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Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

"buildings that are within half a mile of a major transit stop."

Relevant to people commenting without reading. The idea here is to nudge cities away from car-dependence, and parking minimums are one of the worst culprits for embedding car dependence.

"A similar story has played out in Buffalo, New York, and in Seattle, Washington. Most new homes being built in both cities would have been illegal under their old, pre-reform rules."

One good way to increase housing supply is to make it not-illegal to build homes. This is great!

If you want to learn more about how parking minimums affect cities and towns, and the people living in them (or not living in them since it relates to housing), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking is a great read.

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I've been to visit friends in neighborhoods in Seattle where they put up apartment buildings with no parking, and what happened is street parking turned into a shit show for blocks around as people parked in fire lanes or blocked driveways.

People still need a car in Seattle and building expensive luxury apartments without sufficient parking spaces for the residents just seems like a way to off-load the costs of the developers onto the surrounding neighborhoods. The apartments aren't any more affordable from what I could tell.

you're describing the exact chicken and egg problem that we need to take the first steps on with "people still need a car in Seattle". That's only true because Seattle forced buildings and roads to be car oriented for decades, reforms like this are meant to reverse that because the environmental costs are catastrophic.

People don't necessarily need cars in NYC, Chicago, DC, SF, etc because a majority of the housing in those places was built before car oriented zoning became the norm in basically every major city. We have to start rolling that back, it's insane policy.

Of the places you listed NYC is arguably the only one where people truly don't need cars because the public transit is just so good. I lived in Chicago for 9 years, pretty much everyone I knew had a car. Certainly true for anyone with a family. And that's probably the next best public transit in the US after NYC for a large metro.

The problem is you just can't build public transit infra like the NYC subways these days. The costs have become astronomical.

I haven’t experienced this for new (and even old) luxury high rises in Seattle. The reason street parking is a shitshow is because private developers charge huge amounts of money for their parking garage. New high rises have huge amounts of below ground parking. 7 floors in one brand new building which comes to mind!! Like $50/night for public parking too — people are obviously going to try to find the free street parking instead.

The areas of Seattle where it’s difficult to park (like Capitol Hill and First Hill) also have a lot of older buildings. But brand new high rise and mid rise buildings typically have plenty of room for resident parking — it just costs like $200-$400/mo depending where you are. And often not available to guests.

Amazon buildings have lots of parking too, and it’s available for public use at times as well.

This is a great argument for making street parking more expensive - it really should cost more than the garage, since it's the most conveniently placed. A parking benefit district can capture that revenue to improve the area.

Well it doesn't work if crime is allowed. Those people are breaking the law. Why are they allowed to store their private property on public land? Can I just plop a hot tub down on the street?

In terms of offloading costs, the surrounding neighbourhoods are arguably offloading the cost of their free/cheap street parking on to people moving to the city.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/6lvwh4/im_an_ar... is a fantastic thread discussing just how expensive it is to add parking to condos, and how it results in fewer homes getting built.

Obligatory NJB Plug: "Suburbia is Subsidized: Here's the Math" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

I spoke with a house finding agent today to find us a place in Utrecht this summer.

I live in a condo complex, and visitor parking completely inadequate. If you don't have two parking spots, you're basically not having visitors.

If we're going to start doing zoning codes on the federal level how about outlawing single family zoning? There's absolutely no reason one shouldn't be able to build up to a quad on any piece of land.

So no single family homes, everyone just lives in condos? No thanks.

No, you just can't say 'only single family homes can be built here'

Everything should be decided locally, unless that inconveniences migrant worker gentrifiers and the people who want to get rich off of them in any way. Then we need a federal mandate. Virtually an anti-Civil Rights Act. Legislation to federally protect blockbusting.

This is a classic "markets solve the problem" thing. If you want more parking spots, buy them for whatever the market rate is. If you don't, don't. Markets are really good at figuring out these kinds of coordination problems.

...and I specifically bought my property because it had two spaces with the deed. I just think it's a little ridiculous to say 'oh, you have a bus stop that runs once an hour, you don't need a parking spot', and oh by the way we're getting rid of that bus route next year.

They aren't taking away your spot though? your unit will continue to exist with its two spots and units like it will be available at market rate to to those who value it, and any new construction can still build units with more spots than the minimums if the market demands it.

They're not saying you can't build one. They're just not _forcing_ you to build one.

Bear in mind that 'you' here are property developers that are totally down with inconveniencing residents if it means they can earn a bit more per square foot.

So? That's price signals. People value homes more than parking, which makes sense, especially now. If they're willing to pay more for parking developers will build it.

You do realize that zoning and other prohibitions stop this from happening right? Per my deed, I am limited to one vehicle not to exceed 1500 lbs cargo capacity.

Ideally I could just buy one of the nearby undeveloped lots and use that for any additional parking needs. Except, the zoning and the lot restrictions prohibit that.

Yep, and this would only apply to "new or substantially renovated buildings", so if plentiful visitor parking is a feature you want in your new condo, you can make sure to buy in a property that has that.

With parking minimum and maximum laws in effect, on top of other regulations against building things (such as parking garages and housing), it's far from a free market.

Infrastructure is one compelling reason. There is some headroom in the gas,water, sewer,and electric lines but unlikely enough to carry sustained quadruple load.

> The idea here is to nudge cities away from car-dependence,

If that's the goal then this is exactly the wrong way to achieve it.

What you do instead is you start with a decent transport network and people gradually give up cars - most superfluous cars are second and third vehicles in the family and are there because there's no alternative.

If every household had just one car, the ownership rate would be less than 500 per 1000 people.

Personal anecdote: there's a town next to a hill about 30km from my place where I used to drive regularly - used to, because just 1.5km from my apartment there's now a train stop and a recently reopened line that goes every 1.5h.

Point-to-point the trip takes roughly as long, the tickets cost twice what I would spend on fuel to get there and you have to be punctual but I still pick the train because it's a nicer experience.

If someone tried to "nudge" people from driving there by reducing the number of parking spots, people would just not go there.

Bottom line is if you want to solve problems, solve them - not make them someone else's problems.

When I bought my home, I researched the the building I live in, including planning records. When it was originally proposed, in the 1990s, the plan was rejected for too few parking spaces, when it was proposed again, in the 2000s, the same plan was rejected for too many parking spaces, and it was revised to delete spaces. It now has 12 homes, with I think 18 bedrooms between them, so maybe a couple of dozen adult residents, and ten car spaces.

I suspect this will have the opposite impact, and nudge cities into abandoning mass transit.

People will cling to NIMBYism til their last dying breath.

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