Why, it’s being increasingly asked, do those who regale against over-regulation by government, suddenly reverse course when it comes to abolishing minimum parking requirements?
Most recently, the Seattle Times:
Seattle is a highly regulated city, sometimes to the detriment of reasonable development, and generally this package of reforms is good. But to allow the spread of housing without parking is utopian and anti-family.
It is utopian to think that many people will abandon their cars. A few will, but the vast majority who can afford market-priced housing in Seattle will have a motor vehicle, now and always. If they have a vehicle, they will park it — somewhere.
As Erica Barnett in Seattle’s Publicola points out in The Seattle Times vs the Free Market:
All the proposal does is give developers some flexibility to provide less parking in cases where the demand for one parking space per unit isn’t there—something the ordinarily pro-free-market Times should be willing to get behind.
The Times is not alone, of course. There’s the same curious dicotomy from the usual critics of government for ‘social engineering’ who then defend car-dependent suburbia as though it was an untrammelled expression of free will rather than the consequence of a century’s worth of legal mandates, enforced constraints and staggering subsidies. Particularly when it comes to their insistence that high minimum standards for parking be maintained even when developers affirm the lack of demand and excessive cost.
Why?
It’s not a lack of faith in the free market , it’s a classic case of hypocrisy by the right wing in our societies.
Most Conservatives today are happy to support subsidies as long as though subsidies benefit them. Everyone else can pay for them and live in their small government nirvana. In this case, its preserving the pro-car status quo at the expense of non-car users who don’t vote for Conservative politicians in large numbers.
It’s the same cognitive dissonance that gives Boomers a total pass on OAS changes despite the fact that they’ve benefited the most from longevity increases and are burdening their children far more than they ever were. It’s the same cognitive dissonance that allows billionaires to benefit from massive subsidies while whinging about taxes for underserving “welfare bums.”
Small government nirvana is always for someone else, rarely is it intended for the people who advocate for it.
I agree with Jack. Here in SE Portland a developer is trying to put in an 80 unit apartment with no parking. The neighbors are up in arms because these new people will take up the free on street public parking in front of the single family residences, many of which have no on-site parking. And this is liberal SE Portland, where folks don’t like cars. Unless it’s their car, and the free public place where they park it 🙂