Comment by thaumasiotes
11 days ago
> Where I live in Los Angeles, a very large number of people park their cars primarily or exclusively on the street.
> Such a change would have a significant impact.
What would that impact be? Do you see, or experience, a lot of contention for nighttime parking?
There's plenty of contention for street parking in nonresidential areas. But a nighttime parking certificate doesn't do anything about that. Nighttime parking is done in residential areas.
It's not like you have to get waivers to park your cars in front of your house in Japan. Your car MUST have a designated lot, with proofs(more or less a set of simple declaration forms than anything detailed and concrete), to be registered under your name. Otherwise it cannot be registered. A full waiver for parking violations technically exist, but they are reserved for official and/or actually special vehicles only(like actual fire trucks). The vast majority of cars stay in an off-of-road parking lot of some sort, be it a fancy mechanical one or a crude gravel lot next to apartment complex.
I reckon that not many other country do that kind of legal setup. But Japan is among those very few.
But permission to park in front of your own house is trivial to obtain in the US (as the thread has noted, generally not even necessary to obtain, but in some cases it is necessary to get permission) and would satisfy the requirement.
You can imagine a regime where parking in front of your own house is banned as a policy choice, but that's completely different from a regime where you need to document that you have permission to park somewhere at night. The nighttime parking requirement doesn't make it any harder to own a car, because you're "gatekeeping" ownership with a gate that can't bar anyone.
> You can imagine a regime where parking in front of your own house is banned as a policy choice
Yes, I believe that's exactly what's being referred to. A blanket ban on street parking and requiring documentation of a dedicated off street parking space to register a vehicle.
Of course there would be little to no point to such an exercise in a nation where the majority of the streets have wide shoulders specifically intended for parking. What's happening here is that people with a vested interest in a given political outcome aren't making a rational comparison of the differences between the infrastructure in the two places.
My take is that the anti-car movement broadly engages in a disingenuous tactic where they actively attempt to make the experience of using cars worse in order to drive political change while misrepresenting the nature of their actions. It's an underhanded tactic employed by a vocal minority with the intent of fooling the silent majority.
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Not the person you're replying to, but I see the same thing happen in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. Dense neighborhood with a lot of nightlife, but many of its residents exclusively use free street parking to park overnight. There is a lot of contention for spots after about 7pm.
>Do you see, or experience, a lot of contention for nighttime parking?
In the Hudson Waterfront of New Jersey, yes.