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Comment by KennyBlanken | Hacker News Reader

Street parking in the US is almost universally, and massively, subsidized. The money doesn't "go toward" anything except an infinitesimal reduction in that subsidization.

To see this in action, stroll into a popular part of town, check the rate for parking on the street for a few hours, then check the rate for doing the same in a private lot on the same block.

Metering is purely in the interests of the business owners on the block, who don't want people parking for more than a few hours - ie anyone except their customers.

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That's fine though. If building roads and paying for them with meters, even if not fully, helps cities generate significant economic activity, that could easily be worth it from the taxes and other benefits generated. There's a reason every city does it.

There's so much propaganda on all sides when it comes to automobiles in the US that it's hard to tease out reality, but I'd wager anything states and cities have hard numbers behind what they do.

When it comes to things like that, where solid data isn't public I just assume the world is not run by idiots who don't know more about their area of expertise than me. I feel reasonably certain that urban parking subsidization is done at least to a large extent because it makes money.

Cities are soft locked into car dependence in many areas so businesses need cheap street parking to remain viable meaning cities are massively incentivized to continue providing it even if it is a bad local maxima.

The problem is, obviously, the expertise of one field ("maximise car parking to deliver revenue") clashes with the expertise of another ("if we don't work to minimise car parking and dependence thereon, we'll all be breathing sulfur-infused atmosphere and praying we don't break through the wet bulb temperature").

As a biker on the central west coast I just had the 'opportunity' to revisit the midwest and can tell you we are screwed.

> There's so much propaganda on all sides when it comes to automobiles in the US that it's hard to tease out reality, but I'd wager anything states and cities have hard numbers behind what they do.

I would take the opposite side of that bet for most cities in the US. The smaller ones I have been involved in are shockingly captured by a minority of random business owners and retirees that bother to show up to meetings and demand their lifestyles be protected. I think parking subsidization is done largely because it's a visible cost to car owners who will oppose it strongly.

I know in my small city, the pandemic laid bare just how much paid parking meant to the budget. With almost nothing coming in from the city-owned garages and street meters, there was much handwringing about the shortfall.

> Street parking in the US is almost universally, and massively, subsidized

So are sidewalks and bike lanes. I'm not aware of a single toll sidewalk or bike lane.

Subsidy means govt spends more money on parking spaces than it takes out of parking spaces. In the city of Seattle rates for parking spaces are more than $3 / hour from 8:am until 8:pm, including Saturday (Sunday is still free). Most of the parking spaces are used at full capacity. This means that one parking space in Seattle would collect some fraction of $3 x 12 hr x 6 days / week x 52 week / year = $11,232 / year. Believe me - in Seattle these parking space have not been updated in decades. Govt spent no money and instead it got some fraction of $11,232 / year.

Parking spaces, in Seattle at least, are not subsidized. They are a massive source of revenue for the local govt.

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