If stores are helped by free parking, then we should be able to leave the parking space to the market: Let retail real state builders decide how much parking space they need, and let them act in their own best interest. However, that's not how it works.

A large majority of US metro areas mandate huge amounts of free parking that are enough to have space in Black Friday, whether they need it or not. For instance, there's a strip mall near me divided in two halves. One half has a neighborhood supermarket, three tiny stores (hair salon, gamestop, froyo), and two restaurants. That half has 400 parking spots. Typical number of spots in use? well under 100. It's not even half full when every line in the supermarket is working right before thanksgiving. But those 400 spots are mandated by area, just because the municipality finds all this parking space a great way to deter the least successful merchants to move in: Making sure all space is premium space is a way to make sure poorer people not only don't move to the municipality, but not even come here to shop. A bit like how municipalities also don't want public transport nearby.

Which places around here lack public parking? Urban areas where poor people live, as it's a way to tax non-residents.

Therefore, if this was really about what is good for stores, we'd see a lot less regulation, as opposed to what is good for the municipality itself.

Citation needed for the claim that mandated parking spaces are done to keep poor people away.

Isn't the more likely reason that urban areas lack parking is that it is ... an urban area with less available land?

Maybe this is true somewhere in the country but I haven't seen it.

Anecdotal evidence time. In my city, the "poor people" mall have the biggest and fullest parking lot. The most "premium" mall has shitty parking and best public transit access. And it's not in downtown.

Stores within walking distance of lots of customers have more customers, but we made that illegal so we could stratify neighborhoods by income.

I never shop anywhere I can't park at

I only step foot in the mall when I must. I much prefer to walk to the corner grocery store or take the train to a downtown shopping district. I suppose we cancel each other out.

You probably live in a walkable city with good public transit, the parent poster probably lives in the other 95% of the USA.

And the reason transit sucks and cars are way more convenient in 95% of the USA is exactly what we're discussing: mandates from the government that prioritize cars over other modes.

I think the problem is that to transition to a public transit model would require the transportation to be built first. It would also require the public transit to operate at a loss for a decade or two while buildings and people transition to this new mode of transportation. Many people are against this in the US because it's expensive and nobody likes tax hikes. Also people love their cars.

Transit already exists in the US, it just usually sucks. And you're never going to get radical, system-wide improvement in one shot in a car-dominant area. But there's nothing stopping us from releasing mandatory minimum parking requirements while gradually improving transit, biking, and walking. Removing the minimums doesn't erase parking overnight.

> It would also require the public transit to operate at a loss for a decade or two while buildings and people transition to this new mode of transportation.

Transit always operates at a loss, same as driving, or biking, or walking.

> Many people are against this in the US because it's expensive and nobody likes tax hikes.

Agreed, politically it's up in the air whether this will work. Mostly it is region-dependent, with a bunch of metros actually passing tax hikes to fund better transit the other day: http://www.railjournal.com/index.php/north-america/nearly-70...

> Also people love their cars.

Two things:

1. Again, this is largely a chicken and egg situation. Over the course of decades, we've created an environment that's good for cars and hostile to everything else. People are mostly pretty rational about their personal transportation choices, and they quite rationally prefer the method that's much better supported, because it works better. But when other modes work well, people will choose them too.

2. The younger generation does not like cars as much as previous ones. There's a steady shift underway.

What if parking were plentiful but cost $16?

In urban areas the parking actually doesn't attract many customers. It is often government mandated, not something the store necessarily would choose to provide.

Each space requires land, and in urban areas land is not cheap. Even worse, it's land that could be used for more retail, office, housing, etc.

I'm on mobile and don't have access to links, but IIRC each space costs like $10K to provide.

In many cities parking minimum laws stiffle growth by making new buildings impossible to build as the parking requirements are quite onerous. It's either get much bigger scale (also illegal) or get a waiver for parking (difficult for small scale property owners to navigate).

We're not even talking about environmental effects.

Honestly, if parking is so great and rational, why do we have laws requiring X spaces per Y square feet per Z use?

What? Increased demand does not generally lead to lower prices.

Increasing the quantity demanded at a lower price sufficiently can reduce the optimal, profit maximizing price for the seller.

Your thinking of usual asymptotic behavior of idealized competitive markets, which while it has some relation to the concerns of a single seller in a real market facing real changes in ranges where the factors which dominate in the asymptotic case aren't the only important factors, it's not a perfect guide for them.

Nah dude, that's too much logic for washingtonpost.com