I mean, basically yes. We just call them parking spaces. We decided most of the street should be a carve-out to vehicles and the people who can afford to drive and park them. Whenever a Rapid Transit bus lane is being proposed, shopkeepers oppose it because it "removes parking spaces", aka "the free real estate that the shop uses to generate revenue".
So that public subsidy exists, we're just debating whether we want to allocate it towards drivers or pedestrians.
Ok ok but what about parking meter revenue...
> If the restaurant wants outdoor dining, they can build it on their own property.
This I this we're on the same page, we're just haggling over price. Lets say a parking meter charges $2/hour (peak event meters in SF can go as high as $4, others can be less than $1, tweak your own napkin math). Let's assume full occupancy (x 8hr) for the full year (x 356) and we get $6,000 with these optimistic utilization-equivalency numbers. I'm not an expert on commercial real estate, but $6,000/yr or $500/mo doesn't feel unreasonable as an upper bound for an annual lease on a parking spot.
The road upkeep and maintenance almost certainly costs more, but we already agree this is a public subsidy, we're just trying to figure out who gets it.