Post in Shhh!... Legislature's $371 Subsidy Undermines Central Cities

May 01 18:11 UTC

"Free" parking, indeed.  I recommend a book by Donald Shoup, professor of urban
planning at University of California, Los Angeles.  Shoup also holds a
doctorate in economics from Yale.  The High Cost of Free Parking reveals the
level at which auto parking is subsidized in the United States and reveals the
resulting negative consequences to communities.

From a review of the book:

"Drivers currently park free on 99 percent of their trips and their cars are
parked 95 percent of the time. But free parking isn’t really free. Shoup, an
urban economist and professor of urban planning at UCLA, estimates that in 2002
between $127 and $374 billion a year was spent nationally to subsidize
off-street parking—as much as the U.S. spent on Medicare or national defense
that year."

http://www.its.berkeley.edu/itsreview/summer2005/freeparking.html

A $200 million parking subsidy at the Mall of Your Momica is in no way good for
the cities of St. Paul, Minneapolis or Bloomington.  Instead we should be
investing these monies into public infrastructure (like transit) that will
allow for strong local economies to blossom throughout the region.  We would
receive far greater economic impact from having many, smaller and locally owned
businesses in comparison to the large multi-national corporate model that our
Mall in Bloomington represents.

Thanks to Bob Spaulding for posting on this important topic.

Matty Lang,
Midtown Phillips, Minneapolis