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Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#111

Post by Ensorceled »

hackuser wrote: post #105
jedberg wrote: post #16

There was a study a while back that showed that the USA has eight times as many parking spaces as it has cars. At first that seems crazy, but it makes sense if you think about the fact that all the places you go in a day need to have enough parking to meet their peak demand all year, so places like malls have huge empty lots most of the year until Christmas rolls around. And then there is the spot your car is in at w…

> Another nice benefit of self driving cars that are shared is the major reduction in the need to all this excess parking. I would think that applied to any shared cars, including taxis and ride-hailing services. Why would the self-driving feature reduce parking demand beyond that?

Most people own cars. One the anticipated benefits of self-driving cars is that they can be shared rather than owned. If they are shared they can be constantly in use rather than parked and when parked do not need to be parked where they were last used.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#112

Post by christianmann »

CalChris wrote: post #27
trentmb wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Handling cash ain't free. At a minimum, a certain amount must be kept on hand to make change. Then theres insurance on that cash. Then theres the safe (and registers) you have to buy to store the cash. Then theres the transport of the cash to the bank. Also, better hope your cashiers never make a mistake or accept a forged bill.

So that's the basis of a comparison. Cost of cash vs cost of credit cards over the economy. I can't resist an aside. A buddy of mine was in a well known cash business. You can imagine. Anyways, hanging out with him, we'd be driving around and he'd need gas. He'd pull out 2 or 3 $20s, hand them to the attendant pump gas and go. Some gas stations gave a cash discount. It seemed to me that credit cards were supposed to…

> It seemed to me that credit cards were supposed to be fast and convenient, but if you're choreographed for cash, it ain't so.

This is very apparent in (many parts of) Europe. Cash is so much faster there than in America, for a few reasons. The primary cause, I think, is the fact that the prices are generally round numbers, with tax included. This means that you can, in most cases, pay with a small number of coins or bills. In the USA you'd be wrestling with pennies.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#113

Post by hackuser »

skrap wrote: post #46

My city just passed a bond measure which includes $36MM for a 300 space parking garage for the high school and city hall, literally meters from where a new light rail stop will be built. 25% of the city's families don't own a car. I have trouble not seeing this as a forced, direct subsidy for the lifestyle of the employees of the city. And this is supposedly one of the most transit-friendly cities around (in the US).…

A reasonable concern, but a few thoughts:

* Increasing use of public transit benefits everyone, including by reducing greenhouse gas emissions

* Almost everything government does benefits some citizens more than others. Police help some more than others; some make more use of the water system, fire department, the courts, health care, other forms of transit, Social Security, etc. I want my society to provide those services to those who need them; I need some services myself some days.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#114

Post by hackuser »

Ensorceled wrote: post #111
hackuser wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another nice benefit of self driving cars that are shared is the major reduction in the need to all this excess parking. I would think that applied to any shared cars, including taxis and ride-hailing services. Why would the self-driving feature reduce parking demand beyond that?

Most people own cars. One the anticipated benefits of self-driving cars is that they can be shared rather than owned. If they are shared they can be constantly in use rather than parked and when parked do not need to be parked where they were last used.

Why are self-driving cars more easily or more likely shared than human-driven cars? Someone else pointed out that they cost less to operate, but I wonder how much will change. People like owning things, including nice cars.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#115

Post by dang »

pmiller2 wrote: post #106

Come on, now, why was the title changed? The originally submitted title, "Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car," is the title of the article, and it's true , not click bait at all.

Because the 'poor people' angle is a red herring and thus arguably misleading, and perhaps clickbait as well since it makes the story more sensational. Those are the two reasons why titles should be changed on HN, as described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

The article's actual argument is that free parking forces people who don't drive to subsidize those who do. That's a sentence from the article, so it could make a legit title, but in this case we picked another representative sentence, from the article's second paragraph. Either of those seems fine to me.

Edit: ok, since we got other complaints and this is a borderline call anyhow, we've restored the "Poor people..." title.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#116

Post by userbinator »

JDDunn9 wrote: post #98

This topic is discussed at length in the book, "Green Metropolis". It's part of a bigger issue of always putting cars first. You can't build a large building without first doing a traffic study. If you bring too much traffic, you can't build it. Never mind that traffic is about the only cost in America that you can increase to make public transportation more appealing. Generally U.S. building codes include a maximum…

I don't think that many people actually want higher population densities.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#117

Post by allemagne »

employee8000 wrote: post #35

I'm getting really sick of these media companies pushing their anti-rich agenda. Blaming rich people for parking that causes costs to rise for poor people is just insulting. I didn't believe in much liberal bias in the media until this election. This is simply another extent of it, it's really eye opening.

"Anti-rich agenda" sounds like a phrase we'll soon be hearing a lot from the new Congress, President, and millions of temporarily embarrassed millionaires to avoid ever seriously discussing poverty and wealth inequality.

The true victims in America? The most powerful and influential, of course.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#118

Post by cameldrv »

hibikir wrote: post #70
jedberg wrote: post #16

There was a study a while back that showed that the USA has eight times as many parking spaces as it has cars. At first that seems crazy, but it makes sense if you think about the fact that all the places you go in a day need to have enough parking to meet their peak demand all year, so places like malls have huge empty lots most of the year until Christmas rolls around. And then there is the spot your car is in at w…

I'd be very surprised if shared self driving cars lead to a major reduction in excess parking, or lower the number of traffic jams. People want to do the same things at more or less the same time: Having time off while your social circle is at work is not as fun. Many jobs require customers, and others require entire groups of people to be there together. This means the minimum capacity needed to handle peaks is not…

You're underestimating all of the ways self-driving cars will increase efficiency relative to parking, which are multiplicative.

1. Much higher occupancy per car. Based on my personal observations, at rush hour the average occupancy of a car is something like 1.3. I don't see any reason that can't increase to 2.6 or more without significantly slowing anyone down -- 2x

2. Yes, a lot of people need to get to work at 8, but normal working hours start at different times for different people, anywhere from 6:30-9:30 is fairly typical in a U.S. city. If the average person has a 30-40 minute commute, and there is a reasonable amount of reverse commute demand, a car should be able to make 2-3 round trips per day at least -- 2.5x

3. Cars driving more efficiently with quicker reaction time and less mistakes will speed up commutes a lot. Hard to say how much but I'd say at least 30%. This directly increases capacity, since shorter commutes mean each car moves more people in the 6:30-9:30 window -- 1.3x

4. If self driving cars can communicate with each other to park, they can pack themselves very closely, and make room for a car to get in and out, removing the need for oversized parking spots, space between cars for doors to open, and aisles between cars. This should improve parking density by at least 3x.

5. Cars that are on-demand and self-driving can be smaller than typical cars we drive today. Since you can order any sized vehicle based on what's needed for an individual trip, there will be many fewer empty seats. Without the need for a steering wheel and controls, interiors can make much greater use of available interior space. This should reduce the exterior size of the average car at least 1.5x.

6. Cars can find parking in more remote areas. If parking is not available within a block of the office, the car can drop you off and park a few blocks away. This increases utilitzation, say 1.2x.

So, multiply it all together, and you get 35x better parking efficiency. It's going to be a huge win for dense cities.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#119

Post by sfifs »

Most of the commenters on this thread don't appear to have lived in a country with the opposite problem. Consider what happens when development and car ownership expands in a country without adequate government parking mandates.

You routinely find at least two road lanes blocked by parked traffic because buildings don't have adequate parking. This leads to very slow bumper to bumper traffic (try Bangalore, Mumbai, Cairo, Manila), higher air pollution leading to a public health crisis, waste of time, higher green house emissions etc. When calculating "rental increases", articles like these conveniently forget externalities that would result from jot providing for parking.

Re: Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car

#120

Post by badsock »

op00to wrote: post #54
badsock wrote: post #37

The trucks that deliver the goods that poor people buy (and carry away the waste) are hard as hell on roads - you could say that the car drivers are subsidizing (through gasoline taxes) the massive infrastructure costs of maintaining a road network. I don't know how the numbers would balance out, but I'd bet that the benefits of that subsidy are greater than the costs incurred from free parking.

You're right and you're wrong - trucks generally don't pay the true cost of their road usage, but neither do motorists, at least through gas taxes and tolls. Much of our road funding comes from other sources like sales taxes and such. Which seems really funny when public transportation is constantly expected to pay for itself, but far more inefficient private motor vehicles don't have to pay their fair share.

Here in Canada that's generally not the case:

http://globalnews.ca/news/907665/ontario-motorist-fees-taxes...

"The report released Thursday found Ontario road users driving cars, minivans, SUVs and light pickup trucks are paying 70 to 90 per cent of the costs of the road through fuel taxes, vehicle registration fees and tolls, to the tune of $7.5 billion a year."

But the OP is a US article, so point taken!

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