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Comment by dkarl | Hacker News Reader

> Nor are minimum parking requirements even needed: developers have the knowledge and incentives to provide the appropriate amount of off-street parking. If a developer builds too little parking, she will struggle to attract tenants and command lower rents.

This isn't entirely true. In cities where parking requirements are eliminated, many new businesses move into locations that would have previously been illegal, showing that many commercial tenants view parking requirements as excessive.

In my city, judging by public comment, support for parking requirements comes not from business owners or developers but from voters who fear a lack of parking at the businesses they frequent and who fear that parking for nearby businesses or apartment buildings will overflow into their neighborhood (the horror.)

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> This isn't entirely true. In cities where parking requirements are eliminated, many new businesses move into locations that would have previously been illegal, showing that many commercial tenants view parking requirements as excessive.

That's the entire point though. The parking requirements are excessive. The businesses do know better. You're agreeing with the article.

I don't disagree with much in the article, but I disagree with the implication that parking requirements are, or ever were, designed to meet the needs of businesses and business owners. They aren't. They're driven by voters who want businesses to have more parking than business owners would pay for, given the choice.

It's an important distinction because of the way arguments over parking play out. If parking requirements are engineered to match the needs of businesses and business owners, then as the article states, they aren't "needed," but also it can be argued that there's little harm in mandating what conscientious business owners do anyway, and preventing outliers from causing problems.

The article does that in its own way by attacking the research behind parking requirements, but it fails to take the next step and point out the obvious: the research would be a lot more solid if anyone believed that it mattered. Even if it started out weak by necessity, it would have been improved and updated over the decades if anybody cared. But there's literally no connection and nobody who cares about a connection.

>They're driven by voters who want businesses to have more parking than business owners would pay for, given the choice.

And even then it's only the vocal minority. Nobody who doesn't have an axe to grind shows up to the zoning committee meeting on such an item.

A huge amount of specific policy winds up being driven by Karens and NIMBYs who will vote for anything that drives up cost because it tends to drive out everything that isn't Startbucks or similar.

You'll have some policy and the number everyone thinks is fine is X but the Karens get to screeching and the number goes up to 12 because the people who were ok with 8 are also ok with Y but the Karens wouldn't settle for less.

Not quite, because parking requirements is one of the few issues that is high profile enough that voters remember it when it comes time to vote for city council. The people who vote in city council elections are a small minority, but they're a much bigger group than the dedicated and/or crazy folks who show up at meetings.

> from voters who fear a lack of parking at the businesses they frequent

IOW they want a handout from the city (free parking) to support their lifestyles.

To a cheesy jingle tune: public services paid by taxes aren't handouts.

I don't know why this has caught on so strongly online that like water and gas hookups, electric, roads, and trash/yard waste pickups to single-family homes aren't supporting a specific lifestyle but public parking? Those evil suburbanites ruining everything. My hometown Columbus and the policy of mandatory parking is still working out great. New developments are building more parking than required of them and they're the hip trendy areas. The only places in the city where it's an issue is in and around "The Short North" where you can't fit any more parking and they moved to an app based pay system everyone hates. Whenever I'm home and want to go out with friends it's much easier to hit up Bridge Park or Franklinton because they have massive garages.

Free public parking is a handout. I use it myself, I love it, I circle the block multiple times for a free space than pay for parking. But it is a handout.

Forcing private businesses to have parking, even if they make a business decision to not have it, is a tax on those businesses. And on all the businesses that would have been viable without that tax.

I have no issue with paid public parking. It needs to exist.

Or if we love free public services so much, we can talk about why public transport isn't free.

Does attaching a cost really make a meaningful difference? I'm paying for my trash pickup even though I'm not directly billed for it. The point if charging for public parking is more a rationing mechanism than a moral imperative. I think it's annoying to shoulder the cost on businesses which is why it's in practice being shouldered on the developers who get money from the state so large-scale I think it evens out.

I think public transport should be free, keeping on the Columbus track I have no idea why COTA even bothers to charge. They instituted a monthly price-cap that's at most $62/mo and (or at most $31 plus 50% reduction on the per-fare cost if you're broke). And while not an insignificant amount of money to the riders it's bottom-of-the-bag chip dust to COTA itself. Oh no, more people might use the nearly empty busses, the horror.

Yes, because people respond to incentives. A few dollars a month for parking is enough for people to junk their broken cars instead of leaving them on the street. A few dollars a day is enough to make people reconsider getting a second car. A few dollars an hour is enough to make people carpool and limit their stay.

The point of charging for parking is not just to collect funds, it's to make sure parking is available.

You need water and heat to survive; you can have a functional city without everyone having three SUVs. Thanks for coming to my talk.

Around me the public comment is often from business owners who want to drive to work and park for free.

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