Free Parking Is Killing Cities

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-08-31/why-free-parking-is-bad-according-to-one-ucla-professor

by jseliger • 5 years ago

119 137 5 years ago

happytiger• 5 years ago

I normally go out of my way to avoid anything that goes to this site out of protest for their horrid paywall. Thank you.

noasaservice• 5 years ago

With firefox, look up the plugin "Bypass Paywalls Clean". That'll deal with the bulk of news sites' garbage paywalls.

asdff• 5 years ago

What's killing American cities is a lack of an ability to construct any beneficial infrastructure at all without litigious NIMBYs turning out in enough droves to outright kill or dilute all utility out of a given project. The free parking is just a side effect.

smitty1e• 5 years ago

'Beneficial'.

Therein lies the rub.

avianlyric14• 5 years ago

Only true if you ignore the history of American zoning laws, and Americas obsession with the car.

Current zoning laws in most of the US make it pretty much impossible to build anything except suburbs, attached to ginormous parking lots you call cities, by massive highways. It’s not hard to see why building better public infrastructure is so difficult when the current layout of most American cities means it’s difficult to even walk between shops on the same road, so public transport can’t move people between pedestrian hubs.

Changing that fundamental issue with American cities would require people to realise that current approach (which they grew up with, and was touted as the future for most of their lives) is broken and needs to change. As much as it needs to change, I can understand why people have a lot of difficulty accepting that.

ericmay2• 5 years ago

Great point and I would actually further emphasize the car aspect of this. Houston for example doesn’t have zoning restrictions like other suburban cities and yet still chose sprawl.

It sucks because we are just sleepwalking through this. Everyone takes it for granted that energy will be cheap and plentiful and that we can always just spread further out or build a bigger highway.

mkr-hn2• 5 years ago

I don't see the distinction. Zoning laws are NIMBYism encoded in policy.

powderpig• 5 years ago

And I think this is one of the reasons we are seeing so many companies racing to create a commercially viable eVTOL (electric - vertical take-off & landing) product. To me, this transport system only seems to be a solution to the problem mentioned above. I can't see them ever being commercially viable (FAA regulation, power density, etc.) And yet there are a lot of companies trying to make them a reality when really the cities they have renders of with their flashy electric vehicle flying over just need better public transport systems.

jl2718• 5 years ago

‘NIMBY’ is usually in reference to low-income housing projects. I think you would get a lot of ‘YIMBY’ in response to a reasonably well-isolated parking development if it came with removing parked cars from the road.

throwoutway• 5 years ago

It sounds like you have a personal anecdote that you have seen?

kkoncevicius4• 5 years ago

Some other parking reform efforts are trying to take cars more fully out of the equation. In car-heavy Phoenix, real estate developers are building a 17-acre neighborhood called Culdesac Tempe that won’t have any parking, period. (Residents and visitors will have to bike or take public transit.)

Isn't this focused on the young, single, and healthy? I can't imagine having multiple children and living with no car. You cannot bike your 3 kids to schools and hospitals during rainy autumn days. The bigger part of the proposal actually read like it has a big blind zone about the needs of families - having a family or children weren't even mentioned.

EDIT to address some repeating replies:

- Some form of "school" starts at around 2-3 y/o. 2-3 year olds cannot take a bus.

- There is winter, heavy rains, and wind. In most places you cannot rely on a bike all the time.

- In most cities people work far from home, and the early schools the kids go to are also far away. A young family with two 2-5 y/o children will not be able to rely on a bus and a bike, unless they live in some expensive area where everything is nearby and are lucky to have jobs at the same place.

klipt2• 5 years ago

In some areas your children can take school buses to school, no?

CJefferson2• 5 years ago

My family, and many families near where I grew up, didn't have cars.

It does plan you build with this in mind -- in the UK it is assumed kids will walk to school, or take a free bus (which is provided by the school). Most schools strongly discourage parents from driving to school, as it causes road blockages and the chance of accidents near the school entrance.

kkoncevicius4• 5 years ago

I lumped nurseries, kindergartens, and pre-schools under "school". 2-5 year olds will not walk and will not take buses. Also if there is a nursery nearby it would probably have long waiting lines just to get a spot for your child, so in most cities it's essential to be able to choose from at least 4-mile radius.

midasuni• 5 years ago

My understanding of the US is most kids get a yellow bus to school. The U.K. on the other hand is either weak or drive - at least at primary school. At sexiest school theres more chance to be generic public transport.

Symbiote6• 5 years ago

My parents had cars, and took me to and from school in the car most days.

I hated it.

At primary school, if I visited a friend after school we could walk through the park, or the playground, or the library, which was all much more fun than being in a car and then at home 5 minutes later.

At secondary school all my friends took buses, and had the wonderful freedom to take the next bus, or the one after. The playground didn't have the same appeal, but there were shops, cafés and so on.

in the UK it is assumed kids will walk to school, or take a free bus (which is provided by the school).

The journey will be free, but in larger urban areas (especially London) it's also common for the children just to be given a pass for the city buses.

knownjorbist• 5 years ago

In some countries children ride their bikes to school.

grardb2• 5 years ago

This is a common viewpoint in the US, mostly because we're brought up not knowing alternatives.

It might be worthwhile to check out how cities are planned elsewhere. My wife and I recently moved to the Netherlands because we think the way they do things is much better in this regard. I would highly recommend checking out the Not Just Bikes YouTube Channel, as well as Bicycle Dutch.

Here are some videos that might be of interest to you:

- Cycling with babies and toddlers in The Netherlands (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfLJ876lXsQ)

- Why We Won't Raise Our Kids in Suburbia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul_xzyCDT98)

kkoncevicius4• 5 years ago

I am not from US. I also grew up without cars and without tap water even. But it circumstances were different. For one - my parents worked 500 meters away from our home, second - my grandmother lived nearby so I didn't have to go to kindergarten, and third when I started going to school it was close enough to reach by walking.

After I started my family and moved out to a bigger city, all of these things changed. Your parents cannot help with the children because they are in another city. For me and my wife it takes about an hour both to reach our jobs. And the kindergarten we were taking our kids to was about 30 minutes (by car) away. The ones that are near our house or near our work-places had 3-year waiting lines.

And then there are winters and heavy rains. And you might have multiple children all of whom need to be taken someplace in the morning. It's just not realistic to bike, unless you somehow have everything nearby.

kleiba2• 5 years ago

The Netherlands also have the advantage of being completely flat.

dominotw2• 5 years ago

- Cycling with babies and toddlers in The Netherlands (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfLJ876lXsQ)

what happens when kids are 10yrs old. they prbly get their own bikes?

vic-traill• 5 years ago

I checked out the second link and this is IMHO an interesting and thoughtful YouTube channel. These are not words that I co-locate often.

The linked video discusses the deep effect that urban planning can have sociologically; e.g. if a neighbourhood isn't walkable, kids don't walk, and if kids aren't out walking, kids not being out on their own can become normalised, and even lead to censure/punishment for children's independence.

Which seems crazy (to me, anyway) and very much at odds w/ what we want kids to grow into, e.g. that they be independent and active.

Talk about unintended consequences.

hannob• 5 years ago

You cannot bike your 3 kids to schools and hospitals during rainy autumn days.

Two of the most cycling friendly cities in the world are also cities with a lot of rainy days (Amsterdan and Copenhagen). A lot of people with kids there will disagree with you.

It seems to me the biggest issue people who never cycle think stops people from cycling is weather, while in reality it is unsafe infrastructure. Build the infrastructure, people will cycle and will not bother about the weather.

gsliepen• 5 years ago

Indeed. Is it raining? There's raincoats to wear, covers for your bagage, and there's even retractable covers for childrens seats on bikes. Is it snowing? It's easy to get wide tires or ones with spikes in countries that have a lot of snowfall. Is it windy? Just switch to a lower gear and get a bit more excercise. Electric bikes help a lot as well nowadays, making it easier to bike in heavy wind or in hilly areas.

odessacubbage3• 5 years ago

having biked to/from school for many years, a bigger issue is that kids don't have a fixed amount of things they need to transport every day and the upper bound (instruments + art/science project + sports gear) quickly limits the distance you can realistically travel. injuries are also a factor, all it takes is a sprained ankle to take biking off the table for several weeks.

also as an aside there's a lot more potential for variance in travel time on a bike and if a school has punitive tardiness systems, this will get taken out on the student a lot.

Paianni• 5 years ago

The Netherlands had a relatively large cycling population even before they built paths everywhere, the new infrastructure only contributed to a modest increase in numbers over the last four decades. Some new towns in the UK instated very high quality cycle paths in the 1960s, but to this day they are very lightly used.

Overall I think it's a cultural/convenience thing.

masklinn2• 5 years ago

Isn't this focused on the young, single, and healthy?

No?

Cars are expensive, and they're not accessible: vision or motor issues will ban you from car usage (and rightfully so). They are also a major and active danger to everyone outside a car. Even more so these days as ebikes, motorized wheelchairs, accessibility scooters, and cantas are more available than ever, and public transport has much improved in their allowance for those (except cantas I guess). I can certainly say that around here, 20 years back, the odds you could get a wheelchair (to say nothing of a motorised one) on a bus were essentially nil.

Limiting cars and improving alternatives makes the entire thing less dangerous and more accessible to everyone.

I can't imagine having multiple children and living with no car. You cannot bike your 3 kids to schools and hospitals during rainy autumn days.

So… are you saying that the Dutch don't have rain or that they don't have children?

davzie• 5 years ago

I’ve come to the conclusion 90% of HN has no experience raising children and what it entails. This is evident in the replies of people saying “just do x”. Never contains any context as to the country you live in, it’s infrastructure or the requirements of your family.

pfranz• 5 years ago

I agree that before I had kids it was easy to be blind to how different life is even when having those close to me with them. But people have kids in cities without cars and inclimate weather all over the world. I moved from a car-centric city when I had kids because the thought of driving from work, to childcare or school, to soccer practice, then home made me incredibly miserable. Suburbs accommodate this better, but that seems to almost necessitate two cars.

A decent city accommodates this, requires a lot less upfront cost, and just fewer resources all around. The comment you're replying to seems to think its not feasible.

odessacubbage3• 5 years ago

not everyone has raised a child, but everyone has had the experience of being raised as a child.

refurb4• 5 years ago

Absolutely, but I remember seeing a HN survey that showed most HN users were in their 20’s so no surprise there.

When I lived in Singapore, it was very common for families to have cars despite the world class transit system. And despite the $50-70k for a permit to own a car and the 100% tariffs. That just demonstrates how much utility people get from cars. People are willing to pay a lot to have access to a car.

rdtwo7• 5 years ago

Just do x never accounts for time spent doing x. Many times x is possible but does not meet time constraints. If you add another hour plus to your kids school commute then another hour to your own you might never actually see your kids

thomasfl• 5 years ago

I have two kids and no car. Only three bicycle. We live in Oslo, Norway, so the winters can be cold. It helps living in a city with trams, bicycle lanes and electric cars spread around that can be rented by the minute. I just got totally fed up being stuck in traffic jams every day, so I eventually sold the car.

thejackgoode• 5 years ago

I remember my thoughts of being forever enriched in regards of what’s possible for bikes when I was in Norway 10 years ago and saw a man drag a bike child cart uphill an icy ~12% hill in February at -14C

detaro• 5 years ago

Some form of "school" starts at around 2-3 y/o. 2-3 year olds cannot take a bus.

Of course you can take 2-3 year olds on a bus? (Not like they could drive the car themselves either...)

newsclues• 5 years ago

You dismiss Viking in the heavy, winter/falls rains in Arizona, yet I ride a bike all year in Toronto, Canada where it snows!

II2II2• 5 years ago

One of the ironies of cities designed and operated around cars:

Most of my life is close to my home, so I can bike to work and bike for shopping. When the snow hits, people start asking why I don't walk instead. According to them, biking in the snow is dangerous. The answer is simple enough: sidewalks are impassible for a few days after a snowfall, and can be icy for weeks after. Aside for side streets, roads tend to be dry and ice free within hours of the snow stopping. Even the side streets aren't too bad except for the intersections. The worse part is climbing over a three foot tall snowbank to get onto and off of the road.

freddie_mercury2• 5 years ago

I live in Vietnam where effectively nobody has a car. We also have a monsoon rainy season for six months a year that dwarfs any rain anywhere in America gets.

Somehow people are still able to have families and get kids to school.

i_am_proteus2• 5 years ago

Not too many folks in Vietnam use cars, but a whole lot of folks in Vietnam use motorcycles.

refurb4• 5 years ago

Ha! People in Vietnam are notorious for walking nowhere. Need to go to the store down the street? Get the motorbike. Sidewalks are crammed with bikes so being a pedestrian sucks hard in Vietnam.

Add on top you’ll often be riding a motorbike in between container trucks i think your example makes the opposite point you think it does.

esarbe2• 5 years ago

I can't imagine having multiple children and living with no car.

That is because everything in U.S. American life is centered around having a car and not having a car is fighting against that setup. There are perfectly viable alternatives for living without a car but there's been a strong social trend away from these for a very long time.

It will require new modes of living and some re-organization of our cities to get back to a point where not-having a car becomes an attractive default mode again.

brailsafe• 5 years ago

I wish this weren't the case in more places in Canada and the U.S. Where I grew up in central Canada this would almost certainly be a similar experience, but I did happen to live within walking distance, even in the awful suburbs, to every school I attended. Now on the west coast, without a family, I have no doubt that everyone walks their kids to wherever they need to be. There are about 15 schools within some reasonable walking distance, and I think that's incredible and I hope that propogates. Weather is a non-position to me, I don't see how it could be sufficiently arduous as to require a car all the time if the other conditions are met (maybe some of the time), but I'd be curious what I'm missing there. I grew up in hilariously cold winters and now live in extremely wet winters. This of course changes if you've chosen or have had to live really far out from where you need to be every day, but my impression is that this is more often a choice in NA than it is in EU where the centre is the premium for all these reasons (afaik)

avianlyric14• 5 years ago

Isn't this focused on the young, single, and healthy?

E-bikes are a wonderful thing. In countries with good cycling cultures, the older population cycles more than the younger.

People bike as children and teenagers, then get driving licenses and drive for a few years. Once the novelty of car wears off they start cycling again. It’s cheaper, quicker, easier, and healthier.

You cannot bike your 3 kids to schools and hospitals during rainy autumn days.

Yes you can. The Dutch do it everyday. Also you don’t need to bike your kids to school, with proper cycle infrastructure, they can bike themselves, sans helicopter parent.

Some form of "school" starts at around 2-3 y/o. 2-3 year olds cannot take a bus.

There are many types of bikes, include cargo bikes designed to transport multiple young children, driven by one adult. You can even get motor to help you out!

There is winter, heavy rains, and wind. In most places you cannot rely on a bike all the time.

Dress appropriately! Wear coats! We solved this problem a long time ago. There are plenty of countries where people of all ages and experience cycle year round. In the sun, in the rain, in the wind, in the snow! Don’t limit your cycling to just pleasant weather, by proper clothing so all weather is pleasant.

In most cities people work far from home, and the early schools the kids go to are also far away. A young family with two 2-5 y/o children will not be able to rely on a bus and a bike, unless they live in some expensive area where everything is nearby and are lucky to have jobs at the same place.

This is very US centric world view. The US has a strange obsession with spreading everything out as much as possible, ensuring that you have to spend your life in car going from A to B. I would argue that more enlighten approach is to put stuff close together, so you can spend your time doing stuff, not travelling to stuff.

dzikimarian• 5 years ago

Dress appropriately! Wear coats! We solved this problem a long time ago. There are plenty of countries where people of all ages and experience cycle year round. In the sun, in the rain, in the wind, in the snow! Don’t limit your cycling to just pleasant weather, by proper clothing so all weather is pleasant.

That honestly sounds masochistic. I'm not from US btw.

II2II2• 5 years ago

A couple of observations:

The local elementary school has a large number of walkers and a large number of children who are driven in. Those who walk in are frequently accompanied by their parents, the parents appear to enjoy the time with their children, and the parents typically hang around to socialize with other parents. Parents who drive their children in usually drop their children off in dangerous spots and spend an awful lot of time socializing with police officers. A number of those parents also try to drive through crossing guards (sometimes literally) who are there to keep the children safe, including the children who were dropped off on the wrong side of the street. Driving may be convenient, but there are many times when convenience is taken too far and the walkers seem to be happier.

Schools in my city tend to be cancelled when the weather is too dangerous for driving yet safe for walking (e.g. large snowfalls) and are virtually never cancelled when it is too dangerous for walking yet fine for driving (e.g. high wind chill). In a way, it makes sense. Walkers can still be driven in when it is unsafe to walk, while most of the children who are driven in cannot walk to school. It is one of the many costs of designing car centric cities instead of walkable ones.

pyrale• 5 years ago

You cannot bike your 3 kids to schools and hospitals during rainy autumn days.

Where I live, people walk their small children to school. There's also a "footbus" which is basically parents taking turns walking the kids from their block to the school.

17 acres may be a bit small to have a school, but a moderately dense neighbourhood should be able to afford a school within 5-10m walking distance.

jimnotgym• 5 years ago

In the UK you are very unlikely to be able to park anywhere in any city centre without paying. We often have these out-of-town shopping areas that have big grocery supermarkets, furniture and DIY stores, they might be free. High Street parking may be free for 20 or 30 minutes.

thaumasiotes• 5 years ago

High Street parking may be free for 20 or 30 minutes.

There's a surprising amount of free street parking in San Francisco, although it's often possible to see a meter maid waiting patiently on the sidewalk for the street to go into "no parking" mode, at which point everyone is ticketed immediately.

HPsquared2• 5 years ago

What ends up happening is, people in cars just avoid the city centre (who are usually doing several other measures to repel cars), and end up going to the out-of-town places instead. This fuels a proliferation of sprawl, of course.

the-dude4• 5 years ago

My city has large parking lots just outside the city center, great public transport and the city is actually walkable. The city council limits the sprawl by ... not allowing it(sic).

We welcome many foreign visitors (mostly German) every weekend and they seem to have no problems with it.

avianlyric14• 5 years ago

Maybe in the US with your strange zoning laws. But not in the EU.

Here we take public transport, and in the case of London, there’s a green belt that prevents any further sprawl.

Another point worth mentioning, the EU is significantly denser and more built up than the US. We don’t have huge tracts of empty land around our cities, for the most part, it’s simply not possible to create a new suburb in many parts of Europe due to the lack of empty space.

patrick4513• 5 years ago

Yup. This is one of the reasons I generally just avoid city centers altogether. Finding and paying for parking is just not worth the hassle.

mrweasel4• 5 years ago

The parking problem seems to be the exact opposite in many European cities. New apartment blocks are build without providing the required parking, and people aren't willing to pay for parking when visiting the city center.

Some people really do need a car to get to work, but if they also want to live in the center of a large city, then they are frequently not even given the option of paying for a parking spot. The city of Copenhagen famously sold more parking permits than there are actual parking spaces to people living in the city center.

For when you're just going to a cafe, restaurant, or shopping, I don't get why people can just pay the parking fee, it's often not nearly as expensive as people make it out to be.

maccard2• 5 years ago

Some people really do need a car to get to work, but if they also want to live in the center of a large city,

Why does someone living in NYC, Chicago, London, Paris need a car to get to work? There are some very rare cases yes, but the vast vast majority don't need a car, they want a car.

The city of Copenhagen famously sold more parking permits than there are actual parking spaces to people living in the city center.

I would almost always expect that to happen. There is far more demand than there is parking, and a permit doesn't give you a right to a space. I would also be hugely surprised if much money (if any) was made from permits. (Enforcement of the CPZs being a different thing that almost certainly does make money).

I don't get why people can just pay the parking fee, it's often not nearly as expensive as people make it out to be.

It's £4.50 per hour in the city center here, (plus £0.20 to pay by card - and this is a recent option too. 2-3 years ago it was coins only), and most areas have a 2 hour limit. For anyone actually living in the city, it's almost certainly cheaper to get an Uber each way.

avianlyric14• 5 years ago

New apartment blocks are build without providing the required parking, and people aren't willing to pay for parking when visiting the city center.

What exactly is the “required parking”? Here in london most new developments are prohibited from building parking, and are also frequently ineligible for parking permits, because we want less cars on our roads not more. The roads are already full to bursting, and you can’t build more of them.

The number of people who need a car to go work in London is minuscule. We have fantastic public transport, and rapidly growing cycle infrastructure. Today travelling by bike or tube is normally twice a fast as a car. And when I say bike, I don’t mean Lycra clad speeders, I’m talking about casual cycle through the city in normal clothes and no sweat.

For when you're just going to a cafe, restaurant, or shopping, I don't get why people can just pay the parking fee, it's often not nearly as expensive as people make it out to be.

Most on street parking is

1. Full, so you probably can’t park. Not an issue with a bike, bus or tube.

2. Strictly time limited. Unless you wanna move your cat every hour or two, parking probably isn’t going to work for you.

lamontcg2• 5 years ago

You've got buses everywhere, trains connecting the cities and the underground all over London.

In the USA we might have buses. They're usually designed for poor people who don't have enough money to buy a car to get to work.

esarbe2• 5 years ago

Cars are killing cities.

tomohawk• 5 years ago

There's a cycle that a lot of people go through when they graduate. They've been told or are predisposed to the idea that cities are the place to be. And they can be like a campus - lots of places to meet others, etc. So they happily move to the city.

But then something happens. They get married and realize the schools there suck and are completely unaccountable to meddling from parents. So they have to move to find a decent school.

Or, they or their spouse or friend gets mugged, or their house gets burgled, or any number of other crimes that are prevalent in cities run by a single political party. So, they move to escape the crime.

If people have the means to move, they will do so to get out from under high crime, high tax, low service regimes.

rdtwo7• 5 years ago

Cities are like companies the big ones are ineffective at management or providing services. So when you need city services you go to a smaller city to actually get them.

stjohnswarts• 5 years ago

Article could also read "free parking is a thing that no one is making money off of so let's ban it". You have to realize a business oriented magazine and staff have a silo of things they can write about and think about. If it doesn't concern profits then bloomberg is not interested.

lamontcg2• 5 years ago

Yeah this sounds to me like a tax that will fall on some of the poorest workers in the city core. If we had the public transportation infrastructure first this would be fine. Just extracting money from people doesn't seem to work as a forcing function though in this country for improvement, it just seems to be a regressive flat tax.

LordDragonfang2• 5 years ago

The poorest workers generally can't afford cars and rely on public transit, which any tax on parking should fund.

kwhitefoot• 5 years ago

Here in Norway, and also in the UK, free parking is killing cities too but the free parking in question isn't in the cities, it is in out of town shopping centres. People go there instead of to the cities partly because they will not have to pay to park and not have to rush back to the car when the ticket runs out.

guilhas• 5 years ago

Paid parking is killing cities. Paid parking incentivises development investors to invest in an outdated infrastructure that does not produce anything, takes a lot of city centre space, while extorting productive people

In Portugal most parking is free as an extension of the businesses, that the owners have to consider. You can just leave home and not think about it while going about your business

In the UK most parking is paid, and there are hundreds of companies to manage parking lots, check the cars, to issue fines, to go after people that don't pay, a 60£ fine that is now 600£ because you have to pay the salary of the goons putting a wheel lock in your car, everyone in UK has paid a car park fine, it is a whole business in itself that is basically just a capitalist cancer

spixy• 5 years ago

Seems like a bad implementation. In my city (Czechia) most of the parking lots are owned by the city, so it is fined by the city police. Cars are checked by cameras installed on the side of police cars, and in city centre its fully automated because there are cameras reading plates on each entrance. No wheel locks unless you are very bad offender.

hytdstd• 5 years ago

Are you saying that parking spaces do not produce value? Just from the fact that people voluntarily pay for it, would suggest that this is not the case. Personally, I think it's good for parking to be handled by the free market and not the government.

Free Parking Is Killing Cities

Related Stories