TF is a parking minimum?
If a business decides that it doesn’t need parking spots shouldn’t that in theory result in less customers and therefore be a purely capitalist business decision?
Parking minimums are legal requirements on the minimum number of parking spaces businesses and housing are allowed to have. The thing is these laws were developed using shoddy pseudoscience, are extremely arbitrary, and developed with maximum (rather than typical) usage in mind, meaning many developments have oversized parking lots, wasting valuable land. Further, old buildings that predate the parking minimums (and thus don’t have legally sufficient parking) can’t renovate or change usage without being legally required to build new parking, often by buying up a neighboring building and demolishing it to build a parking lot. This exact thing is why so many dense American and Canadian downtowns got bulldozed and turned into parking lots, like in the images below:
Atlanta
Tulsa
Kansas City
For more in-depth information on the insanity and idiocy that are parking minimums, see this video: https://youtu.be/OUNXFHpUhu8?si=KQbU00UPKw5GeNhQ
Those are some depressing examples!
I’m guessing, the idea is that you don’t want companies ‘freeloading’ off of public infrastructure and/or the parking lot from the business nextdoor.
Like, if there’s not enough parking outside a store, car people may to some degree decide not to visit that store, but if they do, then they’ll park on surrounding parking lots or streets or walkways.
Europe parking looks like this
A lot of us cities also do this. Tons in DC.
Mirrors edge
It does in more densely populated places here, too.
My city’s downtown core is about 25% car storage space. The latest wave of office space closures is being blamed on not having enough parking for the workers.
Here’s a great organization for this issue: https://parkingreform.org/
Gross
More parking, less sidewalks, bike lanes, bus lanes, trains, subways or even carpool lanes. Why? Because we love sucking GMs cock, thats why? Now pay your car loan so we can lower your credit score you fucking cucks.
BP, Shell, and Exxon Mobile’s big black oily cocks
Is the government my husband? We have two garages, one is used to store all the family’s bikes, Thule bike trailer and strollers. The second one is full of shit. This morning he said we need a carport to protect the car. The place where I’d personally rather have a carport system covered by solar panels is the train station where I leave my car in the morning to catch my commuting train to work so I don’t burst into flame in the evening in summer and freeze in winter when I return. Plus, electricity. This is my parking minimum.