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> Japan is one of the only countries to have privatized parking. In Europe and North America, vast quantities of parking space is socialized: municipalities own

• newsclues 5mo ago
  Makes you consider the cost of anything that is “free”
  • kulahan 5mo ago
    "free" just means "publicly subsidized" in these cases. Not that this is a bad thing, but that's really all it is. See also: literally anything any nation pays for using tax money.
    • acdha 5mo ago
      Sometimes it’s privately subsidized, too, such as when you go out to eat and your meal costs more because the restaurant provides free parking. People who don’t drive often pay higher prices subsidizing the people who do, which is something we should talk about more directly.
      • cm11 5mo ago
        Same with credit cards.
      • doikor 5mo ago
        A lot of the time the businesses don’t have an option to not have parking as it is enforced by zoning laws/regulations. Though they can make that mandatory parking paid but often the social norm is for it to be free (at least for the first hour or two)
        • acdha 5mo ago
          Yes, the line between public and private policy is blurry but I think our society would’ve gone down a very different path if car drivers were expected to directly pay for what they use as much as transit riders are.
  • wallst07 5mo ago
    This is the whole point of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
• thaumasiotes 5mo ago
  > Before someone buys a car, they must prove that they have a reserved night-time space on private land, either owned or leased. > This is got to be a huge factor. If the USA implemented that exact rule, it would change almost nothing. People already need nighttime parking for non-legal reasons.
  • mjamesaustin 5mo ago
    You are dramatically misinformed. Where I live in Los Angeles, a very large number of people park their cars primarily or exclusively on the street. Such a change would have a significant impact.
    • thaumasiotes 5mo ago
      > Where I live in Los Angeles, a very large number of people park their cars primarily or exclusively on the street. > Such a change would have a significant impact. What would that impact be? Do you see, or experience, a lot of contention for nighttime parking? There's plenty of contention for street parking in nonresidential areas. But a nighttime parking certificate doesn't do anything about that. Nighttime parking is done in residential areas.
      • Tumblewood 5mo ago
        Not the person you're replying to, but I see the same thing happen in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. Dense neighborhood with a lot of nightlife, but many of its residents exclusively use free street parking to park overnight. There is a lot of contention for spots after about 7pm.
      • numpad0 5mo ago
        It's not like you have to get waivers to park your cars in front of your house in Japan. Your car MUST have a designated lot, with proofs(more or less a set of simple declaration forms than anything detailed and concrete), to be registered under your name. Otherwise it cannot be registered. A full waiver for parking violations technically exist, but they are reserved for official and/or actually special vehicles only(like actual fire trucks). The vast majority of cars stay in an off-of-road parking lot of some sort, be it a fancy mechanical one or a crude gravel lot next to apartment complex. I reckon that not many other country do that kind of legal setup. But Japan is among those very few.
• ericmay 5mo ago
  The main low-hanging fruit is just removing surface parking lots in American downtowns and stopping the development and expansion of highways through the same. If you did nothing else that would have a significant positive impact. For almost all communities those surface parking lots are economic extracts from the community. They're woefully underpriced for tax purposes too.
  • spike021 5mo ago
    Maybe the parking lots, but if you know anything about the major Japanese cities with satisfyingly good train systems then you'll also know they have a lot of expressways running through them.
    • ericmay 5mo ago
      Yes, I do love the rail system in Japan. Went a few years ago, going back next year most likely. I've also driven in Japan (Osaka). I just meant, in general, a low-hanging fruit we could tackle is making surface parking lots a thing of the past in downtown or urban areas. With actual economically productive constructs there instead, such as business, retail, housing, parks, &c. we could pretty much get to the density where trams make sense, and in some cities we could work on intra-city rail too. I think where I live (Columbus) is very well positioned for this model if only our civic leaders had courage and stopped thinking of transit as a "blue" thing (also our city council needs to stop suburban thinking). We don't need to build any more expressways or highways. We are maxed out. The only sane option is respecting appropriate density, and focusing on categorical changes in how we move people: walk/bike/rail instead of bus/car/roadways.
      • fc417fc802 5mo ago
        > we could pretty much get to the density where trams make sense That's the key issue. We don't need to launch a war on surface parking to achieve the necessary density. Zoning and mass transit buildout go hand in hand and the problem getting in the way is fundamentally a political one. If the politics is solved and the density increases market forces will cause the surface parking to go away on their own.
• SilverElfin 5mo ago
  That won’t fix the cost of rail in America, which is the main reason America doesn’t have better rail. Look at California high speed rail or light rail in Seattle. They have insane costs per mile, are still very over budget, falling behind schedule, and basically are forever grifts. The availability of parking is unrelated to these issues. It comes back to mismanagement and corruption.
  • n8cpdx 5mo ago
    Can you explain how Seattle is an example? They’re opening new lines, Link is packed often, seems like a well used reliable service, but I only visit once or twice a year.
    • SilverElfin 5mo ago
      It’s been a while since I read about their system but as I recall, across the entire system something like 100 billion is the total cost. But that’s only for like 75 ish miles. So it’s very expensive. I recently saw a news article saying they’re 30 billion short per their projections and are now cutting lines out of the plan that voters expected when they supported levies, and some surrounding cities where residents have each paid hundreds or more a year for the rail to come to them, now may not get them at all. Even though they’ve been paying into it for a decade or two. Which to me is a form of theft.
      • barchar 5mo ago
        The central sections of link were expensive because they're built through the center of the earth with really huge stations, some of this is to avoid impacting cars but much is just to get elevation changes. The connection over lake Washington required a lot of money and work too, as it's a floating bridge. The less complex sections were mostly on-par with other us cities.
  • jltsiren 5mo ago
    The cost of passenger rail is high in America, because America doesn't build enough rail. If you try building a single megaproject, nobody knows what they are doing, everything is inefficient, and mistakes will be made. But you learn by doing. If the individual projects are small enough that there are always multiple projects in various stages, you develop and maintain expertise. Then you can build things cost-effectively and finish the projects in time.
• cosmic_cheese 5mo ago
  Street parking makes suburbs worse, too. Almost everybody in my neighborhood has their garages piled to the ceiling with junk and parks in the street, which makes it a pain to weave through even for someone driving a compact crossover… I can’t imagine what kind of hell it is for trash and delivery drivers having to squeeze huge trucks and vans through without swiping peoples’ cars.
  • bluebarbet 5mo ago
    And that's without mentioning what's like for the lowest of the low (in the USA): pedestrians.
  • nunez 5mo ago
    my absolute biggest pet peeve about living in "modern" suburbs and a large contributing factor behind why i wanted to (and eventually did) leave them. imagine having the only well-maintained sidewalk for a good ways out be blocked by cars whose owners have 2+ car garages!
    • dnnddidiej 5mo ago
      Blocking the sidewalk should be fineable?
      • dboreham 5mo ago
        Such rules are often not enforced.
        • rootusrootus 5mo ago
          In my experience, it's often up to the people in the neighborhood to decide. One of my neighbors down the street a number of years ago was militant about it. Code Enforcement does not routinely drive our streets looking for violations, but if someone blocked a sidewalk, parked facing the wrong way on the street, etc, Code Enforcement would magically appear to give them a ticket. Pretty sure this neighbor had them on speed dial.
• gonzalohm 5mo ago
  In which part of Europe is cheap to park?
  • ciupicri 5mo ago
    Romania. Even its capital and the largest city - Bucharest - is still pretty cheap, sometimes even free like in this example on Google Street View https://maps.app.goo.gl/r6TFFtHbj2SELTqY9 https://maps.app.goo.gl/r6TFFtHbj2SELTqY9 If you're willing to take the risk which is pretty low, you can even park it on the sidewalk like here https://maps.app.goo.gl/y6DNVBdR2KvJsA917 https://maps.app.goo.gl/y6DNVBdR2KvJsA917 But times are changing. Lanes and sidewalks, sometimes even green spaces, are being converted to parking spaces, so there's less spaces for freeloading. They're also becoming more and more expensive. The residential ones have also been hard to get and it will probably become even harder to get as more drivers will need them as the risk of getting a fine increases.
    • gonzalohm 5mo ago
      That's probably an exception. Most cities I know in Europe have crazy expensive parking and usually forbid cars from entering the city center. I would say EU cities are really hostile to cars
      • lebuin 5mo ago
        You should distinguish between residents and visitors. In Belgium, and I believe in many other European cities, street parking for residents is extremely cheap or free.
      • reddalo 5mo ago
        In Italy parking is free for residents. And street parking in the city centre is usually cheap (2 or 3 euros per hour). Car culture in Italy is still too strong; but luckily many municipalities are working to decrease parking spots and build more cycle lanes.
  • bluebarbet 5mo ago
    Not Paris and especially not if you have an SUV: 225€ for six hours (sic). But unlike Tokyo the average narrow street in Paris is still lined with parked cars from end to end, so apparently the fees are still too low.
• PacificSpecific 5mo ago
  Wow weird. I've lived there and never knew but now that you've pointed that out I'm realizing we never parked on the street. It's always at the house or the parking lot of the place we're going. Of course 95% of the time we take the train. Only use a car to go to Costco or possibly go out to the country (even then a lot of remote areas are super accessible in public transit)
• vondur 5mo ago
  I think it is. You have to prove that you have a space to park your car and if you have space at your house, they come to measure and verify that you do. I don't mind parking for places that you are visiting, but you need to have your own parking and not depend on the street for it.
• jccx70 5mo ago
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• dublinstats 5mo ago
  Their streets tend to be super narrow, with pedestrians and bicycles sharing the shoulder. And back streets are basically alleys with pedestrians sharing the street with cars. Obviously parked cars there would be a disaster. Also it tends to cost more via tolls to drive any significant distance than to take the train or bus (or plane for that matter), unless you have multiple people in the car. The car situation in Japan strikes me as more a case of regulatory capture than wise use of land. Because even small towns with vast empty spaces operate this way.
  • BirdieNZ 5mo ago
    It's significantly more efficient to provide services to compact towns than sprawled towns, so I'm not sure this registers to me as a downside. It's pretty common for small sprawled towns to struggle to keep up with maintenance of roads/water/power, which is less of an issue with compact towns. The same applies at the city level, of course.
    • ehnto 5mo ago
      The lack of sprawl is also a consequence of how mountainous the country is. While not as bad as a lot of western sprawl, the areas of Japan that are a bit wider and less populated do have an element of car dependent sprawl to them. Then of course the villages that aren't covered by the train network and aren't boxed in by mountains have a pretty similar relationship to cars as a small western town. Where I think the US and Australia both struggle is trying to make the car work in dense cities as populations grow. We do actually have pretty dense cities in Aus, yet cannot give up the car.
  • fellowmartian 5mo ago
    “Regulatory capture”? This term means something very specific and doesn’t apply in this case at all.
  • christina97 5mo ago
    So in other words… they internalized a number of heavily subsidized externalities of individual transportation by car?
• xnx 5mo ago
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• kulahan 5mo ago
  A fellow Shoupista!
• jayd16 5mo ago
  I like trains but the logic is flawed. If we banned hats, or made it so they were very expensive, less people would wear hats. And sure, probably more places would worry about shade because hats are not an option... But it doesn't really prove that's the right thing to do or that hats are inefficient use of cloth.
  • malicka 5mo ago
    Hats are pretty objectively an ineffecient use of cloth, here. Roads are incredibly expensive to maintain societally because cars cause so much wear-and-tear; cars, maintenance, and insurance are expensive on the individual; lack of foot-traffic is expensive for business-owners; individual car-use is much more expensive on the planet and power grid; travel is more difficult & and dangerous for children and old-folks… it goes on and on. Having sprawling towns that require cars to get around is pretty obviously a bad idea from so many fronts. Trains, trolleys, and bikes are better on all these points.
    • fc417fc802 5mo ago
      > Roads are incredibly expensive to maintain societally because cars cause so much wear-and-tear; Actually the wear and tear due to cars is minimal compared to that of trucks. The relationship of wear to mass is nonlinear. Which isn't to say that buttering half the earth with asphalt isn't a seemingly absurd use of resources.
  • eloisant 5mo ago
    It's not about artificially increasing car ownership price, it's about making people pay for what they use (parking space) instead of having it paid for by the whole society like a socialized good.
    • jayd16 5mo ago
      But it is. Otherwise we'd just be talking about raising meter prices and not trains.
• skybrian 5mo ago
  It would make a difference in dense cities like San Francisco where many people park on the street. A lot of people would have to give up their cars. Meanwhile, in rural areas and many suburbs, it would be pointless paperwork, because everyone has a big enough driveway for their cars and nobody parks on the street at night. So it seems like it would be difficult to get enough people in favor to do it state-wide in California? Wherever it would actually force people to do something, it would be unpopular.
  • deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  • fendy3002 5mo ago
    there is middleground: tax / fines, whatever you name them. It will be free if you filled the paperwork, and it start out cheap, while gradually increase yearly. Can be different depending on the density or how heavy traffic an area is. However you should improve the public transport at the same time too.
  • dbdr 5mo ago
    Your city/rural distinction is insightful. I think it can be taken into account relatively easily. Name explicitly the cities/locations were the requirement would apply. Possibly based on some objective criteria like population density.
    • wkrsz 5mo ago
      Can such policies be implemented individually by cities?
      • ad133 5mo ago
        Not sure about the legal frameworks in the US but that’s exactly how it works in most places in the UK. Cities have restrictions for on-street parking (metered, permitted, illegal) whereas the towns and villages don’t (unless they also bring in bylaws to help with congestion).
• queSide 5mo ago
  It's worth noting that for a kei car (the small 660cc cars that make up most of japan's car sales) you do not actually need to prove you have parking space in some regions of japan (like you do with non kei cars)
• wallst07 5mo ago
  If Japan was a US State, it would be fifth in size. So you maybe right, who knows, but there is nothing stopping a state adopting these laws and seeing how it works out. California could do it, why not?
• brigandish 5mo ago
  This only applies to night time, and trains stop early compared to many other places. Also, there are plenty of paid parking spaces for use during the day, and you’ll often find cars parked in the street, even narrow ones, with the hazard lights on like they’re a magic spell, which they are, because enforcement is close to zero. You will even see cars parked on the road next to a car park. All in all, I don’t think there’s any relationship between Japan’s car culture, parking rules or availability, and its train system.
• balderdash 5mo ago
  The availability of parking is inversely proportional to its cost. High cost = lots of availability.
• mock-possum 5mo ago
  > Before someone buys a car, they must prove that they have a reserved night-time space on private land Ahhhh yes The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to purchase a car without also showing proof of a reserved night-time space on private land.