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Comment by BrainInAJar | Hacker News Reader

> Gosh I hope we can figure this out in my lifetime.

We can figure it out with pure market forces; currently building codes across the continent require businesses to have a certain amount of off-street parking. That also has the effect of killing small local businesses. Own a restaurant? Doing well? Want to expand? Your 6 table restaurant requires no off street parking, but an 8 table restaurant requires (for example) 6 spaces, meaning you can't just add another couple tables, you need to buy / lease the entire building next to yours, demolish it, and use it for parking.

Get rid of these anti-business pro-car zoning laws, and the problem takes care of itself.

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Which continent? At least here in the States (near Lake Tahoe specifically), there are plenty of 8+ table restaurants that don't have their own off-street parking. This has been the case in pretty much every American downtown I've visited; most drivers rely on either roadside parking spaces (usually metered) or dedicated parking garages/lots instead.

The main exception I've noticed is Reno (along with the Nevada side of Tahoe), given that the bigger casinos - even in "downtown" areas - will typically provide parking garages for their guests.

Some pre-code buildings are grandfathered. Minimum parking was mostly phased in between the 1930s and 1960s. You can't build a new restaurant without parking except in a very, very small fraction of American urban areas.

I'd imagine that restaurants in urban centers are rarely "built" nowadays; in downtowns, you're probably leasing (or maybe buying) an existing building.

The flip side is, ignore the problem, remove the building codes, and what will happen? I can tell you: gridlock. Over the last 15 years I've been visiting a suburb of Charlotte, NC. Every year I'm amazed how many forested have been bulldozed and shiny new subdivisions standing in their places. The result is a trip that used to take 10 minutes can take 40, or more. My father, who lives there and has been watching the local politics surrounding this, says everyone is just burying their heads in the sand. More building permits are issued and the problem gets worse and worse. The problem is, there is a lot more building planned, but still no solution to the transportation problems.

When it comes to infrastructure, market forces don't really work.

All those highways were put in with taxpayer money. And the parking at the other end is the fault of building codes. If developers had to pay for all the highway to their new subdivisions, the market would look very, very different.

Suburbs exist only because of government subsidies - they wouldn't be built in a free market because they are just too damn expensive. They require massive public funding for infrastructure - roads, water, sewage, side walks, etc, over the course of decades. At the same time, that infrastructure is only used by the residents of the suburb by design. They don't permit through traffic nor do they allow for mixed use. The problem isn't growth in a free market. The problem is just the opposite in fact.

I'm unfamiliar with this - does it pertain to physical tables or number of seats? If for instance you take an approach such as Bennihana where you have large tables and just add people to the table until it's full, is that counted differently than 8 tables for 4? If two parties of 4 show up, they're both seated at the same table... if the table is for 10, then when another couple show up, they're added to the same table. Does this count as 1 table or 3?

Depends entirely on the city's zoning law. Max occupancy or floor space ratio are fairly common

http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/

Minimum parking laws are the most important of many command-and-control policies and mandates that created the car-oriented American city. More than minimum setbacks, minimum lot sizes, FAR limits, single use zoning, ploughing heavily subsidized freeways through cities, and the rest, parking policy is why American cities have decayed.

Returning to free markets would let American cities be great again.

As for restaurant parking minima, they're usually based on inside area and sometimes on seating. There are minima for offices, factories, schools, homes, ana every land use in most cities.

I feel you should visit any developing country to get a feel of why zoning / building / parking laws are required.

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