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Comment by bobthepanda | Hacker News Reader

This is not really because parking lots are not legalized (they are, and in fact are often required) but because structured parking is so expensive to build; $25-35k per space in an above ground garage and $35-50k per space underground. https://dcplm.com/blog/cost-of-building-a-parking-garage/

The only place I'm aware of that bans new parking garages in the US is Manhattan, which has a general parking cap; but providing enough spaces for the actual car travel demand to Manhattan would necessitate leveling the whole island and then some, so the policy is there to get people to stop driving to a narrow, congested island.

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At least here in California the big driver is Prop 13. The flat parking lots all over Los Angeles have been owned by the same people for decades, usually since the 70s or earlier, so they’re paying a few thousand bucks in property tax while absolute raking in cash - they can usually meet their obligations with a week of revenue and the constant cash flow is a guaranteed lever for credit and loans. Selling or redeveloping the lots would trigger a reassessment, so the owners just keep them as the cash cow they are.

I have a friend who inherited three such lots in downtown ($$$) and he lives very comfortably off just that revenue because their old assessments totaled under a million so they never got reassessed (though the rules have become far less generous with Prop 19).

A good very argument for a taxing the value of the land instead of the improvements/building.

All my homies are georgists

I've also heard that it's popular as a literal cash-heavy business. This allows it to be used for manipulating tax filings, in both directions: laundering other income, or under-reporting profits.

I am pretty sure that most areas here in Portland affected by the shortage of parking aren't zoned to allow building a parking structure. I haven't looked this up though. Edit: It's not downtown here that has this problem, but smaller, hip neighborhoods where you have a shopping street surrounded by an ocean of SFHs

If high cost is the issue, it seems like people are complaining about lack of parking but don't want it enough to pay the real, unsubsidized price. So why should everyone else pay for them?

> it seems like people are complaining about lack of parking but don't want it enough to pay the real, unsubsidized price.

That's exactly what it is. The normalization of "free" street parking does a lot of damage here.

Boston also has a longstanding parking space freeze downtown.[1]

[1] https://www.boston.gov/departments/environment/air-pollution...

When I last worked in Boston (decades ago... pre Big Dig), I shared a spot with a coworker (we alternated days) that was $600 a month for parking (total).

Im in Sydney AU and parking spots are more like 50-100k. In the city center, or desirable suburbs you might see $150-200k. The city has also restricted parking permits to 1/residential address, and eliminated them for businesses.

This has all been more-or-leas fine, with residential prices factoring in parking, and multi-tenant developments pulling in density via car stackers and the like. Oh, and a pretty functional transit system, of course.

> $25-35k per space

Seems unreasonably high.

It's about right from what I've seen. "The high cost of free parking" isn't just an ironic title.

https://cityobservatory.org/the-price-of-parking/ - and this is from before the pandemic.

You might think so at first glance, but if you multiply a regular parking space (9' x 18', 162 sq ft) by the median price per sq ft of a normal house ($244) you get $36288. Obviously these figures are specific to the US, but cars take up more space than you think, either because we're usually inside them or because we're just used to it.

For a whole parking garage you need many large I-beams, tons of concrete, frequently elevators are added, etc. Not surprising builders opt out of including them when they can.

A parking garage also needs a gigantic ramp since cars don’t really use stairs.

Perhaps they can be trained to use them? :-)

Autonomous vehicles will reduce the need to park. Eventually.

I don't think this is actually necessarily true. Most of the AV fantasies involve cars driving about aimlessly when not in use or increasing congestion in the reverse peak towards parking lots in the suburbs during dead times, and to the extent that those scenarios increase vehicle miles traveled that might actually be worse than parking lots everywhere.

Cars are about as healthy as Daleks are for cities.

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