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Comment by ams6110 | Hacker News Reader

The lots are privately owned by the malls, shopping centers, or stores. The "city" is in no position to impose paid parking on private property. Where parking is scarce, private parking is generally not free. Where parking is provided on public property (e.g. city streets) it is often metered, though certainly not always.

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While they can't directly tell a mall "you have to charge", they can encourage it indirectly through zoning laws:

For example, they can cap the footprint of parking lot space, leading to stores building parking garages or taking their own steps to minimize freeloaders through metering. That's just an off the top of my head example.

Never say the govt "can't do something". The have power of eminent domain, as an example of how far they are able to go when the actual will is there to have something they want. Check out the history of the new Fenway Park for things they can do.

Rather than a cap, many suburbs have a minimum parking space requirement for stores. Suburbs have been using zoning laws to encourage a car based economy. In the Chicago suburb which I used to live, you could not walk the one mile to Target even if you wanted to for lack of sidewalks, crosswalks, etc.

The city already legislates how many parking spaces the mall should have, so you can't say there's no civic control over private parking.

Why couldn't our city councils tax each parking space? Landlords would pass that on as a parking fee.

Maybe because both the property and the commerce these spots facilitate is probably already taxed and that's already passed on to consumers.

Just because something supports commerce doesn't mean it should be free. My city (Mountain View, CA) has outlawed plastic bags and requires stores to charge for paper bags...commerce supports that were "free" to the consumer in the past. Yet, for some reason, the city provides TONS of free parking in municipal lots.

Car owners kind of already pay for infrastructure for their vehicles through excise tax, gas tax, and tolls (not really, but at least its something). Why not charge for parking too?

>The "city" is in no position to impose paid parking on private property.

so many other things are imposed on private property, so I don't see why suddenly paid parking is the "limit'

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