If developers were allowed to face directly the high land costs of providing so much parking, the number of spaces would be a result of a careful economic calculation rather than a matter of satisfying a legal requirement. Parking would be scarcer, and more likely to have a price — or a higher one than it does now — and people would be more careful about when and where they drove.
The subsidies are largely invisible to drivers who park their cars — and thus free or cheap parking spaces feel like natural outcomes of the market, or perhaps even an entitlement. Yet the law is allocating this land rather than letting market prices adjudicate whether we need more parking, and whether that parking should be free.
Tag: transit
Whither Transit
Looks like the streetcars have effectively been killed off after already spending millions. Good news is unallocated funds will go to building playgrounds in Georgetown!
Uh, no. The economic impact of transit construction is well known:
- According to US DOT director Norman Mineta, every $1 billion invested in the nations’ transportation infrastructure supports approximately 47,500 jobs.
- Transit capital investment is a significant source of job creation. In the year following the investment 314 jobs are created for each $10 million invested in transit capital funding.
- Transit operations spending provides a direct infusion to the local economy. Over 570 jobs are created for each $10 million invested in the short run.
- Tri-Rail of South Florida expects its five-year public transportation development plan to spawn 6,300 ongoing system-related jobs.
- New York’s East Side Access project is expected to generate 375,000 jobs and $26 billion in wages.
- In 2000, the average downtown vacancy rate for cities without rail was 12.8%, but 8% for all cities with rail transit.
Playgrounds: not so much. Terrible, terrible decision with far-reaching, all-bad repercussions for the DC economy.
Lemkin 