This is self-correcting. Minimums only ensure an inappropriate amount of parking will be built
It can't be if the regulation prohibits building parking for each home, as in this case.
Building housing units without parking just externalizes the problem and makes the whole neighborhood worse. People still need a car, so if they can't have parking they will have to find it on the streets somewhere, which is worse for everyone involved.
I've lived in a neighborhood where apartment buildings didn't have enough parking for residents, it was not pretty. Constant fights over parking, vandalized cars, people circling four hours looking for a spot. Nothing good came out of that.
How would that solve it? There still aren't enough spots.
If you do unreserved spaces through parking meters or resident window stickers, people are still stuck doing all the same things (circling for hours, getting into fights).
To solve that you'd need to have reserved street spots so people are guaranteed which spot is theirs. So now you have to staff up enforcement and towing so the spots they reserved is available. But wait.. so we're back to dedicated spots, but in a less convenient and more cumbersome way. So to solve that, just have the apartment buildings themselves provide the spot for each resident. So we're full circle back to where we started.
As long as cars are needed (in the US, they are needed) the optimal solution is for each housing unit to provide it built-in, instead of externalizing the problem onto the neighborhood.
Anyway pricing means that people can allocate the scarce resource of land in a city efficiently.
That's a good question, difficult to answer in the general sense.
At the individual level the answer seems very easy. Of course I wouldn't want it to be illegal to live however you want or configure your apartment however you like, with or without parking! You do you.
But what about the next owner? If the very first owner gets to spec the apartment however they like (before it gets built) and opts for no parking that's fine. But later they sell it and the next owner needs a car so now they join the street parking scene. Multiply this by all the units and over time it's a problem.
Because ultimately housing lasts for a very long time. That new building is likely to stand there for a century or more, so those initial decisions of how many parking spots it has vs. units will last for a very long time, far beyond the preferences of the first buyer. So it's not that easy.
OK, they can pay market rate for street parking.
Ultimately what I see you proposing is denying people homes because you want to use public land to store your private property free of charge.
See previous response for why this does not work. Either the street spots are first come first served which does not solve anything, or they are reserved which creates unnecessary inefficiency.
> Ultimately what I see you proposing is denying people homes because you want to use public land to store your private property free of charge.
I'm advocating the exact opposite.
I'm saying it never works well if residents have to participate in the street parking scene because residents are by definition there every night/day, so they need a dedicated spot. And the optimal way to provide that, is for the building they live in to have a spot for them (which they pay for, in either rent or mortgage).
That's why mandated parking minimums are still the best compromise solution. Anything else just externalizes the problem which is worse for everyone.
You can build parking! Just don't force people to build it when price signals indicate housing is a more valuable use of said land.
Yes, of course it does. The goal ultimately is to create livable housing, not just pack the maximum numbers of units into a space without practical considerations. Everything is a compromise.
I mentioned above what happens when you build apartments without enough parking: Constant fights over parking, vandalized cars, people circling four hours looking for a spot.
> You can build parking!
Where?
You can't build parking after the fact into an apartment building. It had to be designed in before construction started. If the building is already done and doesn't have enough parking, it will never have enough parking. You'd have to tear it down and that's too disruptive and expensive, will never get done.
(I am assuming city blocks which are fully built-out already. If there's a bunch of empty land nearby there probably is no parking problem either so this is all a moot point.)
> Just don't force people to build it when price signals indicate housing is a more valuable use of said land.
Capitalism always seeks maximum profit, not a sustainable long term solution. In the absence of regulation the builder will maximize units, which is more profit. The problems that arise when new residents realize they won't find street parking only occur after the builder is done and gone, not their problem. They are very happy to externalize the problem to others.
You "can", but that's right up there with spherical cows. Let's be serious.
It will never happen that a recently built apartment building gets demolished because they realize in hindsight that it does not have enough parking. That will never happen.
The problem will simply be externalized to the surrounding neighborhood, good luck in the street parking wars.
It seems obvious to me that parking maximums can do the same thing.
Now upzone the city, oh dear it’s utter gridlock.
Edit: but actually forbidding the building of parking is just as misguided as requiring it. Did not initially see that it was actually proposed to be prohibited rather than simply not required.
Have lived in SOMA for the past 9 years or so. No car. Works great.
To be fair I think of The Avenues and the Marina as almost another planet. It’s easier to get to Oakland than over there. Although I do run past the Marina every weekend, but most people don’t do weekly 16mile runs just for fun.
In my area most daily trips are easier by bicycle or public transit than by car. My gym is 15min by car, 12min by bicycle, 20min by bus, and 25min by foot away. During rush hour, which is when I go to the gym, that car trip easily turns into 20min+. I can literally outpace cars uphill on my bicycle thanks to slight fudging around red lights.
Cities stop being "easy to navigate by car" when they have too many cars around. And car-congested streets are also very hostile to bikes and pedestrians, so it's very hard to correct the problem once it gets ingrained. So it makes sense to give the latter uses high priority, and keep car use as a rare exception.
Also, if you price street parking appropriately people don't need to circle for blocks.
Cars _are_ exclusive. They're one of those things where the more people get them, the worse the experience is for existing users. It makes sense to price their negative externalities appropriately.
Sure, the US is a bit different in that getting to other cities is more difficult without a car, that's definitely true. However within the city itself? My building has dedicated parking spaces for the residents - as in you can't even get into the garage if you don't have a keyfob that opens the garage doors - and of the neighbours I'm acquainted with, people avoid taking their cars as much as possible. And this isn't due to congestion or whatever, cycling or taking a train/bus/metro is just cheaper & more convenient if we're talking within the Netherlands.
My favorite anecdote about a country getting rid of car infrastructure is actually in the city I live in now, Utrecht, where they replaced a highway with a canal [1], and right now Amsterdam has an initiative to bring the number of cars down drastically. They're getting rid of parking spaces in favor of better, human-friendly spaces, small gardens and things of that variety. There's similar initiatives across the whole country, and they've all worked out pretty amazingly in terms of QoL for people.
The US has a planning issue where life is unlivable unless you drive everywhere, but there's no reason for major cities like SF to have this issue if the people in charge really gave a shit. Having good public transportation is an easily attainable goal for cities with so many resources, yet it keeps getting fucked over by car-centric infrastructure.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/14/utrecht-restor...
I own a car myself and use it regularly for longer road trips the few times of year I do that, but I avoid using my car like the plague if I'm traveling within 90% of the Netherlands.
I also like Dingbats. And parking.
Removing parking minimums is a noble idea, but one thing I have noticed is that the new “parking free” apartment buildings in San Francisco, such as the Tenderloin and SOMA, are having a hard time getting all of their units filled, even with prices slashed. This is a problem that buildings with parking seem to not have. Even with good transit, the city is much easier to navigate by car. People who have the means to drive, will mostly drive when factoring decisions like this:
Today I went from Church/Market to Chestnut/Fillmore in the Marina on public transit, which took me about 40 minutes. If I was going to drive my car, 15 minutes.
In Berkeley, there are also buses that traverse every major street, BART cutting through downtown and then over to North Berkeley, but it is significantly more difficult to get everything done without a car - food deserts abound, and the main retail and entertainment areas are also lopsided on the east side of town, with the other being 4th street, which is more like a destination retail area - CB2, Apple.
Without a 1:1 ratio of parking, we gain an abundance of traffic congestion in people circling blocks to find a parking spot on the street.
If parking is available for rent in less than a 1:1 ratio, the affluent - with the deeded parking space in their market rate apartments - usually end up with the few parking spots in a development, on the idea that they can afford to pay premiums for it. Below Market Rate units usually only have a few spots available for multiple residents to pay for at full price.
Parking imbalances give credence to the idea that cars are exclusive, everyone else should take the bus. Its not easy to force people to give up their cars.