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> The only issue that I have with this so far is that newer construction denser housing is not required to have parking for some reason, but people living in them do have cars. I'm hoping that larger projects start to require parking because transit here just isn't good enough to not have a car.

Mandatory parking minimums make constructing new housing more difficult, raising the cost of housing. The city is making the tradeoff that affordable housing is more important than free parking. As density increases it will hit a point where you need to pay for parking. I live in Belltown and own a parking spot. Ultimately I think this is the right direction to go, the city shouldn't have to pay to store your car.

> Mandatory parking minimums make constructing new housing more difficult, raising the cost of housing. The city is making the tradeoff that affordable housing is more important than free parking. As density increases it will hit a point where you need to pay for parking. I live in Belltown and own a parking spot. Ultimately I think this is the right direction to go, the city shouldn't have to pay to store your car.

I get it, but Seattle public transportation isn't good enough to just tell people they shouldn't have a car. I have a driveway and a garage, so the problem is solved for me, and in theory means someone could put their car in front of my house on the street. But if they're putting 6 townhouses on a lot, that won't scale, and maybe they should instead build 4 and parking.

> the city shouldn't have to pay to store your car.

I agree, but that's pretty much what forcing people to park on the street is. I do get that mandating parking raises the cost of housing, which is also counterproductive. But if you drive through Ballard, street parking is pretty tight - I'm not saying people are going to start parking in the median on 8th and 15th, but I'm not sure how much more they can build w/o parking before it starts to look like S. Broad St in Philly!

I agree that we should invest in public transit. It is already good enough to get you a lot of places, but it could be better. We aren't New York or Tokyo. In fact, our energy should be spent on expanding transit, not expanding car ownership.

> I have a driveway and a garage, so the problem is solved for me, and in theory means someone could put their car in front of my house on the street.

I'm not sure what your objection here is then? Density won't impact your parking situation at all. The people moving in (or not moving in) after you can make the decision for themselves. By mandating a specific amount of parking, you are taking that decision from them.

I'm not saying people shouldn't have a car. I already said I have a car, but that I pay for a spot. My partner and I share that car and that spot. If couples downsized from two cars to one, thats already a 50% reduction.

Enacting parking minimums digs us deeper in the car hole. Building 6 units instead of 4 is preferable. Instead we should invest in expanding public transit.

I envy the Tokyo system, where you're required to show you have your own parking spot in order to be able to purchase a car. No wonder their public transit is world class.

The way to solve the parking problem is to price street parking, not to require new buildings to build parking while the existing houses get off scott free. It's the exact same supply and demand argument: limited supply so how do you reduce demand to the supply that exists? Increase prices.

I expect residential parking is pretty price-insensitive. Maybe more households would forgo owning a marginal second car. But if a households needs a car, they need a car. And if that means paying $100+/month that's just something they're going to have to eat.

With parking requirements, families who don't have/need/want a car still have to pay the extra price for a built-in feature they don't need. When we bought our first home, it was a condo in SoMa without car parking. We loved it because we didn't want or need a car, and we couldn't have comfortably afforded a place with parking included. Especially in metropolitan environments, minimum parking requirements are the near the core among the reasons many things don't work well (public service, street safety, runaway home prices...)

The parent was making a different point though which was that increasing the price of parking would decrease the demand. And while that is true almost by definition, mostly you'll just transfer money from all the people who want/need cars to someone or someones else. Most adults aren't going to forego a car because parking is too expensive. (Of course, they may decide just to live someplace else where parking is cheaper/free.)

There's definitely a core set of drivers who can't give up their cars, for whom any price increase will just be swallowed. However there's a big swath of gray cases at the boundary.

For example, when we moved to San Francisco, we kept our car and parked on the street. After two parking tickets within the first month (because we forgot the weekly sweep schedule), we decided it didn't make sense to keep the car. We sold it, and started using Caltrain/Muni/biking for most of our trips, with a few Zipcar rentals peppered in. Without those parking tickets, we would definitely have kept our car because there would be no downside.

There is a gray area. I know a couple who live in SF who don't have a car. (They actually have a parking space but they sublet it.) They take muni some although my observation when I visit is that they use a lot of Zipcars, regular rentals, deliveries, and Ubers.

One of the things that's probably true as well is that many people adjust their lifestyle to what's convenient. If you need to rent a car to go somewhere on the weekend, you probably tend to favor other activities.

If everyone just swallows it, the price is still too low.

> The only issue that I have with this so far is that newer construction denser housing is not required to have parking for some reason

The reason is that parking requirements massively add to the costs of building new apartments. It works out that everyone in the building has to pay extra, regardless of whether they actually use the parking. Parking minimums also mean that some projects just will never work economically.

> at some point we're going to run out of street parking

Sounds fine! The city doesn't need to provide free car storage to everyone.

The poster didn't say he wanted the city to provide free car storage. Parking on the street is being put on people because the city isn't putting in the realistic requirement that makes developers deal with the fact that people actually do have cars, especially in LA

Having car infrastructure paid for by the users is a much more fiscally responsible way to account for the cost of that infrastructure. If the option of building parking was left up to the developer, they would have to weigh whether the income from parking spaces would be greater than the income for residences. At a certain point, people will try to go from a 2 car household to 1 to save money, or go carless. The city shouldn't mandate how many people should have available parking, it makes more sense for the market to decide and allow people to have some flexibility if they so desire.

Making a requirement will just incentivize more people to drive and the costs will be baked in whether they do have a car or not, so they might as well get a car.

I live in Ballard, and bought a town home with a parking spot because I couldn't see the alternative working out (even though, in theory, our transit isn't that bad, living next to the D-line). I mean, there were some nice places that lacked spots, but until my kid is 10 or so years old, we need a car even if we only drive it occasionally.

I don't get why Seattle doesn't introduce permit street parking in our neighborhood though. It just seems like there are way too many cars vying for on street parking. And that's in places that aren't being overrun by RVs and vans.

The only way to reduce the dependency on cars is to build units w/o parking and then raise money to improve transit.

People complain about parking requirements but, in most US cities (and indeed in a great deal of the world) most households have cars. If I lived in Seattle, even if I didn't need one day to day for work/errands/etc., I'd certainly own one for going out to the mountains and so forth on the weekends.

So let the market work. If people don't have a car, they're doing the environment a favor for all of us and clogging the roads less. It's only fair that they should get a discount: not forcing them to pay for automobile storage they're not using!

Isn't that the case already pretty much everywhere land is scarce? When I lived in Seattle, parking was an extra $300 a month on top of rent but I didn't have to pay that when I didn't have a car.

The norm in post-WWII North America is to mandate specific quantities of parking per land use type. Some places get really detailed about this.

Here's a map of places that have eliminated parking mandates in some way: https://parkingreform.org/resources/mandates-map/

Yes I know. I'm responding to the "not forcing them to pay for automobile storage they're not using". This website says it costs 25-50k to build an underground parking spot [0] which when they can charge $3,600 per year it is totally profitable to build them without any subsidy by the renters not driving.

[0]: https://www.dbsg.com/blog/surface-parking-vs-underground-par....

Not everywhere. Resident parking permits are often cheap. You just need to be eligible.

In Cambridge it's $25/year and that's a city with absolutely no surplus of parking spaces.

I should clarify: everywhere land is scarce and the government isn't moronically not charging what they should for street parking. I have an even worse example than yours: my brother and his gf live in lower manhattan and are somehow able to find and park their car completely free on the street somewhat close to them. My jaw dropped when I heard that as I think it is beyond ridiculous.

Forgive me, since I don't own a car:

Wouldn't it be cheaper to rent a car if you're only going to use it once a week or so? I mean, with the payment itself, plus insurance, plus gas, regular maintenance, is it worth the price?

It would probably be cheaper but less convenient. I was in a ski house once with people who lived in Manhattan (carless) and every weekend they came up there was lots of planning and overhead associated with the rental car.

Manhattan is obviously extreme but most people who can afford to do sso would rather just have a car they can jump into when they want to.

Well, how much does it cost you to rent a car for a weekend?

I just checked and it appears to be over $300 for the tiniest clown car available near me.

That is roughly triple the federal mileage reimbursement rate (assuming 10Kmi per year), so I'm guessing renting every week would be more expensive than owning.

Moreso if you drive very little, because insurance, gas, and maintenance are less when you drive less. They're not pets; they don't have to be fed and walked when you're not interacting with them.

But I would be more concerned about the cost of having things delivered. I'm not sure if the scenario you are thinking of is going to the store to get a week's groceries, or to the mountains to snowboard.

I'm also wondering whether the context is "every software engineer makes at least $500K" or "all the people with $1000 in their checking account will be first against the wall when the revolution comes".

I don't have a car either for this exact reason. I could get a car, but the costs are just insane when compared with the alternatives.

$8-10k a year in savings is usually what I come out to.

Do you find, in general, that buying smaller slices of things from service providers tends to be cheaper?

I do, but the smaller slices don't come out to the same size as what they would if I owned a car myself. I use rentals, ubers, and delivery services sparingly. If I owned, I'm sure I would drive a decent bit more.

The other commenter said that 8-10k is expensive (which it is), the big hit there comes mainly from registration fees, taxes, insurance, and parking, all of which are not cheap where I live unless I were to buy a relatively old car that has significantly depreciated, since that's how those fees are assessed.

It depends how often you use them.

Personally, $8-10K/year seems expensive unless you aren't trying to economize. I have an 11 year old ~$40Kish vehicle that I wouldn't typically pay $1K/year for maintenance and less on insurance.

But there is certainly some point at which it makes economic sense to just rent, especially if you are paying to park the car. In a city with difficult parking I wouldn't pay to own a car to use every couple of months.

But if you're going to be paying a few thousand dollars for local rentals for trips, plus some Uber, plus deliveries, plus some Zipcar, it starts to become pretty attractive to just own a car if only for the convenience.

Yup, I live in a somewhat dense area with decent transit and bike commuting options. A car is more of a luxury than a necessity here and they are taxed heavily (insurance is also expensive where I live). I rent cars maybe once every few months, uber about the same amount, and never really get delivery service unless I'm with others and alcohol is involved. I fortunately do have a garage, but I use it as a gym and workshop area.

I do plan on maybe getting a car at some point, but with my current lifestyle it just doesn't make sense. Also the car market seems to be in shambles right now.

> 11 year old ~$40Kish vehicle that I wouldn't typically pay $1K/year

You have a high end bmw or something? New toyotas are cheaper than that with practically no maintenance. I myself spend $840 a year on insurance + 100 oil change/checkup and that is it besides gas.

Maybe they mean the price new was $40K. An 11 year old BMW is worth close to fourteen thousand than forty thousand.

Why should we subsidize a car storage spot?

I think for many people, Zipcar or other car shares would cover their mountain needs. But for those who need one all the time, they can buy or rent a parking spot if street parking doesn't work for them.