Economic View - Why Free Parking Comes at a Price - NYTimes.com

from the piece:

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. We end up overusing land for cars — and overusing cars too. You don’t have to hate sprawl, or automobiles, to want to stop subsidizing that way of life. As Professor Shoup wrote, “Minimum parking requirements act like a fertility drug for cars.”

A great case for how we can start choking off the cars that dominate our cities and towns.

Professor Shoup estimates that many American parking spaces have a higher economic value than the cars sitting in them.

[…]

As Professor Shoup puts it: “Who pays for free parking? Everyone but the motorist.”