Free parking makes it cheaper to own a car. But, as UCLA economist Donald Shoup has long argued, it makes everything else more expensive. Parking at the supermarket is embedded in the cost of groceries. Parking attached to an apartment building is built into the price of rent.
And because cities typically require developers to build a minimum amount of parking — say, one spot per bedroom in each housing unit, or two per thousand square feet of commercial space — you may pay for the cost of parking even if you never drive a car.
One analysis in Seattle found, for instance, that overbuilt parking at apartment buildings can drive up rents by nearly $250 a month. In Chicago, a similar recent study concluded that on average a third of costly parking at apartment buildings sits empty overnight. In Los Angeles, Shoup calculates, the mandate to provide minimum parking effectively reduces the number of units in a new apartment by 13 percent. And it can nearly double the cost there of constructing a shopping center if we’re talking underground lots.