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Comment by jmnicolas | Hacker News Reader

You probably never visited Paris. There's no 'away' to put your car.

Then buy some land to park your car.

This is Europe. There is no land to buy. Land has a specific purpose, for example business, agriculture, housing. You cannot just buy a small plot of land to park your car. It's simply not available.

What you can do, is buy or hire a parking garage that already exists. This is possible of course, but expensive. Think 1/3rd of the cost of a family car (either as monthly rent, or as purchase price).

> This is possible of course, but expensive. Think 1/3rd of the cost of a family car (either as monthly rent, or as purchase price).

Then factor this into the price you have to pay to own a car, why does everyone need to subsidise car owner's parking?

I sense a bit of anger in your last sentence, "why does everyone". For new car purchasers, your solution is possible. For existing owners, that would mean a severe increase in cost of living.

Sorry I didn’t mean it to come off that way. I know that in certain places in the world it’s different but in my city it’s very expensive to own a car and we have a working public transportation system and bike infrastructure, those who drive mostly do it because they can afford to and enjoy the luxury. There are exceptions of course and those that are less able bodied should not be penalised for needing a car.

For existing pedestrians, it would also mean a severe increase in quality of life for no additional cost of living. Everything is always a tradeoff in some way. I’m sure people with horses were hurting when stables started closing too. Its time cities reevaluate what sort of lifestyle they subsidize with land use decisions.

> For existing owners, that would mean a severe increase in cost of living.

And if you force the government to inefficiently reserve street space for cars, society has to incur the same costs, except non-car owners are forced to unfairly subsidize car owners by bearing those costs.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something but in what sense see non-car owners subsidizing car owners?

Non-car-owners pay taxes which go towards the cost of reserving land for car owners to park their cars on.

A quick google shows car parking in Paris seems to be in the 100-150 euros a month range, which is pretty cheap to be fair. If you're paying less than that, you're being subsidised by the land owner (the city, and thus the residents of that city)

There is always land available to buy, €10k per square metre for this property for example: https://tranio.com/france/adt/1928891/

Maybe that's too much to park your car, but land has a cost, why should a car owner be allwoed to store their property on public land for free? Can I build a shed in that space instead?

So yes, you can buy some land to store your stuff.

There's not really any land to buy either. It mean that only rich people are allowed to have cars.

I cant tell if this is a sarcastic comment or not. I have a car in Chicago. There are no parking spaces in my apartment building. Street parking is the only non $250+ a month option. I did not have a car here until we needed one to be able to travel during COVID (to avoid taking public transit during the pandemic).

I can not buy land outside the city to park my car. I can not afford a second car payment to rent a monthly spot. City parking is really my only option to avoid taking public transit and risk getting and spreading COVID.

> City parking is really my only option to avoid taking public transit and risk getting and spreading COVID.

You didn't need to buy a car and avoid taking public transit to risk getting and spreading COVID. Likely every single one of the places you've gone by car have been more risky than taking the train or bus.

Multiple research articles have found no link between public transport and the spread of COVID, even when looking at places like Seoul and Tokyo where transit use is much higher. The risk of catching COVID is higher at the grocery store than on a bus.

I sympathize with why you thought you needed to do that and I genuinely hope you will dispose of the vehicle once the pandemic is over. Humans are terrible at evaluating risk, and people's sudden impulse to buy a car when that's not where the risk lies is an example of this.

Places like seol and tokyo probably have a much higher per capita mask usage rate. Ive seen bus drivers in Los Angeles with their masks around their chin. Even after LA times reported metro operators were dying.

There are 2.7 million people in Chicago city, it's total area is 234.21 square miles. Taht's 11,500 people per square mile

Are you really suggesting that 7% of Chicago's entire land area be given away for free to car owners -- because if everyone owned one car you'd need 1.7 million square feet to park them. That's in addition to the space used for those cars to move around which is at least as much.

If you don't own a car, how can you claim your free space?

Why is a publicly owned car park is worse than a personally owned one?

Or are you only complaining about on-street parking?

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