Hacker News Reader

Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

San Francisco: a city which is happily dysfunctional as long as everyone enjoys the same level of dysfunction. Once you demonstrate that money can buy the things that citizens of other towns get for free, San Francisco gets up in arms about how money is ruining the great things SF has going for it.

View on HN

Parking is free? It has no cost associated with it?

Money is only buying something here because someone, i.e. the previous parker, is getting it for less than it is worth and can now monetize the difference.

On which planet is parking ever free?

Most neighborhoods; all shopping malls; your driveway; any gas station (for a while).

Perhaps you meant 'business district parking'. I always felt it is a huge mistake to have a 'cover charge' for shopping downtown. What is it supposed to do? It certainly discourages customers.

A charge and limited time is meant to keep people who work there from parking all day, so that there is more parking for customers.

In my town, the businesses ask for it for this reason.

If all the parking spaces are full, it most certainly makes sense to charge. Otherwise, people will stay parked there all day, and use is sub-optimal.

Most healthy business districts have few available parking spaces, so charges are appropriate. Not-being-able-to-find-a-space-because-they're-all-taken also discourages customers.

I live in Foster City (~30 mins from SF) and parking is free here,

Reply on news.ycombinator.com