transport is fantastic. Extensive, frequent, convenient, and multi-modal. But the pricing is quite static so that people who use it for short inner-city journeys lose out a bit.
  - stretchwithme 2y ago
    How large is the family?
- unyttigfjelltol 2y ago
  Yes, the system developed as it did for a reason, some of the more obscure being: + entrenched rent-seekers controlling properties in cities (it's almost axiomatic) + centralized transportation systems being subject to political and labor capture-- the main purpose is not great customer service + red tape in urban areas for everything + market forces created last-resort poor quality housing in cities + the car vs transit battle is winner-take-all at a neighborhood level, and transit does not compete properly on a metro or regional level, nor is the park-and-ride system fully competitive + car-compatible density negates transit density + different ownership model for rolling stock leads to over-investment for cars and under-investment for transit (you buy the car you personally can afford and it sits idle while you ride the subway car your grandparents' generation was willing to pay for collectively )
vikingerik 2y ago
Of course, the backlash to that will be "so parking is only for the rich?" Same as when we built express highways and priced the tolls to demand - see the complaints about "Lexus lanes". Capitalism is still the least-bad way of allocating a scarce resource, but of course those who get priced out will be unhappy.
- FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
  The rich use helicopters...
stretchwithme 2y ago
You mean one spot available to pay for, right? Not a free one :-)

immibis 2y ago

How 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 ago
Part 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 ago
Most 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 ago
  That'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.
  - komboozcha 2y ago
    The market economy has solved none of these problems, and I suggest looking up just how socioeconomically mobile people in the US really are (it's not great).
  - wat10000 2y ago
    Price parking at the market rate. Demand for other forms of transportation increase substantially. Provide it. Poor people can now take cheap buses and trains instead of expensive cars. If you're worried about the transition, subsidize other forms of transport and build that out first, but forcing poor people to own cars just to make it to work is not a good way to help them.
    - rob74 2y ago
      Price parking at the market rate. Political competitor criticizes you for being an "eco-dictator" and promises a return to free parking. You lose the next election. Sorry for the cynicism, I'm actually for increasing the price of parking, but recent political events have robbed me of any illusions that environmentally friendly policies have a future. When they have a choice between the environment and paying less money (short-term), most people will choose paying less money.
  - lmm 2y ago
    > 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. No, it's the opposite. A city built around everyone having a car makes car ownership a cliff. Normalising not having a car (and a reliable bus service - like the kind you get by turning street parking spaces into bus lanes - helps with that) makes the ladder gentler. If people are late for work because they couldn't find a parking spot just as often as people are late because the bus was late or didn't show, maybe there will be fewer horror stories of people getting fired because their car broke and they couldn't afford to get it fixed.
- rpcope1 2y ago
  > most poor people don't have a car Outside of maybe a couple urban areas like NYC, that's patently untrue in the United States. It would not surprise me if the poor frankly had more and older/rougher cars than their more wealthy counterparts.
harryh 2y ago
The solution to poor people not having enough money is to give them more money (if you really want to help them). It's not to make random consumer goods like parking free for all. If you do this, most of the goods will be used by people who are not poor, so it's very inefficient at helping you achieve your goal of helping poor people. In addition, many poor people won't want the thing you are making free. In the case of parking that could be because they don't own a car, so this plan doesn't help a portion of the population you are trying to help. Even more inefficient! When people think we should have free parking to help the poor, it's mostly just status quo bias at work. Most people would never say that we should make bread free. Or that we should make milk free. Parking isn't any different.
- RealityVoid 2y ago
  I know this probably doesn't add a lot to the conversation but for me it articulated and cleared some inconsistencies I was failing to square up in my mind. So, nice, thanks. Do you have any books or articles that helped you in your analysis, I wonder?
  - harryh 2y ago
    You're welcome! The topical book to recommend here is obviously The High Cost of Free Parking. https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193236496X https://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/193...
    - davidw 2y ago
      It's quite a big book. Henry Grabar's book, mentioned elsewhere, is apparently more approachable.
      - ryantgtg 2y ago
        It’s big, but it’s very clearly written and you can likely understand the entire premise after a few chapters.
- 2y ago
joshlemer 2y ago
It benefits the poor by allocating resources as efficiently as possible. If there is someone who is poor enough that they need help from society/the government, it would be much more effective to transfer money directly to the, rather than very very poorly (probably regressively in fact) target that help by having the public subsidize parking on their block. They would rather have the $100 in efficient redistribution rather than the government spend $100 so that they can benefit by $1.
spamizbad 2y ago
You can't means-test a parking space. You could, in theory, set parking prices based on the value of the land its by.
- lmm 2y ago
  You can means-test a parking permit. It's dumb, but some cities do.
  - Gigachad 2y ago
    Rather than implementing all these complex and weird rules, you can just ensure everyone has enough money to afford the essentials.
jonstewart 2y ago
One of the ways it benefits them is by reducing traffic congestion so buses can get through. A significant amount of traffic in parking-contested areas is from cars looking for parking.

ajmurmann 2y ago

That's a necessity, but I'd also add legalizing construction of dedicated parking structures in more places. Land is at a premium in any desirable place and street parking is a lot less efficient usage of that than a multi-level parking structure. As a driver I also prefer them. Circling around blocks is a waste of time and annoying and my car is safer in a dedicated building that typically has some cameras

bobthepanda 2y ago
This is not really because parking lots are not legalized (they are, and in fact are often required) but because structured parking is so expensive to build; $25-35k per space in an above ground garage and $35-50k per space underground. https://dcplm.com/blog/cost-of-building-a-parking-garage/ https://dcplm.com/blog/cost-of-building-a-parking-garage/ The only place I'm aware of that bans new parking garages in the US is Manhattan, which has a general parking cap; but providing enough spaces for the actual car travel demand to Manhattan would necessitate leveling the whole island and then some, so the policy is there to get people to stop driving to a narrow, congested island.
- ajmurmann 2y ago
  I am pretty sure that most areas here in Portland affected by the shortage of parking aren't zoned to allow building a parking structure. I haven't looked this up though. Edit: It's not downtown here that has this problem, but smaller, hip neighborhoods where you have a shopping street surrounded by an ocean of SFHs If high cost is the issue, it seems like people are complaining about lack of parking but don't want it enough to pay the real, unsubsidized price. So why should everyone else pay for them?
  - lmm 2y ago
    > it seems like people are complaining about lack of parking but don't want it enough to pay the real, unsubsidized price. That's exactly what it is. The normalization of "free" street parking does a lot of damage here.
- 2y ago

boogieknite 2y ago

my solution is to look both ways before flipping the windshield wipers up on a double parked villain

emmelaich 2y ago

The other part is to make public transport more appealing.

n4r9 2y ago
And cheaper! A roundtrip 10 min bus ride into town costs my family £6. That's more expensive than driving in and parking for 3-4 hours.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  Is there at least seats available? As shouldn't public transport too be market clearing. So price should be high enough that there is always empty room in busses and the busses fully pay for themselves.
  - n4r9 2y ago
    Usually yeah. London has buses every 10 mins on most routes. It can get very crowded at rush hour or school run time though. Several groups (OAPs, kids, disabled people...) get discounted or free bus passes which I wouldn't want to change. Don't get me wrong - London public transport is fantastic. Extensive, frequent, convenient, and multi-modal. But the pricing is quite static so that people who use it for short inner-city journeys lose out a bit.
- stretchwithme 2y ago
  How large is the family?
unyttigfjelltol 2y ago
Yes, the system developed as it did for a reason, some of the more obscure being: + entrenched rent-seekers controlling properties in cities (it's almost axiomatic) + centralized transportation systems being subject to political and labor capture-- the main purpose is not great customer service + red tape in urban areas for everything + market forces created last-resort poor quality housing in cities + the car vs transit battle is winner-take-all at a neighborhood level, and transit does not compete properly on a metro or regional level, nor is the park-and-ride system fully competitive + car-compatible density negates transit density + different ownership model for rolling stock leads to over-investment for cars and under-investment for transit (you buy the car you personally can afford and it sits idle while you ride the subway car your grandparents' generation was willing to pay for collectively )

vikingerik 2y ago

Of course, the backlash to that will be "so parking is only for the rich?" Same as when we built express highways and priced the tolls to demand - see the complaints about "Lexus lanes". Capitalism is still the least-bad way of allocating a scarce resource, but of course those who get priced out will be unhappy.

FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
The rich use helicopters...

stretchwithme 2y ago

You mean one spot available to pay for, right? Not a free one :-)