Does your car parking cost as much as renting a flat/sqm? I bet it does not.

Where I live, parking space costs you about 15€/sqm/month on a single floor/no floor since it's 'public space'. A flat is avg. 22€/sqm/month and buildings in general come with 6 floors: we're closer to 6*22€/sqm/month for living space...

I don’t want to argue for cars, but a square of something you can park on should definitely be cheaper per unit area than something you live in. I don’t think I’ve ever parked anywhere I’d happily live.

If there are fewer parking spots relative to demand compared to living spaces relative to demand, then parking may very well be more expensive. I don’t see why parking “should” inherently be cheaper, it’s always supply and demand determining price.

He must be thinking of Hong Kong: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/hong-kong-parking-spa...

In expensive real estate areas land costs should dwarf construction costs.

This isn’t the issue though, the actual comparison is car park versus living space, and which can be built cheaper.

You've imagined what it would be like to live in a parking space if it were to remain one of a block or a row of parking spaces. I don't think that's the point being made.

I pay $512.84 per month for parking; it's valet parking because they stack multiple cars on elevators in the building basement.

I don't know exactly how you want to characterize the floor space of that, but my gut feel is it's basically a similar cost to rent for an apartment per unit area.

I think it probably comes pretty close - my friends with parking spaces in Manhattan pay $500+/mo

Does a slab of asphalt have the same taxes assessed and upkeep costs as an apartment?

Let’s start with employee plans can allocate several hundred dollars pre-tax to parking but very limited amounts to subway and train.

You can also argue that huge amounts of free street parking are subsidies, but limited areas to chain bikes.

There is more, but those are the obvious ones to me.

Driving is also heavily subsidized by the fact that much of the cost of driving is externalized. When someone drives the fumes coming out of their car damage the health of everyone around them, that cost is paid for by everyone and not just the person driving so there is very little incentive to stop doing it.

If you want to talk externalities then stress, frustration and mental health need to be taken into account on the public transit side of the equation.

I'd put up with a hell of a lot of air pollution if it made the trains timely and not crowded and I'm not the only one who'd make that tradeoff.

Stress, frustration and mental health are costs I have only ever experienced in a car.

Riding my bike to work was one of the best things I ever did for my mental and physical health.

Pre-tax transport benefit plans at the federal level have had equivalent transit/parking amounts since 2016; not that the city has much control over that.

NYC's own pre-tax program explicitly doesn't include parking. It's also probably worth mentioning that the city has a tax on off-street parking at 18.375% in Manhattan.

practically every street in manhattan is lined with free parking spaces, no meters and no required permits.

That’s not free parking! Those are bike lanes pending barrier construction! :)

Having been to community meetings where those bike lanes are proposed, I can assure you it's nowhere near as easy as you make it sound.

Every car parked on a street in Manhattan is taking advantage of free or subsidized parking.

Well, there is some metered parking; admittedly not a whole lot. But street parking is not "copious" which implies an abundance relative to demand.

If there were "copious free parking" in Manhattan, there wouldn't be hundreds of parking garages charging up to $70 a day during the week, would there?

Copious can mean abundant in either supply or quantity.

This is more true in the outer boroughs. Lots of circling the block in Flushing, for example.

It’s just a talking point. The hot thing is to be against street parking these days.

There is free street parking in Manhattan, but nobody would describe it as copious.

Of course it's copious.

Let's say the number of spaces in an average street is X. Most cars in those spaces are just sitting there all day, so the demand for those spaces is 10x. Okay, not copious.

But the demand for moving down that street is 1000x. Now those spaces are egregious.