Isn't that freedom mostly an illusion? I suppose you can hop in the car for an impromptu road trip whenever you like, but you are paying to license, insure, and maintain the car 24/7/365... and most people can't take too many road trips. But I am trying to picture the market providing if there weren't parking requirements - would a neighborhood reach a point where car owners wanting to move in would pay so much to park that it'd make sense to knock down buildings and put up a parking lot? I suppose that would act as a sort of brake on the whole cycle, since there'd be less housing.

Developers would include parking garages if it was something that raised the rents they could charge.

These kinds of rules are usually enacted by people who have lived in a city for a long time and always parked on the street for free. There's some new development and all of the sudden they can't find a space. So they push through rules that force new development to include parking.

in my case work is 22 miles one direction, my daughters schools 15 miles in a different direction. I live in a state that prioritized roads and because of that my commute is fast and easy.

Assuming each workday you travel to drop your child at school, then to work, then back to collect your child, then home, you will be travelling (15 + 15 + 22 + 22 + 15 + 15) x 5 = 520 miles each week.

I'm sure you have come to some other arrangement but holy shit that would be a lot of time spent travelling each week. It's worth working out how much time you need to spend at work to pay for the fuel, maintenance, and depreciation involved because that is essentially also 'travel time'.

edit: Even assuming an average speed of 50km/h that is about 16.5 hours each week. Including time spent earning the money to cover the associated costs it's going to be over 20 hours.

I don't pick up my kids from school regularly, but occasionally i have to. I have to pick up a daughter from her dojo a couple times a week after work, which is in between my home and work.

My average highway speed while commuting is 75 MPH. 90% of my commute is on the highway.

Commuting also means i can afford a home in a one third acre lot, with plenty of backyard for my kids and their dog to play in.

I agree! But if you're a true libertarian, it's not just parking. What about the direct costs of building and maintaining the roads themselves?

I use a bike for 90% of my travel time and I have a (smallish) libertarian streak too. It galls me that there's such enormous subsidies to vehicle drivers, with a simultaneous refusal from government to invest even 1-2% of that amount towards safe cycling infrastructure. And I say invest (rather than spend), because said infrastructure has been shown every time to generate a profit once you include the health benefits, etc.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/driving...

I'm in favor of higher gas taxes if not diverted to mass transit. And toll roads, especially private toll roads. And abolishing the DOT.

You shouldn't because those regulations are what are keeping us with the freedom of choice to drive cars. Without mandated parking spaces in new construction, developers no longer constrained by the cost and time of having to plan and build parking would instead change those to livable units. The argument from the anti-car folks is that's a good thing because we need more inventory to deal with out of control housing costs in cities such as San Francisco and Seattle especially. And on its face it make sense, supply and demand, less urbanites want cars especially if it is too difficult and/or costly to park it. And with the cost of construction decreased by doing away with that the average price will go down right? And that's where the argument falls apart because if the market already demands an insane price for urban living, like 2300+ for a not even that big one bedroom, then the market will keep charging that regardless of parking requirements or not. Having a few extra units per building with no parking will not cause housing prices to fall in a meaningful way throughout a region unless there's also the collapse of a key part of the local economy and suddenly people no longer want to be in that city. It will not help with congestion for the same reasons but it will make commuting to work or just a night out cost a hell of a lot more.

The other thing the more sinister thing about the talk of removing these regulations is the fact that what it would really serve to do is move everyone except the ultra rich away from having the ability to own their own cars. Part of that is a new profit model for the auto industry, part of it is social engineering to better be able to control when and where people travel at any given time and limit our freedoms. It might seem a bit far fetched but I would bet damn near anything that is the dystopian future we're careening towards. And I'm not a libertarian but I do have a pretty strong belief in people being able to exercise their personal freedoms. And if a little bit of regulation when it comes to parking requirements helps protect our (larger) freedom to choose our modes of transportation, the ability to come and go on our own schedules and manage our own lives, to take a road trip at random because it's Saturday and it's beautiful out and not be charged by the minute for it, and to actually keep ownership of our cars for just a little bit longer, then I consider that a win for personal liberties. Because we still would have the choice.