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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

The real disaster (environmental and economic) is that so many places regulate parking so strictly rather than being more market-oriented and allowing people to figure out how much they want.

https://www.planetizen.com/features/113459-perils-central-pl...

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If nobody was allowed to park on public land, that could work

Certainly in the UK it's common for people to expect to own an extra 50 square foot of land for a car or two, usually abandoned to block the pavement. This impacts everyone, especially those of us who don't drive.

It's not really market oriented, it's tragedy of the commons oriented, as developers will build the cheapest thing they can on the premise that new residents can use existing parking, resulting in a reduction of value for others utilizing those commons. By not having parking minimums, it allows developers to pass those costs onto surrounding residents. There are townhouse neighborhoods near me with nearly impassable streets, people crossing 4 lane roads, spreading into surrounding areas, having to walk over 1km to their home from their parking due to insufficient parking minimums. Everyone sees it is a giant problem now, but it is too late to fix. These minimums are there for a reason.

The solution isn't to build more parking, its to reduce the need for car trips. Improve transit and support commercial development in the neighborhood.

The fact is that we're in a housing affordability crisis. We need builders to build "cheapest thing they can" right now because housing is insanely expensive in most urban areas. Parking minimums make housing more expensive, and the fact that people are buying these homes is saying something important: housing is more important than parking.

Yes parking is nice, and there are costs associated with not having a dedicated parking space for each person. But those costs pale in comparison to the costs we pay for having a severe housing shortage. The economic costs, the costs paid in rents, the costs paid in health.

There isn't a world where you can have it all. But its clear that we need more housing, not more parking, and there is an unavoidable trade-off between the two.

Improved transit works in megacities because of rapid transit but in this case they might add a bus route or the bus might come every 1/2 hour. You still do not have the scale to make public transit work unless you turn this place into an actual city.

You can't improve the transport until you start building high density housing, that's not 10 units per acre.

10 units per acre is 1 house per 5k sqft lot--this is plainly single family detached housing. No one in that zoning is having parking issues. When you start talking about 35duc then you start having parking issues--but at 35duc, you're totally within the realm of being able to justify more frequent bus service for a town with 200k+ people. But if you're in a small town with very progressive density allowances like that, then the solution is simple: improve zoning to encourage more neighborhood commercial. No need to worry about transit in that case.

But 10 units per acre is what was being proposed with just 1 parking space per dwelling. That acre is not going to get increased commercial (not enough customers in walking distance, no parking for people driving in), or transit (not dense enough)

Go for 35 per acre sure, you don't need 70 parking spaces then, because (assuming it isn't literally 35 units in the middle of suburbia) you get commercial and transit (people still got to get to work - maybe in WFH stays around that will change)

I'd be interested to see the land use code where this 10 duc with one allowable parking spot is going. This must be a HUUUGE townhouse to go there if its only permitted to fit one car.

is it 1 car garage or literally, a garage with no driveway? if a link to a specific example was mentioned above in this thread i missed it

Another solution is robotaxis. If ridehailing becomes easily affordable You will have your nice neighborhood back. Robotaxis can pick you up in a minute and go to park and recharge in some distant multi story parking.

That is a science fiction fantasy, not something we can plan on in any reasonable time frame.

If you have an area dense enough to have reliable uber then perhaps it works, but uber (and taxis in general) fall down with families with young children - the kind of people buying low density housing being suggested

The issue is that in areas with sufficient parking, on-street parking has few restrictions; maybe you have to move your car every few days and might have a scheduled street cleaning that you need to move for, but you don't need to obtain a permit or feed a meter or worry about where guests might park.

If you put a building with insufficient parking near there, users of that building are likely to park on the nearby streets and that reduces the utility of the street parking for the existing residents; either they may no longer be able to find parking readily, or they need to manage permits, etc.

It's different if you build in an area that already has tightly restricted parking. If you move into a downtown LA building without enough parking for your vehicles, you're not going to be able to find a free spot nearby and you won't reduce the utility of your neighbors.

It's impossible to take a "market-oriented" approach to parking when street parking exists. Either you remove the street parking, you regulate the space somehow, or you have a tragedy of the commons that pisses everyone off. In context, it sounds like the developer was obviously planning to take advantage of existing street parking to reduce the number of spaces built; it was, as described, the densest development in the area, at a below-normal spaces-per-unit for such an area.

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