I believe pushing public transports and bikeways from "quite good" to "top notch, really convenient" and free (paid by taxes) would make a long way for all these issues (possibly mandating for cars to say out of the city for most use cases; it would make many situations more difficult to handle though).
(European perspective)
What matters more for permits themselves, is the capacity of the nearby road network. Bigger parking lots, multilevel ones => more cars => congested network => traffic jams everywhere.
(European perspective with civil engineering experience)
Not impossible. Amsterdam is built on peat, but has plenty of underground parkings and a subway. Google gave me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Pijp_metro_station, which says “The lower level platform with southbound services to Zuid is 26.5 meters below street level”. That puts it way below sea level.
That tunnel was bored, but parking garages (and home cellars) get dug out (typically, before digging starts, walls to prevent cave-ins are pushed into the ground and water pumps are started)
Such projects typically go over budget because one offs are hard to cost estimate, and politically, you can’t sell a project that will cost, say “between $X and 5 × $X billion”. Saying “X billion” is a way easier sell a project.
Free != paid by taxes
I also think tax funded services are quite regressive as you have to pay for them whether you use them or not, and there are no market forces driving them to be cost competitive.
At the same time it also becomes an incentive to use them, because they become cheaper than the individualistic alternatives (as with the cost of owning, maintaining, and fueling a car).
They are operated with a "cram as many resources into my silo as possible" motive which is barely better.
One glimpse at our current reality will show that this is not what is working in practice.
Agriculture, for example, is subsidised up the wazoo. Were it not, market forces would dictate that no agriculture is done at all unless it can turn a profit.
Medication, for another example, is more expensive in the US than in any other place on earth. Market forces dictate that you pay hundreds of dollars for a commodity medication whereas in other distant lands the government negotiates a good price for its citizens.
Market forces give you one, maybe two ISPs to choose from in your area that are expensive and slow, or bandwidth capped. Those market forces also collude to prevent new entrants into the market, e.g municipal providers.
Market forces don't really invest in infrastructure, or shared infrastructure, unless they can get a return on the investment (e.g a toll road).
Market forces will try to keep things cheap, like labour costs, which is why there is such thing as collective bargaining and unions to ensure a person's pay isn't optimised away.
Market forces may also optimise away an entire industry or competence in favour of importing. This is how countries like the UK have transitioned to more of a service based economy and have also practically lost the capability to manufacture certain things.
The overall point being that for all of the things where the invisible hand of the market works wonderfully (as it essentially does with consumer goods), there are just as many cases where that is explicitly not desirable and checks and balances (i.e regulation, collective bargaining, government) are required to ensure the market works in favour of society and not against it. The two things have to work in balance, having one without the other would lead to undesirable outcomes.
The profit motive absolutely still exists, as the government will contract out the work to a corporation that will give a kick-back to the politicians that granted them the contract. If not directly via cash (Likely illegal, but still happens anyways), then via campaign contributions or insider stock trading tips (Again, likely illegal, but still happens anyways).
I don't use public transport that much, I use a bike, but recognize the necessity of public transport anyway.
[1] https://goo.gl/maps/g68PHEdxEJL1ApxFA
[2] https://www.boligsiden.dk/adresse/galionsvej-7-3-3-1437-koeb...
That seems like a pretty typical example of what you'd see as parking for a US suburb that was initially build as sprawl in the 50s but has had to begin becoming dense because economics (like around DC or Miami or the outer suburbs of Boston)
Developers choose surface lots when the cost of land is less than the cost of a garage.
The main factor is the space available and the cost of the land when the parking was built. Density, land value, and taxes on that land tend to move together.
Huge surface lots are most common in the sprawling parts of the US that were developed post-automobile: particularly suburbs and sprawling western cities. Some of that land that is now part of a city, wasn’t, when it was developed. It was cheap land outside of a city at the time.
Land generally is cheap in the USA because the USA is pretty damn big.
Europeans often don't think about how large the USA is. California alone is larger than every European country except Sweden, Spain, France, and Ukraine, and Texas is bigger than any of those. We have 10 states that are each bigger than the UK on their own.
It's why nobody in the USA takes a train anywhere. Even with a 200 mph train, it would take 15 hours to cross the country, and that's assuming no stops. In some states, you could ride that train for 3 hours in a straight line and not even leave the state.
Surface parking's still the norm here as you move out towards the suburbs and land becomes cheaper, but that's not a regulatory thing AFAICT-- parking garages are really expensive per-space, so surface parking is the standard here unless there's a good reason to do otherwise.
[1] https://library.municode.com/tn/metro_government_of_nashvill...
However, the code does specify a minimum number of parking spaces based on size and use.
You can't just start filming or setting up without going through the proper channels.
* an above ground parking garage is ten times more expensive than surface parking
* subterrain parking is ten times more expensive than an above ground parking garage
Not to say that we need to go back to surface parking. No we just need to change our cities and transportation networks so that people don't need the parking to begin with.
>Maybe it would be best if there were no parking mandates at all and cities let the market figure out the right amount of parking space.
That's just hilarious. You should visit just about any city in central and souther europe. All were build either before cars were a consideration or without adequate planning. The result is that driving downtown is a nightmare. Having minimal parking works ok when the population density is high and public transportation is good, but in a car-centric country like the US it just wouldn't work. And having public transportation is another thing to consider when planning a city.
I moved to Berlin a few years ago and aside from unplanned vacations into car-accessible destinations and heavy furniture pickup, don't miss having a car.
> Having minimal parking works ok when the population density is high and public transportation is good, but in a car-centric country like the US it just wouldn't work.
The US's design is not handed down from the Gods. It can and should change, for the livability of future generations if not the boomers who will cling to their coal-rolling machines as long as they can.
Is.. this a bad thing? Why do you feel entitled to a great car driving experience in the densest part of downtown?
Huge swaths of the US population don't live in dense urban areas, and don't have access to public transportation at all.
Try living in the country or even in most suburbs without a car; nearly impossible, and it is impossibly expensive to extend public transportation to every part of the US