I don't think they're talking about reserved spots. The issue is with the government-mandated "parking requirement" that forces builders to account for a certain number of parking spots per person as part of getting a project approved. The analysis is about how much this requirement increases development costs, which are then passed on to all tenants equally.
I think GP's post was saying that they're not passed on evenly. Developers in many cities have realized that they can satisfy the requirements and charge extra for those parking spaces, whether assigned or not. I've lived in at least 2 buildings that had mixed assigned/unassigned parking and residents could choose whether to pay more for assigned, but unassigned spaces still cost extra. In both cases, not having a car would have saved me at least $200/mo.
As a libertarian who loves the freedom my car affords me, I hate that governments are mandating building parking spaces. Let the market provide, if everyone downtown wants to walk, ride a bike or take a bus/tram then more power to them.
Isn't that freedom mostly an illusion? I suppose you can hop in the car for an impromptu road trip whenever you like, but you are paying to license, insure, and maintain the car 24/7/365... and most people can't take too many road trips.
But I am trying to picture the market providing if there weren't parking requirements - would a neighborhood reach a point where car owners wanting to move in would pay so much to park that it'd make sense to knock down buildings and put up a parking lot? I suppose that would act as a sort of brake on the whole cycle, since there'd be less housing.
Developers would include parking garages if it was something that raised the rents they could charge.
These kinds of rules are usually enacted by people who have lived in a city for a long time and always parked on the street for free. There's some new development and all of the sudden they can't find a space. So they push through rules that force new development to include parking.
in my case work is 22 miles one direction, my daughters schools 15 miles in a different direction. I live in a state that prioritized roads and because of that my commute is fast and easy.
Assuming each workday you travel to drop your child at school, then to work, then back to collect your child, then home, you will be travelling (15 + 15 + 22 + 22 + 15 + 15) x 5 = 520 miles each week.
I'm sure you have come to some other arrangement but holy shit that would be a lot of time spent travelling each week. It's worth working out how much time you need to spend at work to pay for the fuel, maintenance, and depreciation involved because that is essentially also 'travel time'.
edit: Even assuming an average speed of 50km/h that is about 16.5 hours each week. Including time spent earning the money to cover the associated costs it's going to be over 20 hours.
I don't pick up my kids from school regularly, but occasionally i have to. I have to pick up a daughter from her dojo a couple times a week after work, which is in between my home and work.
My average highway speed while commuting is 75 MPH. 90% of my commute is on the highway.
Commuting also means i can afford a home in a one third acre lot, with plenty of backyard for my kids and their dog to play in.
You shouldn't because those regulations are what are keeping us with the freedom of choice to drive cars. Without mandated parking spaces in new construction, developers no longer constrained by the cost and time of having to plan and build parking would instead change those to livable units. The argument from the anti-car folks is that's a good thing because we need more inventory to deal with out of control housing costs in cities such as San Francisco and Seattle especially. And on its face it make sense, supply and demand, less urbanites want cars especially if it is too difficult and/or costly to park it. And with the cost of construction decreased by doing away with that the average price will go down right? And that's where the argument falls apart because if the market already demands an insane price for urban living, like 2300+ for a not even that big one bedroom, then the market will keep charging that regardless of parking requirements or not. Having a few extra units per building with no parking will not cause housing prices to fall in a meaningful way throughout a region unless there's also the collapse of a key part of the local economy and suddenly people no longer want to be in that city. It will not help with congestion for the same reasons but it will make commuting to work or just a night out cost a hell of a lot more.
The other thing the more sinister thing about the talk of removing these regulations is the fact that what it would really serve to do is move everyone except the ultra rich away from having the ability to own their own cars. Part of that is a new profit model for the auto industry, part of it is social engineering to better be able to control when and where people travel at any given time and limit our freedoms. It might seem a bit far fetched but I would bet damn near anything that is the dystopian future we're careening towards. And I'm not a libertarian but I do have a pretty strong belief in people being able to exercise their personal freedoms. And if a little bit of regulation when it comes to parking requirements helps protect our (larger) freedom to choose our modes of transportation, the ability to come and go on our own schedules and manage our own lives, to take a road trip at random because it's Saturday and it's beautiful out and not be charged by the minute for it, and to actually keep ownership of our cars for just a little bit longer, then I consider that a win for personal liberties. Because we still would have the choice.
I agree! But if you're a true libertarian, it's not just parking. What about the direct costs of building and maintaining the roads themselves?
I use a bike for 90% of my travel time and I have a (smallish) libertarian streak too. It galls me that there's such enormous subsidies to vehicle drivers, with a simultaneous refusal from government to invest even 1-2% of that amount towards safe cycling infrastructure. And I say invest (rather than spend), because said infrastructure has been shown every time to generate a profit once you include the health benefits, etc.
I rented an apartment for five years that came with an assigned spot. I wasn't there all that long when I gave up my car. All the neighbors were like "Yay! Free space!" My rent did not drop.
I felt all kinds of shit all over. Parking spaces should be extra or people without cars should get a discount.
Well, if they built the parking with the apartment I see no problem in the landlord charging tenants for the spot and letting them sublet it with the help of the landlord. If you didn't want the spot with the place, should've chosen another one.
> C) As I said above: I had a car when I rented the place. I gave it up later. That was not in my plans at the time that I rented the place.
Without commenting on (A) or (B), surely (C) is not a reasonable complaint? If you rent a 2-bedroom, but then your roommate moves out, then certainly it was not in your plans at the time that you rented, but just as certainly you wouldn't expect your rent to go down. (I recognise that it's a different situation, since no-one can readily use the other bedroom, whereas someone can use the parking space; but what I mean is that "That was not in my plans" is not in itself a justification for a rent abatement.)
I lived in a 8 unit apartment with only 4 spaces. When talking to the landlord about why the 1br cost so much more than a studio, they said it was because of the space. The landlord seemed very willing to charge me for a spot if a neighbor didn't need their's. Maybe you should have talked to your landlord?
It's fascinating to see the massive propaganda campaign ridesharing companies are launching against parking spots.
You do all understand that's where the massive wave of articles about changing building codes and zoning rules to get rid of parking, both public and privately owned, is coming from, right? Uber, Lyft, etc would love to make it hard or impossible to use a privately owned car in urban areas.
Getting rid of the requirement to put parking will mostly just lower everyone's quality of life- residents will take up all the street parking, making it harder for shoppers to access stores, restaurants, etc, making brick and mortar stores even further disadvantaged versus online retailers while also causing more headaches as businesses are forced to actively police their parking areas against use by non-customers.
But it'll be great news for ride sharing companies, as millions of people find themselves unable to own a car while living in American cities which are entirely designed to require car travel.
There is no conceivable market failure here that would require regulation of parking spaces. The market will build the amount of parking people want. If the amount of parking goes down it'll be because the land is valued more highly for other uses.
Zoning and height limits are experiencing no such liberalization. Previously we had a decent equilibrium system: low density but also a system of transportation well suited to low density.
Now that system of transportation is being decommissioned, but we're still stuck with low density.
How many hours of productivity must employers lose to their workers' long commutes? Yet the market has not provided us with anything faster.
2) the Baby Boomers are now reaching retirement age. As they get older, they will be less able to drive, making it difficult for them to live in low density areas even if there were no infrastructure problems.
What does mandatory minimum parking have to do with workers' long commutes? Presumably if employee time is important to the employer then the employer will pay for parking spaces even if there were no minimum parking requirements.
If we can't even afford to maintain roads that serve our sprawling zoning schemes, why on earth would we be able to afford any of the alternatives (rail, etc) within our sprawling zoning scheme?
You cannot "fix" symptoms like car use without fixing the underlying problems of car dependence.
Living in a car dependent built environment without the ability to use a car is worse than the status quo, is the point. That's the world we're heading for if we remove parking but continue to resist gentrification and upzoning.
Do you agree with me that the existing system is not and was not in equilibrium?
If you disagree then this exchange will go nowhere, unless you can convince me otherwise. I think the evidence is overwhelmingly against you.
A current approach to reduce the Ponzi road scheme is to switch to unpaved roads and narrower paved roads. This reduces maintenance cost, though people don't like it because it means they need to go slower. (Which also makes it safer.) It also helps shift the balance between denser housing, vs. the sparse housing available if everyone assume there will be fast transit.
As I pointed out in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14801413 , other countries have switched away from car dependency. It's not like it's impossible, nor am I proposing a simple "fix" for car use. Removing or reducing mandatory parking requirements is one one aspect of a much larger systematic rethink that we need.
Your comments about resisting "gentrification and upzoning" seem to be about a different topic. I'm all for upzoning, and 'resist gentrification' is a very broad topic including solutions which have nothing to do with city planning.
I'll explain the last statement. I mean that gentrification occurs even in places like Copenhagen and Amsterdam with no required parking spaces.
Two ways to slow gentrification are to limit the increase in rental rates, and increase the power of the tenant's union to veto changes that the landlord might wish. I don't believe these are typically part of city planning, though I can see how they might be included.
Gentrification is the movement of white, educated, upper-middle class suburban dwellers into urban neighborhoods.
Reducing car dependence requires exactly that. Any policy which prevents or reduces gentrification necessarily preserves sprawl, because that is where would-be gentrifiers currently live.
2) part of the gentrification of London is due to foreigners who buy London property as an investment but don't live there, and only visit for 1-2 weeks a year. Nor do they rent it out. A policy which prevents that sort of ownership would reduce gentrification without increasing sprawl. This is what B.C. is attempting with their new tax.
3) Gentrification exists in places like Oslo where migration to the city does not from suburban dwellers but from residents of smaller cities and rural areas.
4) It's more generally applied to "middle class", and not specifically "upper-middle class". Ruth Glass's book which introduced the term specifically says "One by one, many of the working class quarters of London have been invaded by the middle classes -- upper and lower."
I am categorically not interested in the idea that freeways cost too much, because public transit (at the level of speed, frequency, capacity, and comfort that would be competitive with driving) also costs too much.
>It also helps shift the balance between denser housing, vs. the sparse housing available if everyone assume there will be fast transit.
This is a fallacy. The limitations on housing density are driven by residents of the urban core and inner suburbs. It doesn't matter to them how bad transportation is for people who can only afford the outer suburbs. Increasing the pain of living in low-density outer suburbs will not create more housing in the urban core and inner suburbs.
"Do you agree with me that the existing system is not and was not in equilibrium? If you disagree then this exchange will go nowhere, unless you can convince me otherwise."
Or maybe we could finally invest in public transit, build protected bike lanes, and move towards having more than just a couple cities in the United States that are designed for humans to walk in.
Most of the people who drive for Uber use privately owned cars, do they not? It seems like any restriction would hinder them. In my city, only registered cabs are allowed on the streets of the main shopping areas.
"making it harder for shoppers to access stores"
The density of people walking or on bike is much higher than in a car. Fewer required parking spaces means it's easier to walk from store to store. Remember, most parking lots are empty because they are designed for the busy time of the year. Most parking requirements are per-building, not per-area, so there's even more wasted space.
That wasted space raises rents for brick and mortar stores in a way that online retailers don't have to worry about.
"businesses are forced to actively police their parking areas against use by non-customers"
Nonsense. Get rid of the parking requirement and those businesses which don't want to police their parking areas simply won't have a parking area. While if there's really demand, parking lots and parking garages are a way to shift the costs to those who do want to police their parking arenas.
"while living in American cities which are entirely designed to require car travel"
That is true. But the cities can't change if the current parking restrictions stay. Let the market decide who pays - not some central planning committee.
As often pops up here, The Netherlands up until the 1970s was also increasingly designed around cars. With deliberate effort, and over time, that's changed. "Nijmegen’s center city wasn’t always car-free—cue grainy footage of midcentury sedans cruising past charming steepled rooftops. “The main square used to be a parking lot,” Sjors Van Duren, the program director of Velo-City, tells Clarence Eckerson, the film’s director. But since the 1970s, the city has replaced the downtown’s auto-centric streets with pedestrian pathways and bike lanes." - https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/07/it-takes-more...
> It's fascinating to see the massive propaganda campaign ridesharing companies are launching against parking spots.
> You do all understand that's where the massive wave of articles about changing building codes and zoning rules to get rid of parking, both public and privately owned, is coming from, right?
Some of it, sure. But I think you are making too big of a claim there. There are a lot of other groups and individuals that would like to see fewer cars in densely populated areas.
So what if you don't have a car:
No car, but a parking space assigned to your condo/apt?
Just rent it out to a neighbour with two cars, and you get those $150,- per month right back.
Problem solved.
I rented an additional space in my building for my motorcycle.
Happy renter, happy parking-space-landlord.
Y'all complaining about the price of parking seriously need to consider moving to a city with lower costs of living.
Ive got a 2 bedroom upper level duplex in Minneapolis with a 1 stall garage and 1 additional off street parking space, located on a block with ample street parking, and is only 1 block away from a bus stop on a major bus line that i take to work, all for $1100 a month.
40 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 101 ms ] threadThese kinds of rules are usually enacted by people who have lived in a city for a long time and always parked on the street for free. There's some new development and all of the sudden they can't find a space. So they push through rules that force new development to include parking.
I'm sure you have come to some other arrangement but holy shit that would be a lot of time spent travelling each week. It's worth working out how much time you need to spend at work to pay for the fuel, maintenance, and depreciation involved because that is essentially also 'travel time'.
edit: Even assuming an average speed of 50km/h that is about 16.5 hours each week. Including time spent earning the money to cover the associated costs it's going to be over 20 hours.
My average highway speed while commuting is 75 MPH. 90% of my commute is on the highway.
Commuting also means i can afford a home in a one third acre lot, with plenty of backyard for my kids and their dog to play in.
The other thing the more sinister thing about the talk of removing these regulations is the fact that what it would really serve to do is move everyone except the ultra rich away from having the ability to own their own cars. Part of that is a new profit model for the auto industry, part of it is social engineering to better be able to control when and where people travel at any given time and limit our freedoms. It might seem a bit far fetched but I would bet damn near anything that is the dystopian future we're careening towards. And I'm not a libertarian but I do have a pretty strong belief in people being able to exercise their personal freedoms. And if a little bit of regulation when it comes to parking requirements helps protect our (larger) freedom to choose our modes of transportation, the ability to come and go on our own schedules and manage our own lives, to take a road trip at random because it's Saturday and it's beautiful out and not be charged by the minute for it, and to actually keep ownership of our cars for just a little bit longer, then I consider that a win for personal liberties. Because we still would have the choice.
I use a bike for 90% of my travel time and I have a (smallish) libertarian streak too. It galls me that there's such enormous subsidies to vehicle drivers, with a simultaneous refusal from government to invest even 1-2% of that amount towards safe cycling infrastructure. And I say invest (rather than spend), because said infrastructure has been shown every time to generate a profit once you include the health benefits, etc.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/driving...
I felt all kinds of shit all over. Parking spaces should be extra or people without cars should get a discount.
There is all kinds of stuff wrong with this statement.
A) It was the only apartment complex that met my needs.
B) I don't think there were any apartment complexes where a parking space was optional.
C) As I said above: I had a car when I rented the place. I gave it up later. That was not in my plans at the time that I rented the place.
Without commenting on (A) or (B), surely (C) is not a reasonable complaint? If you rent a 2-bedroom, but then your roommate moves out, then certainly it was not in your plans at the time that you rented, but just as certainly you wouldn't expect your rent to go down. (I recognise that it's a different situation, since no-one can readily use the other bedroom, whereas someone can use the parking space; but what I mean is that "That was not in my plans" is not in itself a justification for a rent abatement.)
You do all understand that's where the massive wave of articles about changing building codes and zoning rules to get rid of parking, both public and privately owned, is coming from, right? Uber, Lyft, etc would love to make it hard or impossible to use a privately owned car in urban areas.
Getting rid of the requirement to put parking will mostly just lower everyone's quality of life- residents will take up all the street parking, making it harder for shoppers to access stores, restaurants, etc, making brick and mortar stores even further disadvantaged versus online retailers while also causing more headaches as businesses are forced to actively police their parking areas against use by non-customers.
But it'll be great news for ride sharing companies, as millions of people find themselves unable to own a car while living in American cities which are entirely designed to require car travel.
Now that system of transportation is being decommissioned, but we're still stuck with low density.
How many hours of productivity must employers lose to their workers' long commutes? Yet the market has not provided us with anything faster.
The system we had was not in equilibrium because:
1) The cost of maintaining the old system was predicated on a continuous growth which hasn't occurred. This is the "Growth Ponzi Scheme" - https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ .
2) the Baby Boomers are now reaching retirement age. As they get older, they will be less able to drive, making it difficult for them to live in low density areas even if there were no infrastructure problems.
What does mandatory minimum parking have to do with workers' long commutes? Presumably if employee time is important to the employer then the employer will pay for parking spaces even if there were no minimum parking requirements.
You cannot "fix" symptoms like car use without fixing the underlying problems of car dependence.
Living in a car dependent built environment without the ability to use a car is worse than the status quo, is the point. That's the world we're heading for if we remove parking but continue to resist gentrification and upzoning.
If you disagree then this exchange will go nowhere, unless you can convince me otherwise. I think the evidence is overwhelmingly against you.
A current approach to reduce the Ponzi road scheme is to switch to unpaved roads and narrower paved roads. This reduces maintenance cost, though people don't like it because it means they need to go slower. (Which also makes it safer.) It also helps shift the balance between denser housing, vs. the sparse housing available if everyone assume there will be fast transit.
As I pointed out in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14801413 , other countries have switched away from car dependency. It's not like it's impossible, nor am I proposing a simple "fix" for car use. Removing or reducing mandatory parking requirements is one one aspect of a much larger systematic rethink that we need.
Your comments about resisting "gentrification and upzoning" seem to be about a different topic. I'm all for upzoning, and 'resist gentrification' is a very broad topic including solutions which have nothing to do with city planning.
Two ways to slow gentrification are to limit the increase in rental rates, and increase the power of the tenant's union to veto changes that the landlord might wish. I don't believe these are typically part of city planning, though I can see how they might be included.
Reducing car dependence requires exactly that. Any policy which prevents or reduces gentrification necessarily preserves sprawl, because that is where would-be gentrifiers currently live.
1) there is rural gentrification
2) part of the gentrification of London is due to foreigners who buy London property as an investment but don't live there, and only visit for 1-2 weeks a year. Nor do they rent it out. A policy which prevents that sort of ownership would reduce gentrification without increasing sprawl. This is what B.C. is attempting with their new tax.
3) Gentrification exists in places like Oslo where migration to the city does not from suburban dwellers but from residents of smaller cities and rural areas.
4) It's more generally applied to "middle class", and not specifically "upper-middle class". Ruth Glass's book which introduced the term specifically says "One by one, many of the working class quarters of London have been invaded by the middle classes -- upper and lower."
>It also helps shift the balance between denser housing, vs. the sparse housing available if everyone assume there will be fast transit.
This is a fallacy. The limitations on housing density are driven by residents of the urban core and inner suburbs. It doesn't matter to them how bad transportation is for people who can only afford the outer suburbs. Increasing the pain of living in low-density outer suburbs will not create more housing in the urban core and inner suburbs.
"making it harder for shoppers to access stores"
The density of people walking or on bike is much higher than in a car. Fewer required parking spaces means it's easier to walk from store to store. Remember, most parking lots are empty because they are designed for the busy time of the year. Most parking requirements are per-building, not per-area, so there's even more wasted space.
That wasted space raises rents for brick and mortar stores in a way that online retailers don't have to worry about.
"businesses are forced to actively police their parking areas against use by non-customers"
Nonsense. Get rid of the parking requirement and those businesses which don't want to police their parking areas simply won't have a parking area. While if there's really demand, parking lots and parking garages are a way to shift the costs to those who do want to police their parking arenas.
"while living in American cities which are entirely designed to require car travel"
That is true. But the cities can't change if the current parking restrictions stay. Let the market decide who pays - not some central planning committee.
As often pops up here, The Netherlands up until the 1970s was also increasingly designed around cars. With deliberate effort, and over time, that's changed. "Nijmegen’s center city wasn’t always car-free—cue grainy footage of midcentury sedans cruising past charming steepled rooftops. “The main square used to be a parking lot,” Sjors Van Duren, the program director of Velo-City, tells Clarence Eckerson, the film’s director. But since the 1970s, the city has replaced the downtown’s auto-centric streets with pedestrian pathways and bike lanes." - https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/07/it-takes-more...
> You do all understand that's where the massive wave of articles about changing building codes and zoning rules to get rid of parking, both public and privately owned, is coming from, right?
Some of it, sure. But I think you are making too big of a claim there. There are a lot of other groups and individuals that would like to see fewer cars in densely populated areas.
Ive got a 2 bedroom upper level duplex in Minneapolis with a 1 stall garage and 1 additional off street parking space, located on a block with ample street parking, and is only 1 block away from a bus stop on a major bus line that i take to work, all for $1100 a month.