Hacker News Reader

Parking, Roads, Gasoline, Pollution, etc... We so heavily subsidize people's cars for no reason. For the cost of all of it we could have free healthcare and amazing public transportation then lower taxes with the left over money.

Um... Just US healthcare spending is 17.3% of GDP. $4.5 Trillion per year. No way this works.

A large part of that is inflated health care costs. US citizens have to pay more than twice as much on average. Some services such as ER visits can cost 10x as much. US spends twice as much per capita than UK but get much less from it. Also keep in mind that the amount spent on roads is only a fraction of the total cost of cars in the USA.

Cut out the middle man (insurance companies and their profits) and you can get this number dramatically lower.

Simple solutions do NOT exist.

There is a litany of "middlemen"; Drs, Corporations, Hospitals, Insurance, Pharmacies, Drug Companies, marketing, Lawyers ... ALL have a stake in something.

jacking up the prices for parking spaces due to artificially induced scarcity will mean that cars are still every bit as essential to get around, but now only the wealthy will be able to afford to park them, screwing over the population least able to arrange/afford alternatives. I guess it's somehow better if the increasing number of poors in the US have to park miles away from their jobs (if they're lucky enough) and have to walk/run the rest of the way.

Like it or not, our cities are already built to make cars a necessity and pricing people out of access to the majority of places within a city isn't a solution to the design of public transportation or roads.

> but now only the wealthy will be able to afford to park them, screwing over the population least able to arrange/afford alternatives

Think for a minute about what it means to be wealthy. Is it having more money? Yes, but... The true meaning of being wealthy is having more options available to you. If some people can park but some people can't park, then by definition it's the wealthy people who can park.

Another way to look at it is, what's the point of accumulating money? It's to buy you more options. Let's say hypothetically that the government gives every individual person a fixed amount of housing, food, a car, and free parking. But it is illegal to trade these commodities in any manner; you are only entitled to exactly your share and no more. In this fantasy world, accumulating money would be meaningless because it doesn't enable you to do any more than your fellow man.

So yes, the fact that once you start restricting driving, then only the wealthy can afford to drive and park - that's a feature, not a bug. It's by design.

This is step 1 of reversing car centricity in these areas. Believe it or not some people in Europe in their 30s don’t even know how to drive because it’s just not needed. When you require parking spots for housing you increase the distance between everything. Going places requires transport because you have all these god forsaken parking lots you have to traverse to get to your destination.

Step one should be creating adequate public transportation so that the people with the fewest options are still able to get to work, doctors, and grocery stores even after existing parking spaces go away and no new ones are built.

Parking lots aren't what's keeping people in subdivisions from being miles away from those places. Parking spots aren't what's keeping people in cities from being able to walk to where they're going either. Parking lots are extremely walkable spaces even while being hot and unattractive.

You could get rid of every parking lot in your city and you'd still have highways you can't cross or safely walk/bike along side of, you'd still have housing set miles away from city centers, and you'd still have no access to most places by public transportation. Our cities are built from the ground up with the expectation that people will use cars to get around. That was a mistake, but getting rid of parking spots isn't the cure.

I've been in places like Tokyo where public transportation met all of my needs. We can do it, but you need the infrastructure in place first or you're just hurting people by leaving them with zero alternatives to what you're taking from them.

Why not replace some on street parking with a dedicated bus lane and stops for such?

Two birds, one stone

It'd be a good start!

It'll take a massive increase in public transportation infrastructure, and a long and slow redesign of our cities and how we live to fix the mess the auto-industry has put us in. It's a transition that's long overdue, but the reality of the situation now is that people still need their cars.

Making sure that people have something to fall back on before we take their cars away from them or remove the places they put them at night/charge them should be a priority. What these cities are doing is the opposite of that.

Many households have more than one car per driver. With WFH many of these cars sit largely unused. We went down to being a one car family over a year ago and it has rarely been an issue. It requires a little bit of planning. "Hey I need the car on Thursday. Does that work for you?" Otherwise, a second car would mostly only get used because "Well, it hasn't been driven in a while".

I agree that WFH is a game changer here. Households in that situation are incentivized to get rid of excess vehicles since they cost money to maintain, license, and insure. With downtown office spaces and the nearby businesses that depend on them being abandoned, a lot of parking space can be reclaimed there too.

> artificially induced scarcity

How is *not requiring* parking to be provided inducing scarcity artificially?

Because before developers were required to ensure that when they built something adding parking spaces to handle the demand they were introducing to an area was their responsibility. Now developers can (and will) push that externality onto the public at zero cost to them. The city has a very limited amount of parking spaces it can provide at any cost which means that removing that requirement will suddenly make parking much more expensive and harder to obtain.

But that's not what artificially inducing means.

London for example have buildings which are prohibited of having parking (or getting street permit). Providing an option not pay for parking space when buying an apartment is not that.

IDK, pure speculation, but maybe 'autoexec' isn't arguing in good faith here and may have a conflict of interest

I really don't. I'm not even sure what kind of person would have a conflict of interest while supporting that we keep the requirement until actual alternatives are available to everyone.

While I have a car, and enjoy having one, and have a nice parking space in a heated underground garage, I also work remotely and don't drive all that much. I'm in a privileged position and could afford to uber (within the city anyway).

This is just a bad/non-solution to a very real problem that will do more harm than good.

Do you pay for that spot? Would you keep the car if it was costing you $150/mo to park it there? If not, then removing parking minimums accomplishes exactly what it is intended to do.

The cost of the spot is factored into the cost of the building so it still costs something, but even if it were a separate bill I'd still be stuck paying for it because I need a car and it has to go somewhere (plus I live in an area where it snows and don't want to get up at 5AM to move it every time that happens or scrape the ice off my windows/mirrors before I can leave).

Assuming bad faith is somewhat ironic and kind of a crummy way to interact online. Do you not think it's conceivable that someone could possibly think this is a bad idea honestly?

The externality is already accounted for there.

Raising the price would just extract more value for the owners from a very limited resource. But the resource stays just as limited.

If you have 200 cars and 50 parking spaces there's no price point at which the 200 cars can park simultaneously. The overflow ends up clogging the surrounding neighborhoods, on top of the outcome described by OP.

Edit. @pc86, both points you make are valid but neither addresses or fixes the problem being discussed. They are an interesting, albeit completely parallel discussion.

This is the approach Singapore (and in some ways, Hong Kong) takes; you can own a car, but you must purchase a 10-year use permit, which costs in some cases much more than a car itself (something like $80,000 over 10 years). So if you're buying a Toyota Corolla ($20K car), you'd still need a $80K operating permit to use it.

That's why 90%+ of the people in Singapore use public transportation or carpool. Granted, you would need the public infrastructure for that to be possible. But if you make cars unaffordable for the average person, suddenly there would be A LOT more pressure on local government to get public infrastructure done.

Sure but public infrastructure doesn't magically appear overnight. It takes years, decades even, and costs a ton of money. I think the solutions may come laterally from developments in autonomous construction robots. They're being developed in Japan due to negative population growth reducing the available construction workforce.

Here in Tokyo, you're not allowed to buy a car unless you can prove to the police that you have a place to park it (and that it actually fits: they'll come measure).

> Raising the price would just extract more value for the owners from a very limited resource.

Yes. If you own a limited resource it's your right to make money from that. I know we like to pretend people making money from things they own is somehow evil but it's how all of civilization has been built and is an objectively good thing.

> If you have 200 cars and 50 parking spaces there's no price point at which the 200 cars can park simultaneously.

No, but is a point where 50 can park simultaneously and nobody who wants to park there and can afford to is denied that ability.

Both points you made are valid but neither fixes or even touches on the problem being discussed: there are more cars than parking spots and this causes problems. The economic theory is an interesting, albeit completely parallel discussion. Price is just about who gets to have one.

Effectively you'll still have 150 cars that cannot be parked next to the owners' residence, that get dumped on the street elsewhere probably in the next lower cost neighborhood, and with the additional issues OP mentioned.

Put it another way, if you want to solve the housing crisis and I tell you "owners can set whatever price they want for the house to extract maximum value and nobody who can afford that will be denied the house" am I wrong? But did I solve the problem?

> and can afford to

Right, so now only the most rich can go visit the area (shops, friends).

I know a lot of people have the opinion that only the rich should get to do things but I don't subscribe to that. At least with public street parking the misery is egalitarian, both the Yugo and the Ferrari can circle for hours looking for parking.

Although having enough parking for everyone would be even better.

> No, but is a point where 50 can park simultaneously and nobody who wants to park there and can afford to is denied that ability.

That sucks for the people who are denied the ability to park there because they can't afford it though. Telling people that they need to walk miles to get to a doctor or a grocery store and that only the wealthy deserve to have access to 90% of the city doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

> only the wealthy deserve to have access to 90% of the city

There parking minimums drive up housing costs. They’re why that person has to drive longer to get to that place. Perhaps why they need to make a car payment at all.

Not true, at least not for most people anyway. People need cars to get to where they need to go. When the developer of an apartment complex has to provide parking for its residents everyone has a place to put the cars they need. When those developers don't have to provide parking space anymore, people will still need cars, but will now have no place to put them at night. This will drive up the price of apartment complexes that provide parking, pricing many people out, while doing nothing to eliminate the need for their cars.

You can't solve the problem of "I need a car" just by taking away the places people put them at night.

The problem we have is built into the design of our cities from the ground up and it impacts every aspect of how they are structured and used. Eliminating parking spaces while the absolute need for cars continues to exist doesn't solve the problem at all.

This is the kind of move that should be done selectively, and only after alternative options are created, if it's done at all.

> This will drive up the price of apartment complexes that provide parking, pricing many people out, while doing nothing to eliminate the need for their cars

There is zero evidence for this. There is evidence for parking minimums raising housing prices.

I’m curious about the overlap between off-street parking minimum requirement advocates and anti-development NIMBYs who don’t believe in supply and demand.

> There is zero evidence for this.

When most people need something, and there is suddenly a much smaller supply of that thing, prices for the now scarce but still needed thing tend to increase. That's basically self-evident.

If you have evidence that shows otherwise please feel free to provide it. I suspect that if examples showing otherwise exist at all they won't be remotely representative of the situation these cities will face.

> When most people need something, and there is suddenly a much smaller supply of that thing

Yes. We have rising, elastic house and stable, inelastic paid parking prices [1[2]]. Due to these regulations, we cannot substitute limited space away from off-street parking towards e.g. housing.

[1] http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/PricingParkingByDemand.pdf

[2] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Funnel-plot-for-the-pric...

The research you link to discusses pricing for parking spaces, but nowhere does it state that eliminating parking spaces doesn't increase the price of what little parking is left.

The idea that developers being responsible for providing adequate parking would mean that we can't have adequate space housing is a new argument, but not a compelling one. Clearly jacking up the prices for on-street parking means we'd have more money and more space for other things, but that doesn't solve the problem of there being too many cars on the road or eliminate the need for people to keep and drive cars.

While the one paper you linked to suggests that higher prices could help reduce the demand for cars and driving, it also explicitly states that price of vehicle ownership is only one of many variables that has an affect those demands. The availability of viable alternatives to car ownership/use is the one being ignored here.

If I will die unless I go to the hospital every week for 6 months for chemo treatment and the only way to get there is by driving, the amount they'll charge me for parking isn't really a factor until it becomes so high that I can't afford to get the treatment I need. The fact that I also can't get to work, the grocery store, the doctor's office, the pharmacy, my kid's school, or the homes of my friends family without a car means that I'm still going to need to own (and still need a place to park) my car even if I could afford to uber my cancer-ridden body to and from the hospital every single week. (this is purely an example, I'm not, to my knowledge, cancer-ridden)

You simply can't solve the problem of people needing to own and park cars by only reducing the number of available parking spaces. Reducing the number of parking spaces is something that should be done only once viable alternatives are established.

For whatever it's worth, the person you're replying to took the courtesy of pointing you to some research they're familiar with, and your "it's just one paper" point (or really, any of your points here) would be much more convincing if you responded in kind to that courtesy.

On topics like this you can argue from first principles endlessly and never get any closer to the truth. Better to show us some data, I think.

> When most people need something, and there is suddenly a much smaller supply of that thing, prices for the now scarce but still needed thing tend to increase.

No one is arguing against the idea that eliminating parking requirements increases (in short-run, first-order analysis) the market clearing price of parking spaces.

The contentious part is that the presence of the freedom to build housing without parking requirements (enabling, e.g., housing plus commercial spaces to be built in a space that would otherwise have the same housing plus parking) does nothing to reduce the demand for autos.

> The contentious part is that the presence of the freedom to build housing without parking requirements does nothing to reduce the demand for autos.

Why would it? Without alternatives to cars as a means to get people to where they need to go, people will still require cars. As long as people are required to own and drive cars not having enough available parking does nothing to help reduce the amount of cars being owned/driven. In fact, we know that it increase the number of cars on the road. That's how we end up with statistics like "30% of all traffic in urban areas come from people circling around looking for places to park".

You can't solve the problem of people needing cars by not addressing the reasons people need cars, and only reducing the number of parking spots for the cars people already need.

> Why would it?

Because it would both enable and incentivize development patterns where people need cars less.

> Without alternatives to cars as a means to get people to where they need to go, people will still require cars.

Dense mixed-use development puts more of the places people need to go in places that don't require cars to get to them. (It also mass transit to other places more viable.)

Your focussed on alternatives ti cars to get to a fixed set of locations, but a big point of dense mixed-use development is to provide alternative locations.

> You can't solve the problem of people needing cars by not addressing the reasons people need cars

The reason people need cars is that the places they need to be a far away because of development patterns; one of the key features of development patterns that causes this is...the space use created by parking requirements.

> Because it would both enable and incentivize development patterns where people need cars less.

As for enabling, nothing stops developers from doing that now. As for incentivizing them, if they can make more money not meeting most people's needs then that's what they'll do. This is also why so many cities have a huge amount of luxury housing available, but a massive lack of affordable housing. What makes developers the most money isn't always what's best for a city.

> Dense mixed-use development puts more of the places people need to go in places that don't require cars to get to them. (It also mass transit to other places more viable.) Your focused on alternatives ti cars to get to a fixed set of locations, but a big point of dense mixed-use development is to provide alternative locations.

I agree with this, but none of these cities are creating mixed-use development or building out their mass transit systems to link them. They're getting rid of parking spaces without any of those things in place.

> The reason people need cars is that the places they need to be a far away because of development patterns; one of the key features of development patterns that causes this is...the space use created by parking requirements.

A reason people need cars is because things are far away. Another reason is that there are no other means to get anywhere else. As long as those things are true, people still need cars. As long as people still need cars, they need places to put them.

The space use created by parking requirements would be a nice problem to solve, but it can't (and shouldn't) be addressed until the requirement of owning cars has been dealt with. When people no longer require cars, we can reduce the amount of space we've set aside for housing them.

> As for enabling, nothing stops developers from doing that now

Zoning regulations and parking requirements, which in many places exist for for both housing and commercial development, and vastly expabd the footprint of both, often do.

I'll concede that with the requirements in place developers have to provide the parking, and although that can mean a lot of things (from lots to underground/rooftop parking) it will increase costs.

Still, I think it's better to have those costs borne by developers and passed to property owners than have everyone else suffer the negative externalities caused by not having those necessary parking spaces available.

I think we'd agree that ideally, the parking spaces wouldn't be necessary because of good public transportation and city planning, and I think that once those things are in place those parking spaces could be reclaimed and repurposed, I just feel that for as long as the parking spots are needed it's better for the developer to provide for them in their plans.

> When those developers don't have to providing parking space anymore, people will still need cars but now have no place to put them at night.

If they have no place to put them, they won't have them, and if they don't have them, then either (1) they won't live there at all, or (2) they don't actually need them.

> This is the kind of move that should be done selectively

No, having parking requirements should be done selectively, if at all. If there is sufficient market demand, the requirements will be unnecessary to get developers to include them, if not, then the requirements are most often a harmful constraint that limits housing supply.

> If they have no place to put them, they won't have them

This is demonstrably false. People still need cars to get to where they need to go, like work, or their doctor's office, or the grocery store. There are no alternatives. Public transportation doesn't get them there. Ubering everywhere is more expensive than owning a car. Until alternatives exist, not having a car isn't an option.

If you've been to cities where there isn't enough street parking to meet demand you'd know that even when people have no place to park their cars they still keep cars. They just go to extremes to find/keep/make parking wherever and whenever they can and often have to spend long periods of time driving on streets/circling blocks to find a spot. They block traffic to wait for someone they think might be leaving soon, they walk great distances to get from where to park to where they need to be, they park in illegal or dangerous places.

There are many negative consequences to this behavior which impact everyone around them, but people can't help but do it because they're left with no alternatives. Examples of this abound. I've seen statistics like 30% of all traffic in urban areas are just people looking for places to park. (some studies have found that number to be as high as 75%!) or that the average amount of time drivers spend per year looking for place to park is 17 hours!

> No, having parking requirements should be done selectively, if at all.

That means the same thing.

> If there is sufficient market demand, the requirements will be unnecessary to get developers to include them

That's not how markets work. If it will make developers more money to not give people the amount of parking they need, then developers will not give people enough parking. All other negative externalities be damned. None of it means there will be fewer cars on the road.

> If you've been to cities where there isn't enough street parking to meet demand you'd know that even when people have no place to park their cars they still keep cars

No? They park them outside the city centre. Or they rent them. You're speaking as if Austin is the first city in the world--or even America--to do this.

> No? They park them outside the city centre.

If you live in an apartment complex inside the city centre, parking outside of it won't help you. If you live in an apartment complex outside of it and there's not enough parking spots to leave your car while you sleep you still have the same problem.

> Or they rent them.

Most people can't afford to uber everywhere. Should the poors not be allowed to go to work or the doctors office?

Austin is only one example, but any city without enough parking to meet demand has these same well-documented problems. Please tell me which cities in America have ditched off-street parking while doing nothing else to reduce people's dependence on cars and had no problems as a result.

> live in an apartment complex inside the city centre, parking outside of it won't help you

Of course it does. You use city transportation systems when in the centre. And you take an Uber or train to your parking lot when you need to drive a bunch.

> Should the poors not be allowed to go to work or the doctors office?

Versus not being able to afford housing?

That's the tradeoff. There is no free lunch. Increasing space dedicated to parking raises the cost of housing. It also reduces density, thereby reducing wealth and increasing transit times.

> If they have no place to put them, they won't have them

That's not how it works. Have you ever lived in an area developed without any parking planning? I have, it's miserable.

People will still have the cars because they are necessary for every aspect of life. Making parking difficult does not change that, so they'll still have the car, now it just becomes a neighborhood warzone on where to park and everyone suffers.

The way you change this is not by removing parking, but by removing the need to have a car. Build excellent and affordable public transit first and then.. well there is no step two.

Most people don't really like to drive and don't like car expenses, so if you build excellent public transit a lot of people will give up their cars and the parking problem disappears as a side-effect.

Yeah it sucks that you might have to pay for parking to do free activities like shopping or visiting medical services.

Leaving aside that neither groceries or medical services are free, the problem isn't that parking will now cost something. There won't be enough parking to go around and many people will be entirely priced out. People will be unable to park near the services they need and many will have no place to park/charge the cars they still require at the end of the day when they're at home.

That's not a good situation for anyone except for a very small number of people who will make more money than they have been, and small number of already wealthy people who will find lots of available parking they can easily afford now that they don't have to compete with the poors. Everyone else gets screwed and the problem of people needing cars doesn't change at all.

I'm not sure why you are being downvoted.

The reason people keep buying cars after prices rise 57% in a decade: the extra $10,000 amortized over 10 years is less than living even 1 year near the things you drive to. Things you drive to includes your parking space!

It doesn't make any sense to own a car and live in a dense urban development. What more needs to be said? Live in the suburbs if you have a car.

Fortunately bridge and toll community members are insensitive to these changes. They see no problems with 2 hours of schlepping, $16 of tolls and $25 parking to drink $0.50 of vodka priced at $17 at a downtown bar. If they were sensitive to these issues, that behavior would have ceased much sooner than a pandemic-induced shock to their routines.

That said, I don't see anything wrong with the suburban lifestyle, I am a product of it. Instead of focusing on issues like parking costs, which cities can never beat suburbs at because suburbs have essentially infinite land, cities should fix their education systems, because they can realistically beat suburbs on the concentration of human capital. My community would be far more appreciative of that than bullshit about parking spots.

> It doesn't make any sense to own a car and live in a dense urban development.

Public transport can be good but it's never that good. I live in zone 1 (ie very centrally) in London and there are still many journeys where it is quicker and cheaper for me to drive than to take any kind of public transport. This is true for longer journeys (going outside London) especially but surprisingly it's also true for quite a few short journeys (even going a couple of miles) - it depends a lot on the layout of the public transport network and the roads, and this is before considering journeys where I might want to bring bulky or heavy things with me which are basically impossible to do by public transport. I end up driving enough that the cost of car ownership vs short term rentals makes sense in pure economic terms but the convenience difference of ownership vs short-term rental is also pretty big.