[CalRobert]

Just charge for it. That encourages efficient allocation of the resource (land).

If the government mandated free ice cream for everyone there would likely be an ice cream shortage. The solution would be to charge more for ice cream, not just try to increase the supply to meet demand (which is basically infinity when the cost is 0)

[ars]

It also encourages people to go elsewhere.

I needed glasses recently, with my insurance I had a choice of 4 stores. I went to the one with free parking. (Google maps streetview is great for checking that.)

Requiring paid parking in a tourist town encourages people to visit a different town.

[graeme]

Choosing a store within a town is different from choosing a different town.

All the old style tourist towns with limited parking seem to be doing more than fine. I live in such a neighbourhood, with no parking minimums and paid parking. People still visit.

[ars]

Think about it like this: Why is there paid parking? It's because demand exceeds supply, so they require a fee in order to encourage people not to come.

But that means you could have more visitors.

Now, if you are maxed out, then good, paid parking makes sense - send those tourists elsewhere.

But if more visitors = more money, and that is something the town wants, then adding more parking, and reducing fees is what the town should do.

Which is what I said: "It also encourages people to go elsewhere."

It boils down to this: When choosing paid parking make sure this is what you want, that you want people not to come.

(And I acknowledge that in certain situations it makes sense to want that.)

And I know what you are thinking: You'd rather they take the bus or whatever. But think about this: Why do they chose to drive anyway, forcing you have to encourage them not to?

Clearly there is something lacking with the bus, to the point that you have to deliberately make driving worse just to induce them to use it.

[graeme]

Have you ever been to Europe? People just don't use cars when visiting most cities there. They walk, take a bus, use an Uber.

I live in Montreal, and it's the same when tourists come here. They may drive to the city, but they leave their car parked the whole time. (Side streets out of the center have some free parking. Commercial arteries and downtown core is paid)

Sure, you could have more parking for cars, but you might not have more people. And with too much parking you destroy the city you want to visit. Edmonton and Calgary have plentiful parking, and no ones goes to visit them, except as a stopping point to see the wilderness around the city.

[graeme]

Oh, when I said "not have more people", I meant it in the sense that cars take a lot of space in the environment, blocking people. They also transport fewer people in a given space than bikes, buses, subways, sidewalks, etc. In a dense urban car that is.

[TeMPOraL]

> And I know what you are thinking: You'd rather they take the bus or whatever. But think about this: Why do they chose to drive anyway, forcing you have to encourage them not to?

It doesn't work like this.

Imagine a person considering visiting the town. They have a threshold of pain/effort in their mind, say V, above which they'll just go sightseeing elsewhere. Let C be the pain/effort of visiting our town by car, and B the pain/effort of visiting by bus. If C < B < V, they'll visit by car. If you can arrange to have C > B, while still keeping B < V, they'll still visit, but via a bus.

So the goal for a town is to make it so that for most interested people, B < C && B < V.

[coraltime]

What is your definition of "the supply of parking" for a given area? I don't think the number of available parking spots in that area is a good measure, since people can always park just outside the area and walk in.

Instead, I think a good measure of parking supply for a given destination point could be the sum of available spots, weighed by their distance to the destination.

[adrianN]

Perhaps they don't take the bus because car-centric cities with lots of free parking usually have crappy public transport.

[safepants]

If all your tourist town has going for it is free parking, I don't think it's worth visiting anyways.

[saint_fiasco]

The whole point of encouraging tourism is that tourists are less price sensitive.

A local would take the time to research the cheapest store taking into account list price, quality, parking costs and so on. But a tourist probably won't. That's why tourist traps exist.

[TeMPOraL]

Another cooperation problem, sadly. It'd be best if all the towns started to reduce parking and make it more expensive, so that going elsewhere wouldn't even be a consideration.

[CalRobert]

Everyone who walks, cycles, or takes public transport to that store subsidized your parking. I prefer things that are convenient for me, so being located nearby. Given that I live where land is expensive, that means no parking. When I lived in a place where land is expensive and parking is forced on people whether they want it or not (Santa Monica) I just got shafted.

[lsc]

I know people like that, who would drive for a long time to avoid paying a dollar and it always seemed like such weird behavior to me. I remember going to get pastrami in LA with a friend; I mean, twenty dollar sandwiches, and he didn't want to pay three bucks for parking, instead wanted to drive more. So weird.

[burfog]

I drove around San Francisco for 3 hours looking for a free parking spot. I eventually found one, in an absurdly wealthy neighborhood. We stopped just to stop and rest for a bit, but obviously by that point we were not going to walk all the way to the restaurant I had intended to visit. They lost my business. I ate some old snacks out of the trunk of the car.

No wonder there are traffic problems. Lots more parking is needed.

BTW, self-driving will make this far worse for traffic, although better for the businesses. The car can just drive around while I visit the business.

[CalRobert]

That's... absurd. Did you spend that time looking for a free hotel as well? Or a free restaurant?

And if you think more parking fixes traffic I suggest you visit Los Angeles. Or even just San Jose.

[ars]

I think he means free as in available, not free as in no cost.

[burfog]

I mean no cost. Of course I'm not going to pay for parking.

Maybe you think it is normal to pay. I don't. I have paid a few times in over 2 decades of driving a car. I can mostly remember them because I'm still angry:

I paid to park in Boston in 2001, near the courthouse. I sort of paid at a park-and-ride place for an airport, but that included a bus ride. I got parking stickers for a couple colleges. I paid the "parking fee" at the Air and Space Museum Annex in Virginia, which is really a cheating way to charge admission.

I think that's it.

The problem is that some people are willing to patronize places without free parking. If people didn't do that, we'd all have free parking.

[CalRobert]

I'm nearly certain he meanh no cost. Sf has instituted market rate street parking in some places and also has a number of garages where I've generally had no trouble finding a space, provided I paid.

[arctangos]

When I have a problem getting a framework or library to do the thing it’s meant to do, my first instinct isn’t to debug it and submit a PR, but to look at my strategy and figure out where I’m going wrong.

In this case, maybe SF is trying to send you a signal: you probably shouldn’t be driving in it.

If you can’t change you strategy, then consider changing frameworks: LA historically has had extremely high parking minimums, though that does present its own challenges.

[burfog]

I almost didn't drive. It's a good thing I got the rental car though. The BART that I would have taken from the airport was down due to a strike. One of the days of my visit I tried to get around without the car, and that was a disaster:

MUNI stop locations above ground are not announced or lighted, and you can't just count because the vehicle only halts if a person asks it to do so. The bus routes are confusing; I went the wrong way and ended up in a terrifying neighborhood. When things got busy, there was no way to board the cable car. Due to holiday crowds (people who might want service!) most of the system (MUNI, buses, cable cars... everything in the northern half of the city) got shut down for the evening. Later I missed a bus because it stopped on the other corner instead of at the bus stop, and that was the last one so I had to walk several miles in a rather scary city.

I suppose SF is sending a signal: you probably shouldn't go there.

[lsc]

What's interesting here is that I won't drive in SF. I will drive in LA (I'll try to avoid it, but I can be talked into it.) so you are partly right... I mean, the traffic is equivalently bad. (well, LA traffic is much worse at night. SF traffic only compares during the day) but in LA, I can usually count on a parking spot, in SF, it's much harder (even if you are willing to pay, my experience is that just getting off the street and onto the place where the valet can get into your car is a bit of an adventure in SF.)

But I won't walk in LA; I mean, I'll show up without a car and uber everywhere, or I'll rent a car, but you need a car to get around in LA.

But... that's the thing; In SF, it doesn't matter that the traffic is terrible, because I won't drive. In LA, you always feel how terrible the traffic is because you can't really avoid driving.

That's the thing; you need a car in LA but not in SF; I mean, sure, the transit sucks in SF, the transit might even be better in LA, but the city really isn't that big; you can walk most everywhere. In LA, that's hard. LA is big. A lot of that big is parking; LA has a big office tower, then like a city block of parking right there. It's crazy. (I once visited a friend without a car in the days before uber; We went from his place near LAX to Langers deli (that's the other reason why I need to move to new york, I love pastrami) It took us like four hours to just get there using public transit. (It was worth it. Oh my that Pastrami was good) - really from then until he moved I'd rent a car when I went.

Personally, this is one of the things I like more about SF than LA. I like walking a lot more than I like driving, and really, I think driving is a low-density transport medium; what are cars good for? cars are good for getting people to different places. When you are in low density areas, each person is going to a very different destination. In high density areas? a lot of people are going to essentially the same place, so shared vehicles, trains or the like, are a much better answer.

It's a choice. If you build your cities to be comfortable for cars, they won't be comfortable for pedestrians, and vis a vis.

I've been thinking about this lately. I mean, I live in silicon valley; essentially in dense suburbs. I want it to be much denser; I want it to be dense enough to be walkable. But my neighbors don't; Maybe that means I should move to new york? I mean, why is my opinion any more right than theirs? It's cheaper there, too. Though, I hear they get up earlier than I'd like.

[craftyguy]

I'm not sure that your comparison between getting eyeglasses and visiting a town for what most people would consider a vacation are even remotely the same thing.

[Gobd]

I agree with this idea, amusingly the parking lot used to be pay to park then the town made it free. I don't see a problem with charging a minimum, then hourly up to a max, just make sure it's cheap enough, maybe max $8 a day. This would give the town money to use to help the problem, either more parking or better public transit options.