In neighborhoods with good access to transit and services, parking works against their advantages as urban places–it encourages driving, takes up space and makes things more expensive. As parking is built where real alternatives to driving exist, more people are encouraged to drive and those San Franciscans that must drive find it ever more difficult and expensive to do so.

People are rational: they get around by the most convenient and reliable means. Every parking space we create makes it more attractive to drive. The problem is that our streets are reaching capacity. There is no room to expand them, short of knocking down buildings. By encouraging people to drive, parking puts more cars on our streets–and further degrades their quality, worsening traffic and delaying transit service. We can never build enough parking, because the more we build, the more people will choose to drive.