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Comment by autoexec | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

The externality is already accounted for there.

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?

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