Comment by thaumasiotes
10 days ago
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.
> 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.
Not at all. I agree with you that that's what they're hoping to express. But it's not what they said. The proposal is just "a reserved nighttime space on private land".
Street parking in front of your house is not necessarily banned by that requirement. The edge of the street can easily be part of the house lot. It can also easily be owned by a private company that owns the whole edge of the street and leases that space to homeowners.
But note that that company wouldn't be worth much, because residential street parking is not in short supply. Which is what I've been pointing out above.
IANAL anywhere, but the actual law[1] is a blanket ban on roadside parking as means of storage. The blurbs around overnight and proofs are just implementation details. Both the spirit and the reality is no one shall leave cars on curbs. I believe this includes privately owned access roads due to technicality combos with building codes that require roads adjoining properties for fire safety reasons(but sort of inexplicably not driveways).
Anyways, the point is, it actually is a nationwide prohibition of curbside parking as a car ownership strategy, and vast majority do comply with it.
1: https://laws.e-gov.go.jp/law/337AC0000000145/