Comment by jerlam
18 hours ago
On street parking is so ingrained into the American lifestyle that any change to the status quo is impossible. Cars have more rights on public property than people. Every suburban neighborhood has conflicts over people's imagined "ownership" of the street parking in front of their house. People rarely use their garages to store their car since they can just leave it on the street. There are often laws that prevent people from other neighborhoods from using the public street to park. New roads are paved as wide as possible to allow both street parking and a double-parked car to not impede traffic. And we've started building homes without any kind of parking that force people to use the street.
> On street parking is so ingrained into the American lifestyle that any change to the status quo is impossible
Plenty of American cities regulate or even eliminated, in various measures, on-street parking.
Europe is much better at this than we are. Even when you have on street parking, they make sure there are clearances around cross walks and places where there are lots of pedestrians. Most US cities don't even care, even a supposedly pedestrian friendly one like Seattle.
Impossible is probably the wrong word. But where I live, a superficially "progressive" area, many of these traffic calming, road diet, etc. measures are met with regular opposition.