Anti-business tax to support cars - let's get cars off welfare

Densely populated metropolitan areas like New York City have become ground zero for clashes among cars, bikes and trucks competing for limited parking spaces. For delivery companies, the tight fit means racking up huge parking fines as a cost of doing business.

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/ups-hit-with-22m-in-nyc-parking-fines/amp

Kansas City, MO, $10 million a year for just downtown parking!

The other step is improving how we spend money to stimulate economic development. After the recession, national firms came to us and said we’ll invest in downtown, but in exchange we need real guarantees and asked us to subsidize parking-garage costs. [In the last 10 years] taxpayers spent about $100 million subsidizing parking garages for these companies.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/ask-an-expert-kansas-city-is-exploring-free-transit-should-seattle/ 

Free parking. One of the biggest subsidies to oil, autos, and sprawl.

Free parking seems to be part of the normal order of our streets, like traffic lights and crosswalks. Although metering often exists near retail and during busy times, experts estimate that approximately 97% of the city’s curbside parking spaces are given away at no cost.

https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-trade-free-parking-for-free-mass-transit-20191113-qdlrk64czrhyjejaxxsw7hky7y-story.html 

Auto subsidy "places enormous costs on our society"

TreeHugger: "From subsidies given to oil companies to produce cheap oil, to government bailouts/ownership of auto manufacturers, to road construction and maintenance on streets that cost nothing to use, to highly subsidized parking spaces, to government health care costs associated with pollution from automobiles, to the detrimental health that results from sedentary lifestyle that cars promote, to the vast government policing forces required to enforce our streets: it is undeniable that driving places enormous costs on our society, and this cost is highly subsidized by our government."

Just for downtown parking $19M not counting subsidy

citizen-times: "City transportation department director Putnam agrees: Parking supply is a matter of consumer perspective. Because parking meters are free after 6 p.m., people seek out those 765 spaces, and they fill up first. Drivers get frustrated looking for street parking, and it seems like there's nowhere to park. Instead, try a parking deck, Putnam said."

The cost to the economy, not counting subsidy, for parking downtown, is $40/yr per person for greater Asheville. Free public transit would end this and free most of the wasted space.

Parking is a hidden cost of the #autosprawl system, an externality not counted in the profits of oil, auto, and sprawl.

The high cost of cheap auto insurance

The Stranger: "The Seattle-based Transportation Choices estimated that between 1994 and 2003, car crashes cost King County $8 billion (PDF). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have the yearly cost of traffic accidents in Washington state at $665 million. Even more staggering are the numbers in a study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. It found, among other things, that the annual cost of car crashes in 2010 was $871 billion. And who pays for a lot of this? The public, of course. It also is telling that the solution AAA recommends is increasing safety on roads rather than increasing access to safer modes of transportation. (One study found that "transit travel has about a tenth the traffic casualty (death or injury) rate as automobile travel."[PDF].)

As if subsides for car insurance and oil companies were not enough, the brilliant "parking professor" Donald Shoup estimated just over a decade ago that parking spaces in the US yearly receive somewhere between $127 billion and $374 billion in subsidies. My point: Socialism has got nothing on American cars."

Oklahoma City takes down bus stop, puts up 24 million dollar parking garage. #autosprawlsubsidy

Examiner.com: "Downtown Oklahoma City recently removed a covered steel beam formal bus stop. Now simply a concrete slab, which appears just behind the sidewalk in the video on the right. This stop is on a triangle, which is owned by Oklahoma City.

...The building on the right in the video is the City Municipal Building. City Hall. This stop is at Robert S. Kerr, Couch Drive and North Walker Avenue, across from the Norick Library. On the South, is the brand new, 24 million dollar 10 story Arts District parking garage, which was constructed under the same group who technically is responsible for the regulation and process of city transit services and bus stops, all of which is under Oklahoma City Municipal government."

Free parking is car welfare

The Weekly Nabe: "The average cost of residential space in my zip code is $892 per square foot. That means the total value of the street space that the city gives away for free is nearly $9 million. And that’s on my block alone.

comment by Eric McClure:

Based on your calculations, Keith, I worked out the monthly mortgage payment if everyone on the block had to buy a parking space rather than get one for free. Using a Toyota Prius as the average model, and allowing for a little space between cars, I calculated that there’s space for 78 cars on the block. Assuming that everyone had put down 20% for their spots, the monthly payment per spot, at a 4% interest rate, would be about $437. Seems about fair."

Cost of parking, more traffic

A surprising amount of traffic isn’t caused by people who are on their way somewhere. Rather it is caused by people who have already arrived. Our streets are congested, in part, by people who have gotten where they want to be but are cruising around looking for a place to park.



Donald Shoup is professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles (shoup@ucla.edu).

http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/CruisingForParkingAccess.pdf

Congress, full of oil trolls, cuts unemployment benefits, gives welfare to cars

Why should drivers get bigger subsidies than mass-transit riders? - The Washington Post: "One of the things lawmakers failed to do before adjourning this year, The Post’s Jia Lynn Yang reported, was adjust the program that allows workers, through their employers, to set aside pretax income to offset the cost of their commutes. As a result, starting Jan. 1, commuters who use mass transit will be able to set aside only $130 a month, down from $245 a month, while drivers will be able to increase their monthly parking set-aside from $245 to $250. Never mind that the increased use of public transportation benefits everyone, including those who continue to drive, giving them less traffic to contend with."

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Free charge leads to 71 per cent rise in town centre car parks use (From Oxford Mail)

Free charge leads to 71 per cent rise in town centre car parks use (From Oxford Mail): "The council estimated the cost of providing free parking was £250,000-a-year, but increased charges for stays longer than two hours by 30p help pay for the scheme."

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A parking space initial direct cost: 10 to 100 thousand dollars.

There's No Such Thing As Free Parking | ThinkProgress: "In many locations, it comes down to the cost of land. An acre of land only parks around 120 cars. So, where an acre is worth $1.2 million, the cost of the land is $10,000 per space. Parking garages would seem to be a smart choice where land is expensive, because the cars are being stacked. However the construction is expensive and the higher up you go, the larger the steel members have to be.
Construction costs are typically between$20,000 and $40,000 per space. Of course the prettiest parking is underground, because it is invisible to the urban landscape. However this is the most expensive parking. Developers have told me that this parking is around $100,000 per space. So the simple answer is that parking costs a lot."

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