Rethinking Free Parking

"Think how odd that is...I wouldn’t open a restaurant so big I couldn’t fill it up except on Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve. Neither would you. You’d just accept it as a fact of life that once in a while, somebody will have to be turned away.

It’s only when it comes to parking lots that planners and local governments insist on invoking a concept as foolish as maximum capacity. And that’s for a rather simple reason: When it comes to parking, nobody worries about losing money. Parking, after all, is free.

Or, rather, they think it’s free. Of course, it isn’t....