Parking Minimums and Income Distribution
It seems that Ithaca, New York is working on a plan to increase the permitted level of density in one part of town and to relax minimum parking requirements. Naturally, I favor both steps. Rather than use regulatory minimums to ensure that parking is available, they propose to let builders construct as much parking as they want and use market-rate pricing of street parking to avoid shortages. Opponents of the change seem to think that they’re doing favors to the poor since the burden of more expensive parking falls harder on the poor. But achieving cheap parking through regulatory mandates makes parking cheaper at the cost of making housing more expensive, and the burden of that also falls hardest on the poor.
The distributive impact of parking minimums is to redistribute income from people who don’t own cars to people who do own cars—not to shift income from poor to rich. A rich family will probably have at least one car for every family member who’s at least 16 years old. A family of more modest means will probably own fewer vehicles.
More generally, while I’m obviously not a hard-core free marketers, it does make sense to consider a free market position our default position. Mandating the construction of extra parking doesn’t reduce harmful environmental externalities. Rather, it generates them. It doesn’t help the neediest members of society, it makes it more difficult for them to afford housing. It doesn’t correct important information deficits—people are perfectly capable of asking whether or not a house they’re considering buying or renting comes with a reserved parking space.
53 Responses to “Parking Minimums and Income Distribution”
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January 23rd, 2009 at 11:01 am
Ithaca has surprisingly good public transit for a town of its size, so I think raising the cost of parking in Collegetown could be very effective at getting students to switch to buses as their main mode of transportation. A lot of the transit infrastructure is already there; more frequent service on a few of the bus lines could make a big difference, though.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:02 am
A beautification plan for Collegetown would be nice.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:04 am
“they propose to let builders construct as much parking as they want and use market-rate pricing of street parking to avoid shortages.”
You can gussy it up all you want, but you’re still in favor of rationing street parking by wealth rather than by the current method of rationing street parking by time, local presence, and local knowledge.
Market-rate pricing of street parking is great for those born with a trust-fund, and crippling for those born without. But Matthew is fully aware of this already, which is why such regressive measures hold such glittering appeal for him. (And which is also why he feels the need to play dishonest rhetorical games about implications of his position.)
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:04 am
Oh, and Ithaca needs one of these.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:06 am
Wow, that picture is scary. I recognized it as Ithaca, but the buildings are very different. I guess it’s been a while since I’ve been there. That said, I’m not sure what you wrote makes a whole lot of sense in Ithaca. Half the population is college students in that town. And the main college (there isn’t only one) is Cornell, where most students are rich. I think the attempt here is to just get students to actually pay the fees rather than blow them off and get daddy’s lawyer to hold the city off until they graduate. Regardless, it’s an innovative approach that I’d expect from Ithaca. I only got to vote once in the mayoral election there. The Republicans ran a Democrat and the Democrats ran a Socialist. The Socialist won and started imposing the free market on everyone. Go figure.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:08 am
“A beautification plan for Collegetown would be nice.”
Yeah. It appears the last one didn’t work out so well.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:11 am
The conventional use of the term “free market” rubs me the wrong way. The market will optimize allocation of resources subject to whatever constraints exist. Adding regulations changes the constraints – but outlawing slavery and murder change the constraints as well. We should be using markets as much as possible, but we need to think about how to shape the universe of possible outcomes. More potential outcomes (a more “free” market) are only better as long as the newly permitted outcomes are benign.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:16 am
Greetings from frigid Ithaca and Ivy-backwater Cornell! Always nice to hear our little hamlet get a shoutout from one of the world’s most influential liberals.
I hopped off the downtown->Cornell shuttle about an hour ago; I take it every morning to get to class. Pretty good deal.
Oh, and the Journal is a rag!
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:20 am
“Oh, and the Journal is a rag!”
Good to hear that some things will never change. Ivy-backwater? I guess so. I always thought of us as the black sheep of the Ivy League, but the one where you could actually get a real education. Harvard can lick the Bear’s balls.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:24 am
“We should be using markets as much as possible, but we need to think about how to shape the universe of possible outcomes.”
Matty has thought about those outcomes.
He’s a trust-fund scumbag. He wants his inherited money to give him privilege and advantage in every possible sphere of life.
It’s why he’s in favor of things like market-based street parking, and why he’s opposed to things like universal healthcare and unions.
What I don’t understand is why a Rockefeller Republican like Yglesias is the lead blogger for CAP. One would think Podesta can start to pay attention to the shop now that the transition is over.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:32 am
Ye Gods, I went to grad school at Cornell. That picture gave the shivers. Nothing to do with the urbanism, mind.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:39 am
Shorter Petey:
I cherry pick Matt’s arguments because it’s just so much fun to insult him in bold type! Besides, everyone knows that the beating heart of the progressive agenda is cheap parking! Lying scumbag trustifarian jerkface poopyhead!!!!1!11!one!!
Seriously, who needs Mixner with the new Petey around.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:41 am
Or maybe he is just sticking it to his fellow trust-fund scumbags?
This plan is pretty clearly aimed at the universities, especially Cornell and Collegetown; the rest of Ithaca has little problem with available and affordable parking. It serves two important goals – allowing the university and its surroundings to build denser and encouraging students to bring fewer cars/use public transportation more. As a former Ithaca townie, I can tell you both are very necessary.
Surely Petey is not upset that some college kid with a trust-fund and a BMW (surprisingly, the non-Ivy Leaguers are worse in this regard) may have trouble parking his car.
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:07 pm
New Petey? He’s always been an asshole.
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Before Hillary, he was abrasive/provocative and at least somewhat interesting but he almost never engaged in such predictable, clumsy and boring ad hominem as he does now. Maybe her loss gave him a Tourette’s inducing aneurysm.
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:25 pm
You know, Petey, you actually have some pretty sharp things to say, from time to time. So why do you work so hard to make sure that no one takes you seriously?
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Petey you can rail against the price system all you want, but other methods of rationing don’t work. Matt clearly does care about the poor, but that concern doen’t repeal the basic laws of economics.
Refusal to accept the price system is an Old Left idea that unfortunately got mugged by reality. And you don’t need a trust fund to know this.
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Collegetown is a special case. There are few permanent residents and the neighborhood abuts the university. The mostly-student population can walk to class. On the rare occasion they need something from a store, they can easily take a bus.
Note especially the proposal for a remote parking area. That’s so the students have a place to store the car they use to get back home on breaks.
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Ithaca has a problem– it’s downtown core is hollowing out and businesses are moving to either Rt. 13 south or the Pyramid Mall area. There is decent bus service to both, but it is the opposite of the walkable downtown. There is resistance to chain stores in Ithaca, but they come anyways and move to those areas with very large parking lots. What we need here is an anchor store come into the downtown area, which can bring back some of the people (and some cars but preferably bikes and buses) to the downtown core.
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:28 pm
ga73 is right. The Commons and the surrounding downtown area are rapidly ceasing to be the town’s shopping hub. There are quite a few local businesses there for clothing, books, etc., and it’s certainly where all the restaurants are. However, Target, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, most of the clothing chains, Lowes/Home Depot, Borders/B+N, and the like are all situated at either the mall, which is several miles away from the center of town, or at a location along the state highway, a mile or so in the opposite direction from downtown. Neither location is anything close to pedestrian-friendly, and the bus service to them is adequate but spotty.
So if you need to do shopping for anything but food (for which the relatively pedestrian-accessible Wegmans is the only sensible destination), you’re reliant on car or sporadic bus. And there’s no worse place to stand outside at a stop than Ithaca.
@fostert: I agree. What was your major?
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:50 pm
See Manhattan for an example of what happens when you leave the provision of sufficient parking to the market. It’s called imperfect competition and price gouging.
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Note: Apparently if you include too many links, you’re held for moderation and we all know that Matthew doesn’t read these comments. I’ve removed the links.
What Ithaca’s downtown needs is an easier way for the Cornell population to get up and down, and that really does speak to the need for a tramway or aerial cable, which is the link I provided in post #4. (That example is the new one from Medellin, Colombia.) A minute of googling reveals that the idea has come up before and was rejected as financially unfeasible, but unlike technical feasibility that’s not an immutable objection, especially in an Age of Stimulus. Just to come full circle, Portland has one of them.
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Stephen: All true, and what’s the harm? In NY the harm is zilch because you can take public transportation–in fact, it’s a huge societal benefit. To argue that the harm is significant because some people are unable to do something they would otherwise want to do is a general objection to capitalism, and to life on earth more generally.
January 23rd, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Petey, I’m sure you’re opposed to the market-based provision of housing which rations it by wealth. Shouldn’t the government assign everyone an equally sized apartment?
January 23rd, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Stephen: All true, and what’s the harm?
Have you tried to actually live in Manhattan with a family with not-Wall Street levels of income?
By the way, this isn’t some natural process of capitalism. It’s called “imperfect competition”, a perfectly valid concept in economics, because land is scarce and the rewards of provisioning an important public good (parking) is an economic externality. This is one of those moments when the government needs to step in. If you have roads, you need parking spaces. And if roads are public goods (which every single economist considers them to be), then parking spaces are public goods too. Insufficient parking spaces reduce economic productivity.
January 23rd, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Stephen: The reason it’s expensive to live in Manhattan is the high rents & apartment houses, not the high parking charges. Which in turn reflects the desire of a lot of people to live there. (Despite, did you notice, the lack of free parking.)
Are you proposing that government build enough housing in Manhattan to house everybody who wants to live there?
January 23rd, 2009 at 2:58 pm
I am referring to the fact that families have to pay ludicrous levels of monthly parking dues just to have regular parking space. That has nothing to do with rents, and everything to do with insufficient mandating of parking space along with every building constructed.
January 23rd, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Myles,
Your argument implies that people could afford the high cost of housing but the parking pushes them out.
I mean get real the $2 million for a 3 bedroom apartment is affordable but the high rent parking is the final straw?
January 23rd, 2009 at 3:33 pm
I am arguing that it is a distorted market. Because the lack of single-stop destination malls (i.e. large, suburban strip malls where lack of parking would have damagned business, retailers in Manhattan are able to offload the parking externality to others and push it out of their balance sheets. When a group dumps the responsibility on each other collectively, you have a problem.
And the case with buildings is that the parking rents are unreasonably high, much more than what would have been added to housing costs had equivalent parking spaces been mandated as necessary for housing construction.
January 23rd, 2009 at 3:36 pm
What parking legislation does is to internalise that externality. In that regime retailers are forced to provide as much parking as the proportional externality of the parking needs induced by their business.
January 23rd, 2009 at 3:56 pm
None of you bastards have obviously ever tried to get a keg from Finger Lakes Beverage up Buffalo Street in February without a car.
Do the college kids still counterfeit the trash tags?
January 23rd, 2009 at 4:15 pm
1) Cities own the residential streets (mostly).
2) Therefore, they own the parking spaces on those streets.
3) Cities would be within its rights to charge for residential street parking (instead of raising taxes).
4) Without really thinking about it, cities have generally decided not to charge for street parking, but rather to give it away first-come, first-serve.
5) When the government gives away finite resources (or charges below-market prices for them), we shouldn’t be surprised if this creates a shortage.
Anyone who wants everyone who lives in Manhattan to own a car really doesn’t understand what makes Manhattan special. Wouldn’t it be better if Mr. Myles lived in one of the many fine suburbs which conform to his values rather than ruining Manhattan for the rest of us?
January 23rd, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Stephen, as noted by at least one commenter above, parking is such a marginal consideration in why Manhattan is expensive for non-wealthy families that it’s not really worth considering.
January 23rd, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Opponents of the change seem to think that they’re doing favors to the poor since the burden of more expensive parking falls harder on the poor. But achieving cheap parking through regulatory mandates makes parking cheaper at the cost of making housing more expensive, and the burden of that also falls hardest on the poor.
Expensive parking falls hardest on the lower middle class. The real poor don’t have anything to park, and would be the big winners from this plan (cheaper higher-density housing that would also probably be better served by public transportation, and attract more local businesses, *because* it is higher density).
Every time there’s a transportation discussion 90% of the participants forget that not everyone is issued a car at age 16 and provided with replacements if it breaks down or is wrecked – regardless of the fact that it was pointed out in the last ten transportation discussions.
January 23rd, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Stephen:
1. Nobody’s entitled to live in Manhattan. If they can’t afford it, there are cheaper places to live.
2. If you imposed parking requirements, it would actually make it even more expensive to live in Manhattan because that would constrict the supply of housing and housing’s a lot more expensive than parking (remember, housing and parking are in competition for limited space, and more parking means less housing).
3. Much of what makes Manhattan such a desirable place to live and work flows directly from its high population density which is achieved by not mandating a higher supply of parking. This is what creates vibrant sidewalk life (as businesses don’t have to be set back behind parking lots), nightlife (bars and clubs and restaurants tend to be much more successful when there are lots of people within walking, taxi, or subway distance), and economic prosperity (you can fit more commercial space and businesses in if commercial lessors don’t have to build huge parking lots).
In other words, if you tried to lower the cost of parking in Manhattan, it would (1) increase the cost of living there, and (2) decrease its desirability, all in the name of allowing people to live there who don’t need to or have a right to and could live somewhere else that is cheaper.
Part of what is driving this issue (it is certainly driving Petey, for instance) is a simple outrage at any sort of a financial requirement to live somewhere. But the reality is that any place, like New York, Hong Kong, Beverly Hills, or Dubai, that develops real cachet as a desirable place to live and work is going to become brutally expensive because demand to live there will inevitably exceed usable urban space. And that means over time you are going to have to be more and more well-off to live there. Efforts to fight that don’t tend to work very well (witness wealthy people in New York City living in ridiculously cheap rent-controlled apartments).
Now, what that means in practice is that if you are poor or middle class, you won’t be able to live in certain places. This outrages people, but it doesn’t really outrage me. We need to do much more to lift the poor out of poverty, but I don’t see any real way to make living on Manhattan Island a possibility for everyone who would like to do so.
January 23rd, 2009 at 5:50 pm
You are not getting the point. There is something very peculiar and wrong, in my mind, with an American home not furnished with requisite parking. It’s un-American.
January 23rd, 2009 at 6:17 pm
You are not getting the point. There is something very peculiar and wrong, in my mind, with an American home not furnished with requisite parking. It’s un-American.
What about an American apartment? What about an American apartment in a dense urban area where you don’t need a car to get around? Where a car is a liability because of traffic and unavailability of parking at common destinations?
Look, of course you are right that it would be pretty weird to see new suburban homes with picket fences sprouting up without copious available parking. But that’s not what Matt’s talking about (and in any event, suburban developers will often tend to provide for a fair amount of parking whether or not it is required by the local zoning board, simply because it is necessary to generate business in car-dependent areas). But it would be just as weird to start requiring that Manhattan coops have large parking garages or surface parking lots attached to them. I don’t know about “un-American”, but that would certainly be “un-New York City”.
January 23rd, 2009 at 6:33 pm
There is something very peculiar and wrong, in my mind, with an American home not furnished with requisite parking.
It’s called street parking, and it’s available all over. It’s only a select few neighborhoods where you can’t find a spot on the curb within a block of your home. I lived like that for several years of my life. And in a denser area, it makes perfect sense.
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:11 pm
> You can gussy it up all you want, but you’re still
> in favor of rationing street parking by wealth rather
> than by the current method of rationing street parking
> by time, local presence, and local knowledge.
I think it was three years and two MY blogs ago that Petey went off the deep end, and the last time I agreed with him. But up to this point in his post he was absolutely correct: this is an issue that Mr. Yglesias refuses to address, and it is a significant issue. Given that parking meters in dense areas tend to have 30-90 minute limits, there are serious issues of social equity in privileging those who have bags of quarters in their cars from those who don’t.
Cranky
January 24th, 2009 at 12:06 am
In typical Ithaca fashion, they’ve been thinking up an even bolder and weirder transportation solution in PodCars(which of course is unlikely to be realized, but still):
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/nyregion/21podcar.html
January 25th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Anyone who is seriously interested in this topic might want to read UCLA Professor Don Shoup’s The High Cost of Free Parking, 2005. See the reviews there at Amazon. Shoupd actually has a lot of data, not just opinions.
Free (or underpriced) parking creates an amazing number of hidden subsidies, implicit market distortions, and in some cases, wasting a lot of fuel hunting for spaces.
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