“Why is it that men and women, normally courteous and considerate... should all of a sudden revert to selfish, snarling savages the minute they get behind the wheel of an automobile?’’ —Miller McClintock.

Free parking is a local benefit or cure that harms the whole city.

Free parking increases the demand for cars, and more cars increase traffic congestion, air pollution, and energy consumption. More traffic congestion in turn spurs the search for more local remedies, such as street widening, more freeways, and even higher parking requirements. Off-street parking requirements quietly create citywide problems that are far worse than the local ones they are meant to solve.

The list of problems caused by free and under priced parking is long:

Car dependency: Free parking encourages people to drive more, rather than seek alternatives.

Discouragement of environmentally-friendly transport: People who own cars are less likely to walk short distances, since there is no economic penalty for driving: the increased cars in the street make walking and bicycling more unpleasant, and clog the roads used by buses, thus making bus service slower.

Traffic congestion: Encouragement

of driving simply increases traffic congestion, as more people buy cars and use them for all trips, even very short ones.

Energy waste: More cars, and reliance on them even for short trips and solo travel, wastes fuel.

Accidents: Cars parked in the street cause accidents when cyclists hit an opening car door.

Air pollution: An increase in car traffic means an increase in air pollution, given the cumulative effect of each polluting vehicle.

Global climate change: An increase in air pollution contributes to global climate change. Vehicle emissions are already the main contributor: we need to discourage, not encourage, travel by motorized vehicles.

Increased housing prices: Since the price of parking is included in the price of homes, homes become more expensive.

Unjust subsidies for cars: Only a few people drive, but everyone pays.

Social inequity: When the poor and middle class subsidize the rich, social inequity increases: social inequity in turn leads to poor health and increased crime.

Distorted choices in transportation investment: A focus on providing infrastructure for cars, not people,

leads to investment in roads and parking rather than mass transit, NMT, or affordable housing and liveable cities.

Degradation of the environment: More space for cars means less land available for planting trees and for other green spaces.

Increase in impervious surface area: Parking lots, and increased street surfaces due to the need to provide more road space for the increased number of cars, means that more of the city is paved over, leading to greater prob-

lems of storm water run-off.

Reduction in land values: Parking is probably the least profitable of land uses: more parking means less value of the land, since virtually any other use would bring in more money.

In some cases, zoning requirements for parking can mean that older build ings that fail to provide adequate parking cannot be converted into new uses. This is one main cause of urban degradation in the US.

FarjanaAfrin, Mirpur, Dhaka