Loyal opponent MSetty made some points about parking in comments to last week’s post about subsidies to the automobile. As MSetty indicated, it has become an article of faith among planning advocates that parking is a huge subsidy to auto drivers, particularly because most city zoning codes impose minimum parking requirements on all development.
UCLA economist and planning Professor Donald Shoup is behind many of these claims. Shoup makes a cogent argument against minimum parking requirements, saying that “when considered an impact fee, minimum parking requirements can increase development costs by more than 10 times the impact fee for all other public purposes combined.”
Why do zoning codes have minimum parking requirements? Even before the automobile, city streets provided parking for horses, wagons, and other vehicles. But as autos increased and high-rise buildings allowed for an increase in office and retail densities, on-street parking was insufficient to meet parking needs.
Some retailers, however, were tempted to rely on on-street parking for their customers. This led to people driving around and around searching for parking, meaning that limited parking merely added to traffic congestion. Cities imposed with minimum parking requirements to avoid this congestion.
As an impact of this, corridors and buy viagra without veins unwind and open up, climbing the blood supply to the penis, so foods that are good for your heart is good for your health. In abusive relationships, individuals lose a clear sense of http://www.devensec.com/news/Appendix.pdf uk tadalafil individual boundaries. Sexual dysfunction: people who are suffering from sexual dysfunction or impotence are disturbed for being unable to cheapest viagra pills http://www.devensec.com/news/Devens_MVP_Report_FINAL_052218_Compiled.pdf have sex anymore. This drug comes under statin class of drug whose basic foundation lies on the prevention of cholesterol production by blocking the activities of HMG-CoA reductase, an enzyme which is the cialis price online key cause of production of cholesterol. Another solution — the free-market solution — would have been to charge market rates for on-street parking in congested areas. This might have led developers to provide their own parking without mandates. But it might not — especially in areas where downtowns were being subsidized by cities trying to maintain their dominance over suburban areas.
Significantly, Shoup is from Los Angeles, the densest, most congested urban area in America. He is probably right that parking mandates are excessive in that region and that market-rate parking charges are a better solution.
In the suburbs of less-dense regions, the problem took care of itself. Retailers and office developers realized that having plenty of parking was key to their success, so mandates weren’t needed. In fact, on-street parking is pretty inconsequential to suburban retail and office parks.
Retailers offer free parking because they know most of their customers want a place to park and their competitors will provide it. It is not a subsidy; since nearly all suburban customers drive to shop, they pay for parking in their purchases. Sure, a few people won’t drive, but realistically they are not subsidizing the other shoppers anymore than people who bring their own baskets are subsidizing those who use the supermarkets’ shopping carts.
To the extent that mandates led to too much parking they are not really a subsidy to drivers. They are more a subsidy to concrete & asphalt companies and other parking-lot providers.
So let’s get rid of mandates. But let’s not go the other way: too many planners want to replace parking minimums with parking limits: requirements that development not have as much parking as developers might want. That makes as little sense as mandates (and, as near as I can tell, is not supported by Shoup).
I have personally seen where those “maximum parking” mandates have caused one very large high tech employer to abandon a manufacturing site near a light rail stop. They simply felt that they could not park enough employees to make their facility operate properly.
The property is now a subdivision.
While I don’t expect paid parking to be imposed at suburban shopping malls, big box stores and in business and industrial parks soon, I would hope the FTA would give transit systems planning new rail and BRT lines extra points if local governments eliminate minimum parking mandates and “let the market decide.”
As for the argument that since the price of goods includes parking costs and therefore auto use isn’t subsidized, I reject this political sleigh-of-hand. While parking charges won’t directly be placed on the act of motoring as opposed to shopping, from a cost analysis point of view “free” parking is still a cost 100% attributable to the automobile/highway/parking system.
As Shoup also points out, every kind of transportation system has vehicles, travel ways, and terminals. The air travel system has aircraft, they sky, runways and on-ground aircraft storage and terminals. Rail transit and BRT have railcars and BRT buses, tracks and busway/bus lanes, and stations. The auto-based transportation system has vehicles, streets, highways and roads, and parking. Thus, as an activity, parking is correctly attributed to the act of driving, as the cost of airports is attributable to the air transportation system.
I also attribute a large chunk of current and past “defense” e.g., war, spending to the U.S. quest to have easy access to cheap oil, which is mainly to maintain “happy motoring” in the U.S., as my friend Kunstler puts its. Greenspan said as much the other day. If the U.S. consumed as much for personal transportation as the Europeans and Japanese, we would simply NOT need the massive military machine that we do to ensure that the oil continues to flow.
Now whether or not one attributes this to automobiles and other heavy oil users in the U.S. is a political argument; however, many concerned “defense” types are strongly in favor of reducing oil consumption in order to reduce our excessive dependence. This includes people like former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, among many others. My desire for policy here is that carbon and other fossil fuel taxes become to some degree a proxy pricing mechanisms for these areas not charged directly to drivers, to help get solve some of the severe problems caused by our 90-year “path dependence” created by the auto/highway/parking system.
I don’t expect automobiles to disappear, but their importance needs to be cut back to sustainability, such as no more than 50%-60% of urban trips, the norm in other western societies (I don’t know the exact percentage, but when the overall transportation system can be run without fossil fuels reliably, then we’ll know).
Msetty,
If you picked up the newspaper tomorrow and found that GM scientists just discoverd how to run cars efficiently and without polution on solar power and were going to share the technology with the world, would you still want to cut auto use?
GM scientists just discoverd how to run cars efficiently and without polution on solar power and were going to share the technology with the world, would you still want to cut auto use?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Good ‘un.
I lived in Yurp before the wall fell. I routinely saw Ford cars with waaay better mileage over there (hint: I thought the Yurpean Merkur XR4 TI was trés hot until I moved back to Murrica, and they routinely passed my BMW 525 on the Autobahn). The technology has been there for years, but in Murrica the lobbying has been better. Oh, and I grew up in Detroit. F’n dinosaurs. But I can’t seem to shake being a Tigers fan.
HTH.
Johngalt:
Somewhere I read there is something like 10 million tons of lithium available in readily mineable locations. This was calculated to be sufficient for 4.5 billion “pluggable hybrids” battery packs for vehicles the size of a Prius. However, according to
this Wikepedia link, CHINA possesses the largest share of readily accessible resources. Nevada also has some, but in much smaller quantities.
So, if the demand for lithium for car batteries skyrockets as the U.S. adopted pluggable hybrids and/or straight electrics, expect lithium prices to soar. Given the limits on this resource and its location in unfriendly areas, it’s not clear how plausible a hundreds of millions of pluggable hybrids with lithium-ion batteries really is.
This concept may have more promise, if it functions as advertised.
However, many automotive technologies that were touted as THE “magic bullet” have come, and gone. We’ll see about this French idea in the next two or three years, I guess. If the vehicle on their main page is the norm for the technology, I cannot see Americans adopting it on the scale they have with ICE-powered vehicles (too much of a “downsizing” of the automobile concept, for one thing).
Ok msetty, sorry, maybe my point was unclear.
If by magic (not toutied but real magic) cars produced no polution and used no oil, and it was all 100% real and foolproof and was adopted 100% by all Americans.
Would you still want to cut down on auto use?
There is little point to commenting on a fantasy concept, except to spend a bit of time pointing out that, in reality, there will always be a great deal of resource usage by mechanized transportation of whatever kind. Shoe leather and sidewalks, bicycles, transit and automobiles–regardless of the power–will always be the least resource-intensive to the most, respectively.
Actually, johngalt’s 100% solar car scenario can be acheived, IF auto travel is priced to cover the current externalities, such as parking, carbon emissions, supporting wars, injuries and deaths not covered by auto insurance, and the ongoing and increasing costs of maintaining streets, highways, and roads. The latter will require some form of mileage rather than fuel charge, since gasoline taxes would disappear.
However, the “solar car” economy will still require essentially the same built environment as the current ICE system, so net resource usage mined from nature will still be large. With such pricing reform, there would will be a much larger role for transit, walking and bicycling than now.
I have a question for johngalt that I hope is less a fantasy than his query.
Since electric or French “air cars” would be much more quiet and less intrusive to higher density, walkable cities than their cousins are now, wouldn’t a larger percentage of people choose to live in such environments than is currently the case–and particularly if the myriad of motor vehicle externalities are priced to offset their negative impacts? As a developer, I presume he would have some insights.
never a straight answer… I guess he would be against the car no matter what. I, on the other hand, would be for whatever kind of housing environments people demand. Most people who chose not to live in high density envirnments do so for other reasons than loud poluting autos though.
I am also fully in favor of more accurately pricing externalities as well as direct costs of autos, bikes, busses, boots, trains and planes.
I, on the other hand, would be for whatever kind of housing environments people demand. Most people who chose not to live in high density envirnments do so for other reasons than loud poluting autos though…I am also fully in favor of more accurately pricing externalities as well as direct costs of autos, bikes, busses, boots, trains and planes.
Believe it or not, I almost completely agree.
I would add I’d like to see accurate pricing of homes too and the elimination of the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction as well, in order to level the playing field – but only for those who don’t need it (IOW, to get folks into homes – how to make that happen is beyond me).
DS
I agree Dan, except I don’t think those that cannot afford to buy should get tax payer money to do so. Perhaps those who cannot afford to rent (only if charity is not picking up the slack).
I staffed a public meeting this evening. The questions were mostly standard, meaning: what can the government do to [fill in blank], to: how can the government not [fill in blank]. There was also a standard reply from the planner that government isn’t going to step in here, so organizing and gaining access will get you much further down the road; in most cases this stops people for a small variety of reasons.
The Pareto principle comes in handy here when mixed with our (society’s) experience with free riding. It is, in my view, human nature (created only after agrarian society arose) that drives this underlying and implicit issue that has arisen in comments 9 and 10. My preferred method of addressing this issue, expressed just today in a peer group of mine, puts me at odds with the typical planner-type. Why? I see johng’s Objectivist point of view as useful from an environmental management perspective, as the implementation of such a scheme would drastically reduce human impacts on the biosphere, as the free-riding would end. And advanced societies, all of them, have decided that there are enough resources to support everyone & thus support some level of free riding. Thus the fundamental differences are illustrated in our daily lives.
Resource competition makes this difference more stark and poignant at the same time as we struggle to direction society. Answers? No, only advice and consent.
DS
I agree with Dan here. The more efficient the market the more welfare we will derive from it so efficiency is a win-win-win. Unfortunately there are such strong irrational belief systems (like msetty’s auto-hatred) that we are constantly being pushed to more inefficient systems.
No, I don’t “hate” automobiles.
What I “hate” is the irrational attachment some people have to them, and the unwillingness to admit that they have negative impacts, e.g., the likes of Karlock. Then there’s the denial on this topic by Randal, Wendell Cox, and a load of others. Then there’s the people who say we must consider the allegedly tremendous benefits of automobiles to individuals–but if such benefits are so tremendous, then we should be readily willing to cover the negative costs. Part of the problem is this society is that Americans as a whole have gotten so used to “free riding” (sic) in this area and many others, they aren’t willing to make the change.
This is partly why I didn’t give a straight “yes” or “no” answer to that theoretical, oversimplistic question. I agree with Dan that johngalt’s point of view is useful for resource allocation purposes, but is only useful for understanding a small part of overall human endeavor. Even in economics, “rationality” and prices can only explain a portion of human behavior. Some systems may be “inefficient” from a narrow Homo Economicus viewpoint, but make virtuous, ethical or moral sense, or damn!, internally consistent culturally (ethical or moral, or not).
But if you believe that “Man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, that he should not sacrifice himself to others, nor sacrifice others to himself.” …isn’t auto use extreamly moral and forced reduction of auto use immoral?
But if you believe that “Man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness …
Right. Only a small minority believes this and takes Objectivism for moral guidance. Other subsets of society use different sets of criteria, goals and expectations for their moral guidance, along a psychological continuum from ‘self-regarding’ to ‘other-regarding’.
Plus, only a subset of any society or community is rational. Individuals are only sometimes rational. The 20% of folk who do 80% of the work/make 80% of the changes are an amalgam of rational/driven/happiness-focused, etc. along that psych continuum. The implication of my #11 above & esp the last para is that societies — esp democratic societies — hash out societal direction, every day. We use indicators for this direction, some of them economic, but not everyone is primarily interested in money or efficient resource allocation, making reliance on a few favored indicators problematic when so few calculate Pareto optima (thus the fundamental problem for the Private Property Rights movement).
One must always remember that one cannot expect everyone to have your moral compass, although it is easier to be around folk who do, which is, I suspect, the reason for the rise of megachurches, social marketing websites, FaceBook, etc., in our built environment made out of isolating boxes.
As our society increasingly is directioned from dwellers in isolating boxes, it is important to remember that hopefully the majority is well-informed, able to interact with others productively, and ultimately decides on a good direction. Reading the cr*p coming from our media on the debate in our crazy Capitol makes it hard on a lot of days, esp. when our methods of communication are less and less of the face-to-face variety and more and more of the binary certitude variety.
Markets require good information. I see it becoming harder and harder to acquire information. Well, not information, but useful information for decisionmaking.
DS
As related here,
Ayn Rand at West Point, 1974, regarding the theft of land and genocide against the First Nations of America (the Canadian terminology is the most conceptually correct here):
They didn’t have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using . . . . What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their ‘right’ to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent.
Rand’s grand rationalization here was the same as all imperialists throughout humanity’s “civilized” (sic) history.
As someone who discovered he is of 1/16 First Nations blood fairly late in life (a great grandfather who was 1/2 “Indian”), you shouldn’t be surprised that I think “Objectivist,” Randian” or whatever her sort of “ethics” or “morality” is called, is a steaming pile of horseshit. Mr. johngalt, as much as I appreciate your quest for freedom, Randian/Objectivist thought–such as what you’re trying to convey through pithy slogans–is a non-starter given Rand’s nakedly imperialist/genocidal notions and racism.
It seems obvious that Dan is right, people’s view of what is “moral” differs. So, what gives the msetty’s of the world the right to impose their individual version on the rest of us?
So, what gives the msetty’s of the world the right to impose their individual version on the rest of us?
Well, that was my implication too, but focused on an ideology closer to the ‘self-regarding’ end of the spectrum in a world with a large percentage of other-regarders, that frequently argues for rationality in an irrational world, and for market-based solutions in a controlled-information & overloaded environment where few calculate pareto optima.
DS
oops.
…where few calculate pareto optima.
Hence my lament in #11.
DS
It seems obvious that Dan is right, people’s view of what is “moral†differs. So, what gives the msetty’s of the world the right to impose their individual version on the rest of us?
You mean like the “right” of Objectivists to impose their half-baked beliefs on us, such as through people like Alan Greenspan whose watch was characterized by the precipitous decline of the dollar, TWO, not one, massive economic bubbles (dot.com and housing), let alone a dramatic decline in the average living standard? If reversing this requires dramatic action by a legitimately-elected government to correct the situation*, but said action is “imposing one’s morality on others” according to Objectivism, why should I care? You’re outvoted.
A person with normal Judeo-Christian ethics/morality would understand “imposing one’s morality on others” as meaning direct government command and control, similar to the “Religous Wrong’s” attempt to outlaw abortion and restrict contraception, not PRICING an activity to account for its negative impacts. “Command and control” would be odd/even driving restrictions and gasoline rationing, as opposed to raising the price (and you can be sure a lot of Americans would prefer odd/even days and rationing over higher prices, though I am not one of them!)
If johngalt cannot understand what I’m saying by now, there is no point in further discussion on this particular topic.
* Saw a fascinating “infomerical” last night about an auction of foreclosed housing here in Northern California. Beginning asking pricing were anywhere 40% to 60% below the reported “previous value,” the lowest reduction in good, close-in areas, and the highest in the more remote outposts of exurbia, such as Brentwood (roughly 50 miles east of San Francisco). This outcome of allowing Hayekian-, Friedmansque- or whatever you want to call it economics is likely to continue for a few years yet.
It is interesting that msetty is choosing to blame the bubble in Bay Area housing prices on free market economics. If this were true, I would expect the same sort of bubble to occur in Atlanta Georgia. The reason that housing costs have shot up, then declined, in the Bay Area is that it is very difficult to legally build a house there. This has driven prices to outrageous levels worsened by speculation. Eventually, the speculative bubble had to burst. None of this would have occured had the free market been allowed to respond to rising housing prices by constructing more houses.
None of this would have occured had the free market been allowed to respond to rising housing prices by constructing more houses.
Excellent! More density from the infill! [Remember, of course, The Market bought a lot of land for open space, making it unavailable for development. Lots of diatribes leave out this little bit].
Outstanding. I like it when we can all work together.
DS
The housing price increases in the Bay Area as a result of land shortages ran up in the 1980’s primarily after the impact of Proposition 13 was felt, and was incorporated into the prices paid in the 1990’s.
The recent housing bubble is a direct result of deregulation of the financial sector, which also played a major role in the previous dot.com bubble. Both bubbles were on Greenspan’s watch, e.g., during the watch of the world’s best known Ayn Rand sycophant. Lax lending standards, the very strong quick-buck incentives to the thousands of new “mortgage companies” that sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, the typical bubble mania of house buyers going after quick bucks, a spate of house “flippers,” a land rush of new real estate agents, combined with “liar loans” and banks out to make a quick killing on selling dubious mortgage paper as securities all conspired to generate the latest housing bubble.
If there really had been a major housing shortage in the Bay Area, rents would also have skyrocketed–but they did not.
As always happens in the wake of economic bubbles and other financial catastrophes caused when society listens to unfettered “free market” snake oil, the quick buck artists disappear as quickly as water after a desert thunderstorm, going back under their rocks or onward to the next scam. Meanwhile the rest of us have to pick up the debt pieces, suffer the consequences of a growing credit crunch as the previously “anything goes in lending” banks overreact in the other direction, and cross our fingers the continuing aftermath doesn’t transform into another 1929.