Hacker News Reader

Comment by bartvk | Hacker News Reader

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).

View on HN

> 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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com