Cspan. Org podcasts. Writer and journalist and urban analyst, a terrificte wrir with the ability for complex issues and narratives and receive the troubles we are running into everyday everything is connected and the forces that have shaped from the rise of automobiles and challenges a parking space is nothing less between driving and excelling. [laughter] good evening. Thank you for that introduction and thank you for upstaging. Ill know you want to spend an hr of watching but this will take long, im going to explain history. Shes with us only about parking have no characterized intellectual life the library reality tv parking wars if you havent seen it, it follows the workers of the Philadelphia Parking Authority as they toe the Little Things cars and generally provoke and sometimes experience an extraordinary level of mental anguish. You can probably imagine when i started writing a book parking status, i felt blessed to learn there were dozens of hours footage this kind of thing. At its core, tension in the show revolves around unresolved question, of the american of an experience to whom does parking for long . Who owns it and on one condition . Two years ago donald shupe of the first speaker observed thinking about parking takes place in reptilian cortex. The part of the brain sent to government aggression, territoriality and ritual display. I believe cognitive science has moved on but holds true for parking. Sitting here in this Beautiful Library removed from the stress of the road, your answer to the question of parking ownership is simple. This is public, it belongs to all of us. From behind the wheel of your car, he might say otherwise. You might say it belongs to me. You see this assumption on neighborhood forms such as next door for unfamiliar parked car at a suburban purpose could be part of the conversation. Many cities issued local parking permits as a way to legitimize time. Parking belongs only to the people who believe. As to a private garage also resists piece of the curb for you. Listen keep it in chicago all or your car with the endorses is what it is. When person tried to limit this practice after a snowfall, incident councilman protested in the issue speaks to the basic principle what it means to be an american like goldmine and pioneers, residents of the right to their claim will not surprise you to learn dozens of americans are killed. I submit to you. Public, private or somewhere in between. Rarely enforced getting a parking ticket is unlucky and unfair, parking is mapping because we have no choice but to drive. Notcar, maybe freedom but being able to park it turns into cage but youre probably figuring out the source of the irritation, theres just not enough parking. Fair enough, sometimes its immediately in front of their destination upon arrival. Parking people like to say driver smoke parking to be free, convenient and available. Think of it as a venn diagram. You can get two of those three, inconvenience but not available, parking when you show up to a restaurant downtown 8 00ot p. M. Convenience and available but not great, thats parking in front of thent hot restaurant downtown. Free and available but not convened is where many of us parking because we dont want to pay for it myself. In other words, standards for parking for very high. We dont want to pay, we dont want to wait, we dont want to walk. Universities, the best parking s is sold out one comprised status. Uc berkeley too win reserved parking place you must win a nobel prize a little what is required here at the library. It would be unimaginable to hold any other standard the problem is not that we dont have enough parking. In fact, there is an astounding amount of parking in this country as many as eight spots for every car and of course not all cars are parked. Even as someone who set out to write a book about parking in this country are shocked by these numbers so digress from the difficulty of finding parking space and give a sense of a much parking is. In Los Angeles County there are 19 billion Parking Spaces, five for every household, 14 of the inc. Land in the country, more land than moving land on the streets and freeways put together. Silicon valley in the wealthiest region in the united states, parking and 13 of the land. A parking thing that the earth twice. The smaller the city to mark parking there is generally,es moines iowa has 20 a household. Parking household, partly stability excsively to parking pick up 20 of the land, 29 wntown kansas city and it doesnt include insig or other buildings or curb parking. Abandoned philadelphia here also. In buffalo new york, half of downtown property was devoted to stealing cars it was joke and master plan is to demolish all downtown and we are only halfway there. If you see, there still buildings thatst are there is me in this country and you see the working, politics and urban design by. Not only how much originally just going to model real cities but we realized there were too many pertinent ones in the real world it would be boring in terms of parking lots and try to imagine the parking was underground to do the best we could to make it look attractive so if there is so much parking and white is it so hard to find a spot . The answer lies in ownership. The parking problem as old as the road itself in the seventh century bc, is hearing king posted signs that read royal road, let no man decrease it. Penalty of death and public impalement y so stop complaining about your parking tickets. [laughter] Julius Caesar introduced parking in rome to use traffic in 17th centuryy new york established a towing service to give the streets. You could get your pink back from the current or course for two and a halfan and the terms g pound and told pound come from shared history of unclaimed property. Up until the invention of the automobile, the temperamental nature was its own form of regulation. Cars that can be left outside in all weather days or weeks at a time turned the parking problem into a major dilemma. Not only did merchants and abandoned horsepower for the first few decades of the 20th century, commuters ditched the pickpockets. Americans had a mode of transport overwhelming and immediate. 1920s, from the woman spoke for a nation when she said she bought the car before installing into a comet. What followed, a car formed downtown. A largeus share traffic. The Business People and money in the institute and Real Estate Developers and it was going the district of large cities. The first came across city here i couldnt believe itt because between racial inequality and housing characterized the urban trajectory in the editorials. The General Motors represents this era and filled with more parking and the importance and it was newng urgency. There was parking in the revelation and at this time cities manage parking demand by turning her parking building walkable places 1935 and parking spots taken byy employees early in the. Morning and during the day. You a little bit of parking all day of a five minute walk away and interfaced between streets and buildings, shoppers and delivery. Parking meters were in the time we miracle. Cities and chose another path, to those on parking supplies, parking lots settle into the wreckage of urban renewal and garages were put up downtown and parking meters fellow Transit Service will begin to disintegrate. Development was redlined most important cities began requiring new or renovated at its own contract. Home to business capable of managing streets and curbs, cities first private sector to take care of parking and this would have serious consequences. It is very complicated and the question of who owns it. Chronologically speaking free or cleared and the Critical Role is limited. It was ubiquitous and understand the private sector. Developers would be forced. Nearly every city was long. Apartment buildings and schools, now salons yet youre looking at a Public Parking manual on the screen. I am coffee donut shop with the drivethroughif window that is o specific. Look at marijuana dispensaries, corporate store, Building Material and lumber supply, it goes on and on. The code includes the following parking rules. Once but for every 250 square feet of the pool room, one for 150 square feet at the bingo parler. Five for every link at a bowling l. A. , one for every two in a marina and one for every 250 square feet sexually oriented business. In the private sector the united states. In housing it goes from there. Sometimes it is just one parcel and it canan be hard to make anything work at all. Developers cant afford it even if they could find properties for sale. They are immovable objects and the result of these rules, the requirements have helped trigger events and triple factors and the early 20th century. More parking means less pouting because parking tickets have space. This is annually to pay for the parking and rent regardless and of person inch looking at the values on one side and downtown cincinnati for this can cost 100,000. On the left we see low density with ample room to park. You dont see much in between. High parking requirements is not. Limit our parking. A second consequence making parkingt spot mandatory husband in architecture. For such a default in tandem with parking lots and increasing required parking and forced developers to move from the early 20th century mentioned, taverns, storefront groceries, rowhouses and brief spots, triple factors in the center, fast food chains for primary architectural features a garage door. When land values are high enough to get parking part of building, an example might be a city in chicago on the left plenty of examples here. When land values are not so high, we get something that looks more like dodger stadium, los angeles. The system has made it impossible to maintain the american mainstream. Parcels on mainstream were originally developed as commercial storefront facing the sidewalk 20 or 30 sidebyside there you go, main street. Thats what you see on the upper left here but if you want to open a shop in an American City today, you need to provide 1200 square feet of parking for every 1000 square feet of interior commercial space. More than half of the thought is working out. 2001 is stories, the building shrinks to more than, fed more than a quarter and makes it impossible to renovate Historic Structures and one describes building as walked up behind the sidewalk and concomitant of parking and its even worse for restaurants in most cities, ten Parking Spaces are required for every 1000 square feet of restaurant so the main street lot of 7500 square feet can only support the restaurant of 1500 square feet. 80 of the law is parking now. Developer in los angeles told me about presenting projects. I have some architect rents and we would show a picture in the communityy, a beautiful line, 1930s building saying you want. Then our requirements unless youre going to taco bell, you need not apply. Fast food architecture, compact structures on cute watch what you see at the bottom right, thats the architecture parking requirement. Te follows fu function. This brings me to a third consequence of the post parking status quo, transportation. This requires parking and it only makes us hungry for more parking. Parking forces us to drive more in the more we drive, the more parking we crave. In the early days certainly Parking Facilities arose in response to demand buthw later e hopes of planners decided to require parking in every building began to create demand. Research has shown parking growth between 1960 and 1980 was a powerful editor of car use in thees following two decades. More food to traffic, not spanish originally hoped backing cars off the street. I spoke to a guy in chicago, chief of staff there who said your number one concern is traffic and your number one demand is parking, ask understandable they are cross purposes. He told me their two things you must never assist in the community. You dont want to be all night, does anyone have a guess what they are . One of course is parking and the other is max. Okay have confirmed this relationship between parking and driving in commercial districts. It is hard to see why. Free parking isnt just an incentive, it degrades urban environment to the extent that walking, biking or transit use becomes difficult or dangerous, buildings that repel each other like magnets are hard to walk between. Parking memos are like andnd expanding architecture and urbanism with asphalt. After affordability, architecturere and transportatin parkingha decisions have had a terrible environment driving, local solutions, strong water flooding and heavy rainll becaue its over perry, tomlin and forrest, lack of groundwater replenishment for the same reason parking is a huge contributor to the urban event affected hostile environment. All of this private parking have consequences for housing affordability, architecture, transportation and theth environment but heres the crazy thing. All that private parking didnt even make it that. One reason parking has had offices and shops and rarely if ever shared. D. Client was from complementary parking in office and Apartment Building or a bacon start or schools in the future sidebyside and it is familiar and accessible. It can become parking. This is not just because its shared but also the best parking is free. Three parking will become boys or girls play in studies estimate a third of downtown traffic is made up of people in the was on the road each year and garages, no ones first choice are expensive streetst parking and remember why we decided to mandate private parking with private requirements and enormous effect and one of the safest changes for city officials somehow permit and removing parked cars, this forces drivers to make precisee term and if a child is about to cross the street, they dont want to touch three parking. Alternatives for the private arguments and most cities dont because of the three parking. The parking situation having a more pernicious effect in the resident changed the growth in the community and this is natural and prioritizing for these people. You will naturally have this and finally, there is the question of public space. Confining so much of our most valuable land. This is the part where i tell you not, its bad, i know. Theres heritage, the environment, transportation and the things are changing for the better. After i started writing this book, i read an article about this and i want to tell you something i had wished, do you know this story . A man comes through in the worst possible way. I chose the topic in part because i experienced a sudden revelation, on the streets of our cities and also send parts as well the boss amount of public space for the long term storage of course. Compound bow we collectively decided the best to use this space was for cars to rest and recuperate for the next journey. Along each curb holding by you. The most expensive land in the world and you can have it free provided you use it for one thing. I wish for others to share this epiphany recognized tremendous potential of all the land that lay beneath 1000 parked cars. Simultaneously came to the realization of the parking previouslyd considered potentil Small Business survival. And you can begin to imagine what else we might do with this land. Too much a freeforall. Th there are no rules. Heavy with baseball bus. The rest of the funeral home and regulated everything. Living in chicago, the founder of the parking diagnosis, but a parking spot in defense in the downtown plot or garage. Starting t this company, because not enough parking but its not but theres not enough parking, is that there is too much but you dont know where it is because it is reserved for this poster or the courthouse, churchesnc parking lots tend toe full just once a week particularly egregious example. Feed the hungry, close the needy but dont share parking . Park Developers House started to challenge this. Lowering costs and right. Cities have tried to do something similar instead of making each business build its ownn parking and it allows an uninterrupted stretch and cincinnati is trying to Public Parking lot and minute hands so what happens when they stop requiringn it . 2018. With all this parking was a bill only to comply with the ha ha drivers manifesting an environment that reflects priorities. And the nazis and construct parking that otherwise built. Example builders choose parking once they were freed from these requirements. In los angeles builders were giving the option to convert old officeyo buildings like this turquoise eastern building youre looking at. They were givenfi the option to convert all Office Buildings to apartments and condos without including parking. O they use to great 7000 new Housing Housing units downtown in one decade. That wasde more than had been built in the previous three decades in downtown l. A. Combined. Ni onethird of the units would not have been built if parking had been constructed to the old standard. Many of the new resident did own cars,er but the proximate downtowns many commercial garages which are mostly empty at night. Had some friends who lived in this blue building and turns out they just parked their car in a crotch across the street, no big deal. Just the cities relax the rules about offStreet Parking the begin to recognize that on streetet parking could use a few more. Parking meters believe it or not are making a comeback. San francisco for example, has repriced its streets withth the goal of ensuring that drivers can always find an open space. This has resulted in more expensive Street Parking in certain locations but cheaper Street Parking elsewhere and cheaper garages as less cruising, and less cruising for parking is parking spots open up more quickly. Revenue from parking violations has gone down as legal parking spots open up and residents are spending much less time looking for them. Toote often, cities have forgotn the original purpose of parking meter, to manage and organize this precious zone that connects our streets and our buildings. They have instead viewed parking regulations is way to make money and not even primarily by the way for meters but from the cycle of fines and tickets that ensue when theres not enough room for everyone to park. Most cities make more money from tickets than did you from meters, and thats backwards. Of course leaders to bring in some money, and some cities are using that money to fund public improvements, to give a transit passes, cities are trying a special zones for delivery trucks, who currently lack of tens of thousands of dollars in illegal parking fines per truck per year, trying to do their job in places like boston or new york. Tens of thousands of dollars here compare that to the 275 you might pay for parking meter and suddenly free parking starts to seem kind of expensive. Like urban riverfront in the 1990s, the curve is being reassessed as a place with lots of potential. Nobody likes payin. I get it. Cities are becoming more and more expensive. There is an egalitarian in cachet to the idea that can drive right to the center of town and leave your car there for free. But if you give something away for you will soon run out of it. And down that road, lies mistakes from which Many American cities are still trying to recover. At the end of the day, free parking. All that equitable, after all. It leads to pollution. Congestion, tickets, traffic crashes and a parking shortage that motivates opposition to new housing and new residents to the outskirts of the city. A free place to park is a lousy consolation prize from a city that doesnt want you to live there. This reassessment parking ownership, liberal liberalizing the private lots and regulating the curb is an opportunity to improve cities in other ways too. What else might we do with the curb . We could create tiny parklets patches of space where older people, teenagers and young parents can sit and chat. We can build bus lanes to stop transit riders from getting stuck traffic or streetcar riders for that matter. We can build bike lanes because no one should die riding a bike. We can plant trees and restore patches. Prairie which will draw in bugs and birds clean and cool the air and soak up stormwater before. It floods peoples basements. This is no fantasy. This spring wrote a story about paris, a city has taken the upheavals of the last three years and flipped its parking policy down. It has stripped away tens of thousands of Parking Spaces and in their place put in place streets for school outside hundreds of schools. Like what . What youre seeing here, some of them include trees for shade lanes, for bicycles or and benches for older people, rest on their morning walk. This rethink is a necessity because. We are in the midst of a once in a century change in parking policy spurred by the arrival of electric vehicles. Parking in the 21st century is going to assume all the functions of a gas station. Building out electric vehicle. Charging whether in a condo parking lot or on a big city curb, is expense ev. It would be crazy. Install this infrastructure for every car in every single parking. But if were going to share, we have to figure out how to share parking. And with shared parking with, a world of parking thats a little less divided between public and private and lot better managed. We would not so much parking. Now you may say that doesnt sound very good. Me. And its true that Many Americans voted with their feet for a house in, the suburbs with a three car garage. But the promise of parking reform is not punishment for drivers or a Mass Movement towards car free households. Its the freedom to leave the car behind once in a while. There is a surprising amount of promise here. The median american owns 2. 2 cars. Thats a lot of cars. But more than half of all trips in big metro areas cities and suburbs are under miles. Thats distance that could be comfortably, could comfortably be covered on an electric bike or in a golf cart or on foot. If we made the streets safe enough for people to feel comfortable doing so, and if we were to take all parking and permit ourselves to do Something Else with it, there would be so many more things. Schools, cafes, gyms. So on parks, within walking distance, the most expensive places to live in this country are time, time again. The very where driving is optional and parking difficult. Historic university. 19th century neighborhoods in philadelphia. Boston. Wicker park in chicago or Highland Park in l. A. In our obsessive drive to, create more parking. We have made it impossible to build more places like these even as they have become the most desirable and neighborhoods in the country without parking. Baked into our streets and architecture. How many more people could live walkable places like these . How many more car dependent freed from parking laws could grow into neighborhoods where people could ride bikes, where a family with three cars could get by with two or a family with two cars, might manage with just one. In that world it would be easier, not harder, to find a spot and much easier to live in a place where you would not need to drive quite so often. Kids could walk to school and adults to the grocery store. In a world with better parking, there might be fewer places to park. But in place of those old parking spots would emerge. A city so much richer and fuller and fairer that we would not think twice about the one we had lost. Thank you very much much. Yeah, for some questions. Yeah. So were going to do questions and raise your hand and ill come over with the microphone. People can hear the question. If you havent. I remember hearing in the first stories when we started seeing about a selfdriving cars back concept effects that might happen in the cities where cars come and go, not stay in the city. Who dropped . Someone off at a location and, then go away from the urban core park outside before or cars could be shared and requiring more traffic, more on the road and less time park and fewer research about that and how would affect parking needs. And it isnt even Real Estate Tax and thats great question when i started working on this book feel like it was peak hype for selfdriving cars and i was very interested in that idea. And the founder of lyft wrote this long blog post about how selfdriving cars would make it possible to reimagine the urban environment. Because, for example, in downtown, you would no longer need any Parking Spaces because cars would just drive in, drop off their owners and drive to some low rent lot out by the airport or something, and parked there all day until it was time to pick up you from your job. And that is obviously an enticing vision because we have some we would have so much land work with. But i think the thing that has happened since is that the promises of selfdriving cars have just consistently failed to, you know, the reality has failed to live up to the promises over and over again. I think elon musk said a tesla drive crosscountry in 2018 and five years later were hearing it hasnt happened yet. So my sense is that its not its quite around the corner as we as we thought it was before. Coming out of this book is terrific in its process. I would like to buy it you can and will sign and ill put my parking stamp on it literal stamp. This is sort of related to the previous question, but maybe a stepping stone is. Im curious what your thoughts are on car sharing. I think it is maybe in your book or somewhere i heard that 1990 5 of a cars life has been parked. So its a huge waste. The use of the car and i just have stayed in touch. Whats going on with zipcar and other companies that have gone into that area . But it seems like its a bridge between waiting for the of selfdriving cars. But more efficient while were on our way. Yeah so those companies showed a lot of promise. There were all these companies were offering car, sharing. And for example, in an urban car, urban you even have a real Public Parking spots that would be reserved for them. And you could take one out for a couple hours and pay ten or 15 bucks. And it was much and cheaper than renting from from hertz or avis or Something Like that. My understanding from speaking with people who worked in that industry is that their business was sort of done in by the billions of dollars that were poured into and lyft. And it got to the point where you could rent a zipcar for 4 hours to, you know, drive out to the outlet mall or Something Like that. But it would cost more than it would cost to just get an uber driver to come and drive you both ways. And obviously that was not an actual comparison of the costs of each of those processes, but there was so much vc money being poured into uber and lyft at that time that they sort of drove some of those Car Sharing Companies out of existence reduced their clientele. Now, one reason for optimism, perhaps, is that car ownership has become extremely expensive of the price. Evs are obviously very pricey and the price of a new vehicle is gone up by Something Like ten or 15 in the last few years, and car payments are auto debt is also a soaring portion of americans household debt. So all of that i think adds up for all that adds up into reasons why car sharing might be possible again. But. But i think the companies that had to go out of ten years ago obviously were no longer in that low Interest Rate environment that permitted them to to do that kind of thing. And so, you know, im not sure. So i just had two questions. First of all, as do follow the not just bikes movement and that do you think moving a wave from bikes and towards the public is probably the way that would be beneficial towards or to most american and you know for here what was the first question do you follow the not just bikes movement not just bikes but no what what is that its i mean its moving away from sort of cars and towards, you know, Public Transportation bikes, those sort of things. They may have a lot of things that youve said throughout your. I and obviously im not familiar with the with with the expression not bikes. But i think generally speaking, i like the idea making it possible for people to get around other ways. I think one of the big challenges here, right, we i talked obviously about how how much parking is has been into the urban environment in a way, has made it really hard for to get away from from driving everywhere. And there are some pretty easy we can make like getting rid these laws that require new parking with every building that will begin to reverse tide. But its not just about land use, its also about street design. And if you do not make it safe for people to get around some other way on the street, then they are going to stop driving and you know, like today i was over in mount lookout. I was actually visiting my the childhood home of my grandmother who grew up in cincinnati and like there so many things about the neighborhood that just feel like theyve gotten a lot right, like theyve got these parking meters down by this little downtown commercial district, which obviously prevents, you know, the people who work in the stores and from parking there all day and taking up the. But then you go on some of streets around there like delta avenue and people are driving 55 miles an hour and theyve got bike lanes on the. But youre two feet away from somebody going by at that speed in a in a in a in a pickup truck. And no ones going to want to take their kids to a Little League game on that street. So i think that, you know, getting rid of the parking requirements is sort of a low hanging fruit. And after that, you have to start making some difficult decisions about how youre going to allocate the space in the street. And politically, obviously, that has proved challenging. I, i joined the slide right here. I joined the of the Community Council in overtherhine to advocate for residential parking. And ive emailed dr. Shoop and hes sent me suggestions for we did get permit parking. Thats helped a lot, but i found that the city that is prioritizing high density specific and adr uses the parking minimum to sort of make this case that if i parking for my son or my aging parents or what are all the needs that we have as residents of cincinnati but like to access all of cincinnati and a car is the best option for it theres this sense that i get that im choosing cars over people by trying to advocate for residents that need parking that dont have the affluence, to have Street Parking built into their property. Im also hearing developers kind of use the parking minimum to justify not building parking at all in Affordable Housing where those families absolutely still need their car. So in my Affordable Housing unit opened up a project that was 56 units and it was brought to the street that has 11 parking spots where all of those were already filled residents. And were now looking at density of an additional 35 units. Still, the same amount of car parking, none of them are providing parking because this argument and i think its great it sounds so beautiful. Its very idealistic. Im wondering if in your research you have found the downside of this where developers are going, no parking, i can park 12 units into this project without parking. Youll figure it out later. The residents are now trying to figure it out and getting so much pushback from people that are simply dismissing us with this of like you monsters. You only think about your car. When were thinking about our kids. Yeah well, i mean, yeah, its obviously there. Were going to have to make some tough choices. And if choice in that case is, you know, its do we want 56 units and no parking or do we want, i dont know, 35 units and 35 Parking Spaces and . I think that for too long we have taken the latter tack and prioritize over units and the situation may not be as severe or in cincinnati as it is in some other cities, you know, like in new york city, for example theres 60,000 People Living literally on the street and so it becomes very hard in those places to that we should build more parking instead of more homes. That said understand obviously at a neighborhood level does create this sort of intractable conflict that that inspires people to oppose new housing at all. And thats worse, obviously, than winding up with with a with a smaller building that includes some Parking Spaces. Now, the idealistic solution is just to tell people, well, its going to get more difficult to park. This is going to become a neighborhood where car ownership is maybe a little less a little less and people own fewer cars in this neighborhood. This neighborhood is going to change its character. And thats one option. Thats the idealistic option and the sort of cynical machiavellian option is you give the current residents ownership over a limited of parking placards that entitle them to like, you know, ownership over curbs basis thats limited. And so anybody else who moves in the after that they come with the car if they want but their options for parking are going to be limited based on the number of available spots. And right now, the status quo in a lot of cities is the issue residential parking permits, but they dont adjust the number to correspond the existing number of spaces on the street. And that obviously creates a lot of conflicts. And so if you were to just cap it and you were to say, okay, this belongs to you and its a tradable asset, then all of a sudden you have an incentive for more people to move into the neighborhood because you have something thats to become more and more valuable, which a license to park on the street. I didnt come over you and i can well enough i like to provide something uplifting but we moved last year after 46 years of pasadena, calif. Yeah, we love the eastern building building and we now come to Fountain Square and the Mercantile Library on south bank shuttle. It puts us up right outside . Our building drops us off right outside graders and we go. And thats something that few people use. But it is terrific. So if you live in newport or covington just cant take it the bloody thing yeah. Just like a question do we have a parking or do we have to drive . Which it feels to me sometimes we have a driving problem more like i. I love that my kids who are in their young twenties are saying i dont want a car for like i want a car when i have kids of my own. Like, are you seeing change in terms of people driving . I am skeptical. The idea that millennials or, gen z, are not going to car drivers just like their parents were, just because theres some innate generational difference there. I think lots i dont think that the american urban environment is a result of actual preferences. Its very hard to see the environment weve got is the environment weve because there is so much law and subsidy that is interfering and encouraging us to create more low density places. That has been the case four decades, starting with maybe the construction of the interstate highway system. Home mortgage interest deduction. On and on and on. Right. So. So. I think that know one of the things that shows me that theres a preference for, perhaps some more urban living is just that the price of living in cities is so high. And that is that has dissuaded a lot of people and thats and thats thats a real shame. And i think with respect to driving parking like i dont know if this is the case for the fellow who was just telling about taking the shuttle. But there are lots of ways you can try to dissuade people driving. You can put a higher tax on gasoline for example, you could you could put in tolls, the bridges or Something Like that. But but the often the easiest way just to charge for parking. I mean it is we just know that this is how works if you make people pay for parking, they will really test their transportation and decisions. And so its i sort of agree that the is probably as much as it is parking but parking happens to be the lever we have to control driving and its very accessible, its pretty flexible. And so if you put in a bunch of parking meters and a little downtown Commercial Area and people stop coming there and parking on the street will just lower the price, i mean, you screwed up. Its okay. You can change it. And and thats not true of, you know, maybe like shutting down a highway or Something Like that. And i think thats one of the things thats appealing about the parking Reform Movement is like its about tinkering, right . And thats what they did in san francisco, they raised the price here lower the price. You see how people react and and so so theres theres a theres lot of opportunity there to shape the way drive just just through parking. And although do you know about our three cdc good this is our privatized urban Planning Department its been very successful in gentrifying this whole area, rehabbing places, nice parking spots and stuff. They get a lot of their revenue, parking garages that seems like a conflict interest. We need to be getting rid, but they make a lot of money often for the developers. I mean, i guess it seems like. Yeah. So you can it seems like a conflict of interest because you think that we ought to be they going to construct more parking garages and encourage more people to drive because they make money from it . Actually i think that in a lot of cities the status is permanent conflict of interest because of something i mentioned during my which is that cities make a lot of money from illegal parking citations, almost all of them make more money from illegal parking citations than they do for meters. And this is this is a big component. The department of justices report on ferguson and revenue driven policing there, which is that basically these parking tickets trap people in cycles of debt and fines and it this terrible situation and i think so i basically agree with you that its bad for cities to think about parking as a cash cow they should think about it as a way to organize street space but. That said, if people are willing to pay that much to parking garages, then i think its basically okay. Think thats probably where they should be parking. And if that money goes back into city and creates neighborhoods of people want to invest in and spend time in, then to me thats thats a pretty good source of revenue for that that. So thats a question. And you have a talk too much about public transport station as an you havent talked too much about Public Transportation as an alternative. People shouldnt be driving all that much. I mean, one of the ideas of redeveloping downtown area with fewer Parking Spaces is that people will stay closer to home, and if they have to leave they will take Public Transportation to leave but if theyre going to be an urban environment, they have all their needs met within that urban environment so they dont really need the car. Well, obviously Public Transportation is ae big part of the solution especially if people are going to be going completely car free and the going to depend on it. And so again, like a lot of the problems with creating an efficient and workable Public Transportation network comes from the fact parking is free and so theres very little incentive to pay money to use transit, and also it takes up so much space that it prevents us from, for example, converting lanes of traffic to bus traffic transit and allow transit rider to get where the going were quickly. The reason i dont dwell on it so much is i think the real low hanging fruit is really about those neighborhood trips. Those are trips peopleke making cars now that you dont need to making cars in the future. It goes without saying that a more efficient and robust Public Transit network will help people get there in reduce car ownership from 2. 2 cars per household to i dont know, 1. 7. Even that would be a seismic american urban environment, in our economy and the way we store our cause and all that stuff. But again to me the easiest stuff is with this neighborhood trips, though short trips. That is simply for Public Transit should be rollede out. The pandemic we seen a reassessment of howt people thk about Public Transit. For decades its been organized on getting people downtown, because Downtown Business interests that want to be choked off by traffic and they were the ones who supported new initiatives, newew investments d so on. Public transit agencies are recognizing if theyre going to survive in an era where fewer people come downtown they are going to need to focus less on serving downtown offices and more on helping people live car free lives. I think some of them are coming to the realization and i hope they figured out before they all go bankrupt. [applause] cspan chapter or two cspans online store. Browse through her latest collection cspan products, apparel, books, home decor and accessories. Their something for every cspan fan and every purchase helps support our nonprofit operations. Shop now or anytime at cspanshop. Org. As part of a new series were asking you what books do you think shaped america . The books can be found initially by william faulkner. Pilgrims progress. To kill a mockingbird. You can join in the conversation by submitting your