myrmepropagandistJul 20, 2023

~one billion
~1,000,000,000

That's how many parking spaces there are in the USA. For every car? About 4 empty spaces... just sitting there, not absorbing the rain, making flooding worse, making cities hotter as they bake in the summer sun.

Our built environment and laws bend over backwards to make driving the only viable transportation option in nearly every imaginable context.

You need to pay for healthcare, but almost never parking.

(Pointing this out makes libertarian heads explode.)

Show threadRon MillerJul 20, 2023
@futurebird Yes, we have too many cars, and too many parking lots with too many spaces, but free? It's .50 to a $1.00 per hour in my small town to park, $30-$40 a day in the city and double that to park at a hotel.
Show threadBrandon WebsterJul 20, 2023
@ron_miller @futurebird you listed the only two places where parking is ever not free (walkable small towns and walkable big cities), and generally the reason those are nice places to be is that they don’t have government subsidized parking. Even still, $0.50 to $1.00 and $30-$40 a day is likely still subsidizing car owners, and is not an accurate representation of how much those parking spaces are costing their local municipalities
Show threadRon MillerJul 20, 2023
@bwebster @futurebird The garages in cities tend to be privately owned, but the "metered" parking is municipally owned -- and downtown business owners in my town still complain about charging for parking, claiming it keeps customers away (it doesn't).
Show threadBrandon Webster

@ron_miller @futurebird yeah, so many business owners seem to think that because they drive to their business, everyone else does too. We have that a lot where I live when business owners try to prevent bike lanes replacing parking. It’s almost always a fundamental misunderstanding of their clientele.

Private paid parking may not be directly subsidized, but it does still have an opportunity cost in terms of preventing something more useful being built there

Jul 20, 2023 at 2:28pmWeb
Show threadJeff ByrnesJul 20, 2023

@bwebster @ron_miller @futurebird Also kinda interesting: metered & time-limited parking tends to be good for business owners, b/c it encourages turnover of the parking spots, which means more customers b/c there’s somewhere to park nearby.

The best-priced parking is where there’s always one empty spot nearby.