Then remove the regulation that requires developers to bear the cost of building parking spaces and simply let merchants choose to pay to build them if they want to. Some merchants may feel that the additional cost of a parking structure is worthwhile, others may not. The market will sort out which ones are correct.

(I am an elected politician on the Board of Directors of a special district, one power of which is related to residential parking permits, and am additionally on a community committee working on improving the parking situation in the business area; my job on this committee is to do the actual outreach to local businesses. Note also that I am someone who believes in decreasing the use of cars.)

Your suggestion essentially turns into a game theory problem of "is it better to construct parking for my business or be located next to a business that was dumb enough to construct parking, as many of my customers who really would have wanted parking will end up just parking there, they will get the ire of anyone who actually gets towed, and that assumes they also have any good mechanism to decide who to tow anyway.

Requiring each building in a business area to have its own attached parking is a great way to perpetuate sprawl. Successful walkable business districts either use metered street parking, or intercept cars in parking lots at a stand-off distance away from the shops themselves. This amortizes the parking load among the shops.

If that sounds a lot like a mall, it is, but I'd advocate for also removing the zoning restrictions that segregate residential condos from business (a really stupid decision that many American cities keep perpetuating).

This is a different suggestion: removing parking at businesses and centralizing it using government (which does not lead to the problem I mentioned).

Maybe we could place that government parking on the sides of existing roads; we could automate the payment process with small devices mounted on posts that could take coins (or in some places, cards or mobile payments). For people who don't pay, we could have city employees walk around and issue fines for non-compliance...

In my city it's common for large retailers to provide parking lots at a cost. If you buy something, the cashier gives you a stamp that nulls your parking charge. Anyone can park, but free for customers. There's ways to game it, but it seems a workable solution.

I've only seen parking validation for private garages. Are your parking spaces owned by the city, and retailers can still validate for downtown, on-street parking?

In my hometown's downtown we have large parking towers that provide parking at fairly cheap rates. In the city owned one, the first hour is free. It's actually a lot more convenient than hunting for parking at area X, hoping there is street side parking or a parking lot. We also get a walkable downtown as a result too.

So instead of requiring a business to have parking, ban the creation of parking and mandate the creation of parking towers or lots financed by business property taxes instead. You get denser, nicer downtowns as a result. You can similarly socialize parking in less dense areas by banning business from having free parking lots and making a few city ones instead.

I agree: the suggestion I was replying to was to remove regulation and try to let the market come up with parking, which this suggestion is clearly not anything similar to ;P.

Parking lots can exclude people. It isn't a public good.

And in what is probably the first mental association most people have with parking lots, they're also rivalrous.

Right. That is, in fact, the point, and why the suggestion to remove regulations and to just let the market regulate parking ends in combat and a bunch of people trying to game theory each other's parking... the result is everyone hates each other and is clearly unfair (if potentially efficient).

Imagine the horrors if we let the market regulate cabinet space in your kitchen.

Once you remove the subsidy people pay to park. What is so unfair about that?

Then nobody will go through the expense of building any parking for their development, after which everyone suffers. New owners will have to build parking simply to exist in the space, and a great gap forms between affordability for owners who were there before vs new owners coming in - less traffic means all the businesses suffer.

I'm (inter alia) a merchant - chairman of a deli and cafe in a small town.

Our whole district (West Oxfordshire, England) has free parking and it's killing us. People pass up shops they could walk or cycle to, like ours, in favour of shops they can drive to (in the nearest large town). There's no up-front cost to driving, and walking takes effort, so why not drive?

The result of the local free parking policy has been that two large town centres in the district are thriving; everywhere else is dead; and the roads are clogged with traffic.

There is clearly more to the story than just free parking. My guess is those town centers have a larger variety of stores and possibly better prices.

This is already the case with some places that provide free customer parking but most city centres still provide free or low cost parking for personal vehicles at a cost to the city which is effectively a subsidy for merchants in that city.

> most city centres still provide free or low cost parking

Not sure about "most." Even in smaller cities free street parking is getting pretty rare. My town charges $1/hr for meters and it's clearly too cheap because it's still hard to find a spot most times.

Certainly in urban centers like downtown Chicago there is no such thing as free parking, even at hotels and office buildings.

Yes, it's a subsidy to the merchants who, in turn, pay to the city property tax and sales tax.

Merchants decide where to locate in part based on traffic counts (vehicle and pedestrian). Places that are more valuable to merchants are more valuable to the city (property taxes and sales taxes are higher).

It's economically logical for the city to consider whether to offer this investment/subsidy.

I know that in Boulder (CO), the downtown parking spaces that are on the street are owned by the city, and merchants were paying people to feed people's meters b/c they felt parking tickets were driving people away.

Edit: I should put this in context:

The merchants felt the city (which collects sales tax revenue) would benefit by subsidizing parking, which allows for more traffic and theoretically leads to increased sales (more tax dollars). The city saw parking tickets as a greater source of revenue, and felt increasing enforcement was the better plan. The merchants paid meter-feeders selectively, so as to encourage locals who are a more consistent source of revenue.

It shouldn't just be up to the merchants, though. It's a decision that has externalities. Providing space for parking, for example, limits the density of space available for other uses, which makes the whole area less pedestrian friendly.

Other externalities: more traffic, hence more noise, more pollution, more traffic accidents.

Agreed, I live in LA (near downtown) and places that have some amount of easy/free parking will be patronized much more than other places (even if the latter has higher quality goods/services).

> Apple is building 11,000 parking spaces not because it wants to but because Cupertino, the suburban city where the new headquarters is located, demands it. Cupertino has a requirement for every building.

They may well do so. But the point of this article is that municipal ordinances don't give property owners the choice:

> Apple is building 11,000 parking spaces not because it wants to but because Cupertino, the suburban city where the new headquarters is located, demands it. Cupertino has a requirement for every building.

That is exactly what validating parking is for.

People who arrive by car spend less, not more. Rather than reflecting the luxurious lifestyle of its owner cars are burdens to most people.

I don't know what is your basis for that claim. Looking at actual figures for different places where I live (Finland, which has many places with very good public transport options) shows that people who come by car spend substantially more money when they come shopping.

If that's true in Finland which I don't doubt I suggest that is a reflection of the very different built environment of that country compared to the USA. In the USA there have been several studies on the question and all have determined that arrival by car is associated with lower spending. Here is one:

http://kellyjclifton.com/Research/EconImpactsofBicycling/OTR...

Here is a roundup of numerous case studies. http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2015/03/the-complete-busine...

I think he got his first sentence backwards, his second sentence contradicts it.

People who arrive by car spend more than people who never arrive to that merchant.

I have no idea what part of the world you live, but near me cars are neither luxurious nor a burden to people. It seems like car angst could be a symptom of big city overcrowding. Overcrowding isn't a car problem. It's a problem of too many people in an area.