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There is a thorough book on this topic, Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World. Highly recommend it if you're interested in the causes of so much of our dysfunction in housing costs. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/634461/paved-paradi...
Interesting. I also listen to podcasts like The War on Cars [1]. [1] https://thewaroncars.org
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like the parking was underpriced. EDIT I am rate-limited so can't reply, but this part: "If you have 200 cars" This is only the case if the demand for parking / driving is perfectly inelastic, which would be quite extraordinary. Empirically, when you charge for parking or institute toll roads, traffic tends to fall, in some cases sharply (because many journeys are low value). I repeat: if the parking spaces…
jacking up the prices for parking spaces due to artificially induced scarcity will mean that cars are still every bit as essential to get around, but now only the wealthy will be able to afford to park them, screwing over the population least able to arrange/afford alternatives. I guess it's somehow better if the increasing number of poors in the US have to park miles away from their jobs (if they're lucky enough) an…
Think for a minute about what it means to be wealthy. Is it having more money? Yes, but... The true meaning of being wealthy is having more options available to you. If some people can park but some people can't park, then by definition it's the wealthy people who can park.
Another way to look at it is, what's the point of accumulating money? It's to buy you more options. Let's say hypothetically that the government gives every individual person a fixed amount of housing, food, a car, and free parking. But it is illegal to trade these commodities in any manner; you are only entitled to exactly your share and no more. In this fantasy world, accumulating money would be meaningless because it doesn't enable you to do any more than your fellow man.
So yes, the fact that once you start restricting driving, then only the wealthy can afford to drive and park - that's a feature, not a bug. It's by design.