Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Downtown
But where's the empirical proof that people living in no-parking buildings—and I'm one of them—have lower auto ownership rates than those in similar buildings with onsite parking? There's nothing in the CNT study about that; it only looks at whether some existing spaces are going unused.
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All other variables being equal, buildings with on-site parking reduce the threshold of ownership. There is a certain amount of friction that has to be eased before car ownership will be worth someone's while. Of course, if there is exclusive primacy of the commute to their employment in their decision-making, and they are dead set on living where they live, then they're likely to grind through the friction and search for a street space every time they need to access their vehicle. But there must be a large amount of those whose situations place them very near the threshold of ownership, in which cases our current parking policy is pushing them to own, when they'd be quite comfortable not owning a vehicle. The TOD residents may bring vehicles into the fold, but perhaps they'll bring enough of them to create the pivotal amount of friction in the street-parking domain to get the marginal cases to ditch their cars, whether they live in a TOD or not.