> There probably are places where 10 m2 costs around £3,000 per year, but they are relatively rare.
Costs in what sense? The whole argument here is that cities subsidize car space, so the cost to the end consumer doesn't prove anything.
> Traditionally having all car owners share all parking space makes sure that when you drive your car somewhere, for example to visit a friend, you can actually park there. If all parking space is privately owned that model tends to break down.
Depends. If it's privately owned by parking suppliers, then presumably you can buy parking. Or if it's privately owned by residents, then you can use your friend's parking.
Besides, you can always have alternate options for visiting friends.
No, I'm talking about the cost to own a piece of land. In most areas it is possible to compute what a piece of empty land costs. Even if that piece is right in the middle of a city.
If you want to have a car (or otherwise rely on cars) it is an extremely bad idea to rely on a privately owned parking supplier who can set prices at any amount. Additionally, if everybody reserves space on his/her own private property for visiting guests, you are wasting an enormous amount of space. Wasting space is bad because you want to have as high population density as possible within constraints set by your life style.
So the obvious solution is to pool all that space and then let the local government set the price for using it. And then of course, it is best to just pay that as property tax.
Of course, if you don't need a car, then it is better to live in an area where cars can not park. And that space is use for something else.
Ah, well in that case 3000 GBP/year doesn't sound that unusual to me. I bet lots of cities have prices that high in their CBD/downtown area.
> If you want to have a car (or otherwise rely on cars) it is an extremely bad idea to rely on a privately owned parking supplier who can set prices at any amount.
"If you need to eat, it is an extremely bad idea to rely on a privately owned food supplier who can set prices at any amount."
> So the obvious solution is to pool all that space and then let the local government set the price for using it.
Okay, maybe that can work if
> And then of course, it is best to just pay that as property tax.
Wait what? Why? That space is valuable, if the cost to the end user at the point of the transaction is zero then you're making people who walk/bike/bus subsidize people who drive, which means the poor subsidizing the affluent, not to mention it'll get overused. Why would you want to do that?
Cars should be optional things, and if the government subsidizes them people will tend to drive everywhere and push for vast swathes of parking everywhere (see: almost every city in the US) which hurts every other form of transportation.
> And then of course, it is best to just pay that as property tax.
This is where you lose me. It is better for the government to charge per use so that people have the incentive to use parking space efficiently. Making the parking free at the point of use just encourages overuse.
Once you have built a residential neighbourhood, parking on the streets is a sunk cost. Cities need money for the police, to collect garbage, etc. So there is no point in coming up with convoluted schemes to charge people for services that the city provides. Keep tax simple and it costs less to collect it.
Of course, you always run into people with mistaken believes in economic incentives, such as charging per kilo of garbage. By and large those cause more problems then they solve. The best option to make people miserable is to let a private company collect parking fees on behalf of the local government. Then you can be sure that a lot of that money will be wasted on expensive officies, salaries for management, etc.
If there is an actual shortage of parking space, and replacing parking space with bike lanes, etc, may cause such a shortage, then charging for parking makes sense.
If most people living in a residential area are convinced they need a car, then charging for parking is just going to make people unhappy and is likely reducing the value of property in that area.
You've got it exactly backwards. There IS a shortage of parking in big cities. You can't make more streets. Collecting a pile of money in property taxes doesn't improve the situation.
The point here is to use money as a means to allocate a scarce resource, and to make car drivers pay the fair cost of operating their car. This will re-balance the incentive structure to push people to walk, use public transit, bike, use delivery services, etc. Covering the cost in property tax doesn't allocate the cost to people who drive.
But this works really well!!! I live in an area where instead of paying x per month for garbage collection, I pay about €3.50 per bag for a particular kind of bag that I can leave at the curb and have picked up. This way I am incentivized to produce less waste (also, recycling is a little bit cheaper) . https://keywaste.ie/domestic/domestic-waste-services/
Similarly, there is no free street parking. We have some street parking, but it's still too cheap because it's almost always full (about €3 per hour but only during enforcement hours). However! There is a private garage around the corner where I can park for €22 per day if I care to. If I don't care to, I am wealthier as a result. In the end, so are my neighbours, because none of us is paying for parking we don't need.
Costs in what sense? The whole argument here is that cities subsidize car space, so the cost to the end consumer doesn't prove anything.
> Traditionally having all car owners share all parking space makes sure that when you drive your car somewhere, for example to visit a friend, you can actually park there. If all parking space is privately owned that model tends to break down.
Depends. If it's privately owned by parking suppliers, then presumably you can buy parking. Or if it's privately owned by residents, then you can use your friend's parking.
Besides, you can always have alternate options for visiting friends.