I'd prefer for there to be a more market incentive to build parking garages than a mandate for commercial/offices to have to all have their own parking, or effectively subsidized free street side parking. Think of all the surface area used up by cars parking on the street; pave that over with a sidewalk and allow bars/restaurants to set up shop there. That's what I would like.
Building a parking spot in a modern building can cost $20k, which is hard to recoup with parking revenue.
If the break even target is 10 years with no interest accrued, we are talking about $5.47 a day in revenue needs to be generated (plus the overhead of managing the lot itself).
How many paid parking lots do you see that are full on a regular basis? Are they really generating revenue even half time?
