What this paper ignores is the economic benefit of a parking space. If there is no parking at all, what would be the economic loss suffered? Does that loss exceed the cost? This would vary by municipality of course. But, I am more likely to spend money and buy things if there is easier parking. For example, grocery shopping. If I have two kids and have to have the stroller plus carry my purchases home on a subway, that is a disincentive compared to a place that offers adequate parking. If freezing in the cold waiting for a bus is my only access option for office space, then I am disinclined to rent that office space. This is highly simplified of course, but a major flaw of the paper is completely ignoring the benefit side of the equation.
The paper (and subsequent book) is not about abolishing parking. It's about abolishing parking minimums and time based (free) parking. The first removes the dead-weight loss of regulated (over) provision of parking spaces for both retail and residential developments. The second is about allowing parking to function in an economic market where you can exchange the time you spend circling around trying to find a park for the (lower) cost of paying for the privilege of parking somewhere convenient for you. Hence the title "the high price of free parking".
I don't see the flaw. The point is parking planners ignored the cost of parking when setting minimum levels of required parking or require free parking, not that there's no benefit.
But there's no such thing as a free lunch. Benefits to you (for easier parking) correspond to subsidizes by others (like those who can't drive).
One conclusion I drew is to view the paper as an argument that centralized planning for parking spaces is inefficient compared to an open market. When economics interferes with human rights and dignities then I am all for changing the laws so as to change the economics. But I find it hard to believe that your disinclination to pay $2 for parking so you can drive to go shopping is a human right any more than my disinclination (as one who walks to the store) to pay for your free parking through higher food costs.
As the paper points out, current infrastructure assumes, and therefore depends on, free parking. It can't be simply changed, which is why the author proposes "parking benefit districts" as a step towards a free market solution.
If urban grocery stores weren't required to have 100 parking spaces, there would likely be more neighborhood shops and you wouldn't have to take the subway to get to the grocery store. In thriving, dense urban environments without excessive parking, it is at most 3 blocks to the grocery store, often less.
Edit: Quoting from the article: "These retail
corridors have narrow parcels on which building a store and providing the required parking is difficult. As a result, much commercial land remains vacant, and adjacent neighborhoods lack retail services, even food stores".
It doesn't ignore that; in fact, it recognizes it by saying that this benefit confers economic value on that parking space, and that charging a fair price for that parking will ensure it is used efficiently.
Also, you may be more likely to spend money, but that's anecdotal. Lots of people don't own cars (myself included) and excessive parking dissuades me from patronizing a business because it correlates to difficult access.
I used to be a bicycle commuter between Santa Monica and El Segundo (in LA near LAX) and it was a vile, horrible experience of cycling through an asphalt hellscape while motorists tried to kill me. I now live in a place which has no parking minimums and far less free parking (with exceptions for the disabled) and find life to be far superior.
If I had not had this experience, I might feel differently.
"benefit confers economic value on that parking space"
Another way to look at it, is it increases demand for land in the burbs, where there's free parking.
There's no obvious inherent benefit to shopping downtown where I work or in the burbs where I live. Theoretically centralization would benefit everyone. However no one shops downtown if they can avoid it, the parking situation is horrendous and high rents mean higher prices. So all my retail shopping is done in the burbs. Which means higher land demand in the burbs (both for the stores, and the free parking).
There are ancillary cultural effects. If you partition an area into "you only go there because you have to go there because there's no free parking and no retail" vs "you go there because you want to, and there's free parking" the coincidence sets up inappropriate beliefs, like free parking is a universal good or paying to park is a universal bad. Reality is its more like a circus ride where if your land prices exceed $X/sq foot then both free parking and retail are inherently economically inappropriate in those areas, if at all avoidable. Stick a super expensive office building on that land instead, etc. Shoppers and their freely parked cars don't belong in areas that cost $2000/sq foot, especially if $20/sq ft is a ten minute drive out of the city.
Not all shopping has to be done with a SUV in a large parking lot. Retail does not require parking if there is a large population within walking/easy public transit access.
I'll give my neighborhood as an example. I live in a small city, outside of the most urban part, where most buildings are houses on 1/10 of acre lots. Population density is about 10,000 per square mile. Pretty much everyone has a car, however most local businesses don't have any off street parking. The side streets tend to have free parking (there's always enough), and the main streets tend to have metered parking. Plenty of people come here from the suburbs to shop, because there are unique, local stores you're not going to find at a mall, and there's plenty of good places to eat and drink.
The businesses don't have to provide nearly as much parking, because they have several thousand potential customers within a short walk.
The setup you're describing is, if at all urban, only barely so. Really on an area average you've just described a suburbs which happened to develop with a dense enough core that there is little or no 'free parking' for the businesses.
It would be like me picking out the area called 'west Seattle' (one of the near by suburbs of Seattle) when I should really be talking about Seattle as the urban environment.
Source please. My experience, with my friends and coworkers, is that nobody leaves downtown to shop if they can avoid it. It is quite possible that False Consensus effect is coming in to play here:
I don't mean to be rude, I just think you (and perhaps me too!) may have some inaccurate assumptions about how people behave. You shop in the burbs. I avoid the burbs with every fiber of my being (grew up there, hope never to return).
On my phone so don't have links at hand, but I've read surveys about parking which say that retailers overvalue free parking in their assumptions about customer behaviour. Especially parking immediately out front on high streets.
There are many high streets in Australia completely flanked by parked cars where passing traffic is then blocked from seeing storefronts and thus less likely to stop and shop. Councils are slowly reducing the number of parking spaces in these situations but fighting their own tenants in doing so.
