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

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

#381

Post by closeparen »

verbify wrote: post #329
VLM wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"people do find it desirable" Americans are culturally completely blind to narrowcasting, in this case narrowcasted beliefs about lifestyle. For example, millions of people are rabid extreme fans of the TV show "Survivor". Its economically important. Its culturally and socially relevant (well, to its super fans who insist on seeing life thru a "Survivor" lens). Enormous sums of money change hands over this one TV sho…

I did not advocate for everyone living in cities. I advocated for more city housing, as currently it is unaffordable to many who do want to live in them due to demand outstripping supply. If you want to see my view as Pol Pot style authoritanrianism, well, I'm not even sure where to start. We need more city housing because there's plenty of demand. I understand plenty of people want to live in rural areas, and I wish…

Decreasing the viability of suburban life will create more pressure for urban apartments as suburbanites get tired of crowded trains and move to the city center. If your more housing comes with an effective requirement for everyone who works in the city to live in that housing, we should expect the price to go up.

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

#382

Post by hvidgaard »

criddell wrote: post #294
hvidgaard wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a funny thing. I don't mind a long commute, of say, 1 hour each way mostly highway. I can use that time to listen to podcasts, audiobooks, or music. Things I rarely find time to in my daily life. But if I have 1 hour commute in heavy traffic, I feel that I'm wasting my time. The former I'm okay with, the latter I avoid at all cost, even if the net result is the same for me.

If you had a self-driving car, do you think the heavy traffic or even stop-and-go traffic would be as bothersome?

It's hard to say. Maybe not. When driving, I am 100% aware of what is happening in a self-driving car I would be focused on other things, perhaps work. In that case I wouldn't mind at all I think.

But it's the thought that I'm spending so much time, on what should take far less. In essence losing time compared what it could be if not for the external factors.

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

#383

Post by hvidgaard »

criddell wrote: post #294
hvidgaard wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a funny thing. I don't mind a long commute, of say, 1 hour each way mostly highway. I can use that time to listen to podcasts, audiobooks, or music. Things I rarely find time to in my daily life. But if I have 1 hour commute in heavy traffic, I feel that I'm wasting my time. The former I'm okay with, the latter I avoid at all cost, even if the net result is the same for me.

If you had a self-driving car, do you think the heavy traffic or even stop-and-go traffic would be as bothersome?

It's hard to say. Maybe not. When driving, I am 100% aware of what is happening in a self-driving car I would be focused on other things, perhaps work. In that case I wouldn't mind at all I think.

But it's the thought that I'm spending so much time, on what should take far less. In essence losing time compared what it could be if not for the external factors.

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

#384

Post by germanier »

kuschku wrote: post #250
Symbiote wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't German stores accept debit cards? The cost is much lower on a debit card transaction.

Thwy accept German EC cards, which is an entirely seperate network from MasterCard and Visa (and it's the E in EMV). Mostly because their fees are even 10 times lower than MasterCard's debit card fees.

The "E" in EMV is for Eurocard which is something different (and now merged with MasterCard).

The fees for the German Girocard system (which is what colloquially is still called EC) are lower than MasterCard's fees but not by that much anymore nowadays. MasterCard debit should not be 50% more expensive than Girocard considering all fees (which of course still is more) if you shop around a bit. Even Aldi takes them now and they try to save money wherever they can.

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

#385

Post by TheCoelacanth »

dionidium wrote: post #321
op00to wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the U.S. most of a state's transportation budget comes from the U.S. government, but the largest state-level source in my state is fuel taxes: Source: http://www.modot.org/about/documents/FinancialSnapshot.pdf (See the chart on page 3.)

Wow, drivers pay for a whopping 37% of transportation funding and receive only 96% of transportation spending. Truly they are paying their fair share /s

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

#386

Post by cardiffspaceman »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #73
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…

It floors me that businesses are allowed to keep their parking lots off limits during non business hours. That alone would go a long way to freeing up spaces.

A property owner that allows the public onto their property needs to have insurance against claims that members of the public were injured by the property owner. Such claims can arise out of accidents that happen in the normal course of walking. The claim process itself is expensive to use for settling claims, regardless of the outcome, therefore the insurance premiums are significant.

It is cheaper therefore, to only admit into the parking lot the cars that belong to the customers of the property owner, because there will be less people who could press claims against the owner. When the owner's business is closed, it behooves the owner to enclose the parking lot to keep out people who aren't customers.

I suggest that non-free parking that belongs to a parking company would be preferable, on the above reasoning. Plus fewer spaces would be needed since the company would have no reason to make you move your car if you wanted to patronize a second business.

I patronize a bar where I have to find on-street parking most nights. It is across the street from a supermarket that has a mostly-empty parking lot. I understand why the bar patrons are not permitted to use the supermarket parking lot, and I believe it were best that that parking lot was instead a paid lot open to all drivers. I think about this as I walk to my car.

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

#387

Post by tjic »

tgb wrote: post #368
tjic wrote: post #245

Meh. You also pay for the cost of public parks even if you never use them. You pay for the cost of government elementary schools even if you homeschool your kids. etc. Now, I'm an anarchocapitalist and would love to see all of these costs unbundled, so that we each pay only for what we use. ...but the other 99.9% of folks in our society think that it is reasonable to have one-size-fits-all solutions, where a single b…

I think you've missed the point of the article. People who don't use public transportation subsidize those who do, but we're OK with that as a society in large part because many need to use public transportation; the young, the disabled, anyone who can't afford a car and or to live next to their work and a grocery store. Similarly, we subsidize schooling and school lunches. But subsidizing parking is the opposite of…

No, you're doing EXACTLY what I was calling out.

You've got your own ethical / utility function and are explaining to me that basket of goods X is ideal bc it's exactly the basket that your ethical / utilitarian code wants, and basket Y is very bad, because it's the basket that other people want.

This is special pleading.

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

#388

Post by mahyarm »

wcummings wrote: post #289
mahyarm wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you get most of that with electric busses then? I can see the argument although for automation and how you can multicar trams with one driver.

>Don't you get most of that with electric busses then? If you're going to put up catenary wires why not just make it a tram?

Because then you also have to lay track.

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

#389

Post by r_smart »

thorawy33 wrote: post #378
tjic wrote: post #245

Meh. You also pay for the cost of public parks even if you never use them. You pay for the cost of government elementary schools even if you homeschool your kids. etc. Now, I'm an anarchocapitalist and would love to see all of these costs unbundled, so that we each pay only for what we use. ...but the other 99.9% of folks in our society think that it is reasonable to have one-size-fits-all solutions, where a single b…

"...but the other 99.9% of folks in our society think that it is reasonable to have one-size-fits-all solutions, where a single basket of goods is created and handed to everyone, regardless of whether they want it or not." Oh the irony of calling everyone else out for their love of monolithic solutions, then peddling your personal preference for how the economy for everyone should work for everyone. The 99.9% is just…

They identified as being anarcho-capitalist. I'm willing to accept the premise that 0.1% of the population subscribes to that ideology. I suspect their claim is that there should be no 'economy for everyone', but I don't know much about an-caps.

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

#390

Post by overcyn »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #358
overcyn wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't forcing subsidized parking. They're forcing the construction of parking lots and structures. As for public interest. The idea is that without regulation, new apartments and condos would choose not build parking pushing their residents to park on the street. This causes congestion (cars circling trying to find parking) and makes going to these areas less pleasant. And I'm sure some would say these regulati…

> They aren't forcing subsidized parking. They're forcing the construction of parking lots and structures. The part where they're required to build these lots virtually always results in subsidized parking. Yes, technically you could charge for spots, and then they wouldn't be subsidized, but in practice that's so much effort that it's much easier to just let the spots be free. For most businesses, running a paid par…

Like you say, for most businesses running a paid parking scheme is too much overhead to be worth it. But you would remove requirements for minimum amounts of parking. So wouldn't you expect in areas with limited parking the issue to be exacerbated, since business would have less incentive to build parking? You say that the city can then charge for parking, but also that they already do it, so not much would change there...

Re-planning cities takes a long time. Do you suggest people just take taxis/uber for a decade until public transportation catches up? Might not be the worst idea.

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