Is Free Parking Welfare?
Yes, says the Washington Examiner's Tim Carney:
When D.C. recently doubled its parking meter rates, many folks called it a tax hike. But it’s not. It’s a price hike — on a product already being subsidized by the taxpayers.
Parking is an issue where I think Left and Right should agree. Liberals want people to drive cars less. Conservatives want markets, rather than government, to set the price of things.
It turns out that we could do some good by ending government subsidies and getting rid of laws that require developers to build parking. Tyler Cowen, a free-market economist, discussed this in a NY Times Op-Ed headlined “Free Parking Comes at a Price.”
For liberals and conservatives, is the issue a win-win? Is anyone in the mood right now for a win-win? And what about the way the parking issue exacerbates divisions on the right? At least some of the right's more traditionalist observers consider free parking to be of a piece with the broader set of zoning regulations that spread suburban sprawl -- destroying, as they argue, the fabric of healthy culture and community. I for one am open to a grand bargain on free parking. But let's face it: it's not likely to be a national priority. Take it away, localities...
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May '10
Re: Is Free Parking Welfare?
Wait, is this article actually saying that if the government did not mandate parking lots that Home Depot would not build any for customers? I mean, how exactly is the land they use more valuable than the car sitting on it if no customers come into their stores? Does removing free parking help the town square stores sell more or less goods? Should I care that local free parking helps out locals, and ends up costing money for visitors? I mean, doesn't Florida operate its whole tax structure for the state on that idea?
The basic argument here seems to be that motorists don't pay for parking and therefore everyone else pays for it. Right. So we should charge for parking to take money out of the pockets of consumers and give it to the government. This is supposed to be a good thing?
Does Mr. Cowen also advocate 100% fare supported Mass Transit? I rather doubt that. Maybe he has called for that. After all, every one pays for Mass Transit, except the people using it.
Jul '10
Re: Is Free Parking Welfare?
James, really? Has it come to this? Parking Spot Policy?
But, since we are here......What this yahoo is saying only makes sense if you ignore the fact that most publicly owned parking spots are on public property. Unless he is willing to privatize our roads and byways, what he is saying is utter nonsense.
Re: Is Free Parking Welfare?
Patrick Shanahan: James, really? Has it come to this? Parking Spot Policy?
But, since we are here......What this yahoo is saying only makes sense if you ignore the fact that most publicly owned parking spots are on public property. Unless he is willing to privatize our roads and byways, what he is saying is utter nonsense. · Sep 2 at 5:47pm
I know, I know, Patrick -- it's not exactly a Great Issue of Our Time. But it feeds into a debate about an issue that is pretty momentous, and that's why I flag it. Runaway budgets, onerous federal mandates, swelling social services, bloated civil service payrolls, and a spiraling public pensions crisis -- it all adds up, doesn't it, to a national crisis of governance at the state and local level? Cities are declaring bankruptcy, municipalities are tearing up concrete streets in favor of packed gravel, and states are issuing their own citizens IOUs. How bad does it have to get before a critical mass of people start asking serious questions about privatization and about local government that's really in the local public interest. It's already beginning to happen. And the answers might be surprising.
Aug '10
Re: Is Free Parking Welfare?
First of all, Tyler Cowen is not some central planning new urbanism transit fanatic but a pretty hardcore libertarian who as it happens is fond of suburbia and skeptical of mass transit. However he (following Donald Shoup) acknowledges that pro-car regulations are still regulations. Similarly Ed Glaeser @ Harvard has written at length about how suburbia is in part the product of onerous residential zoning regulations preventing greater urban density.
Second, yes, the suggestion is in fact that absent zoning regulations many stores would have smaller parking lots. Almost no stores have larger parking lots than they are required to, implying that the regulated quantity exceeds the market quantity. It's true that public transit is often a statist boondoggle, but that doesn't necessarily mean that everything involving cars, such as regulations demanding large parking lots, is a paragon of freedom. It's debatable whether it would be more or less statist to continue having free (to the user) street parking or to do something else with that space, whether it be state-operated meters, leasee-operated meters, devote the space to additional traffic lanes (and let a market develop for intra-city-block lots), etc.
Jul '10
Re: Is Free Parking Welfare?
Geez, that old controversy?
Read the Federalist Papers, why dontcha?
James Madison clearly believed that parking meters were the gateway to tyranny.
Of course, that still leaves open the question of valet-parking, but the Constitution is, after all, a living document.
May '10
Re: Is Free Parking Welfare?
I doubt that the local Home Depot would decide to have less parking that it needs to gets its customers to the building. Saying they don't have more spaces than required is hardly the same as saying without the regulation they would have too few.
Active commerce is good for everyone. Government action to facility commerce is a good thing. I wonder sometimes if hardcore libertarians think all roads should be private and we pay fees to use them.
We have to have some regulations. Might it make sense to have some that people want? People vote for the representatives that make the car culture part of America because they like the car culture.
May '10
Re: Is Free Parking Welfare?
Garrett Hardin, Your Commons is Calling!
What began as means of controlling traffic in the central enterprise zones has, as have things like traffic tickets, morphed into revenue streams for profligate local governments (such as Harrisburg, PA).
Originally, parking meters prevented employees, etc. from tying up all the spaces for 10 hours at a time, preventing shoppers from getting to the downtown stores that are the lifeblood of the central districts. Now, a combination of greed (mostly by the city governments who believed that demand for downtown commerce was so inelastic that any price level was OK) and traffic in the face of easier suburban alternatives have pretty well destroyed the central shopping districts.
The relevant question here is not philosophy- it is the primacy of markets. You don't need to be a libertarian to understand that city parking is all screwed up. In DC, you need a neighborhood parking permit to park on the street in front of your own house.
It would be better, though, for the city to privatize the roads and parking, with some clear rules to protect the residents and opportunity for merchants to buy blocks of space for their own benefit.
Jul '10
Re: Is Free Parking Welfare?
I agree that the little regulations are the greatest danger to free society. They nibble away at our freedom with our hardly noticing.
But.... this is not quite that. As long as the govt in the form of towns and cities "own" the streets, they will own the parking on those streets. How one arranging parking on those streets therefor becomes a political issue.
What annoys and worries me far more is government efforts to regulate private parking. I may sound like a beast, but the entire "handicap parking" thing really fries my giblets. It assumes that, absent coercive govt action, we cruel morons would make crippled grandma park a mile and a half from the Walmart entrance. We are not to be trusted.