The C is for Crank
The Seattle Times vs. the Free Market
As Josh noted earlier, the Seattle Times
has a jaw-droppingly oblivious editorial today inveighing against the city of Seattle's proposal to lift minimum parking requirements on developers building within 1,300 feet of frequent transit service, allowing the free market, rather than government, to determine how much parking developers build. The idea is that if buyers want to live in a condo without paying an extra $10,000 to $25,000 or more for parking, developers should be free to give them that option.
But the Times ---echoing its totally nonbiased front-page coverage of the issue a few weeks ago, complete with the headline, "Parking around Seattle may get worse as city planners favor transit"---insists on government intervention. If homebuyers don't want parking, and developers want to give homebuyers what they want, then only city bureaucrats can force developers to provide the unwanted parking spaces.
"It is utopian," the Times writes, "to think that many people will abandon their cars. A few will, but the vast majority who can afford market-priced housing in Seattle will have a motor vehicle, now and always. If they have a vehicle, they will park it — somewhere."
If the Times is right, of course---if "the vast majority" of Seattle residents are "always" going to have a car---then the market, being the market, will provide parking for them. Nothing in the legislation the council is considering prevents that. All the proposal does is give developers some flexibility to provide less parking in cases where the demand for one parking space per unit isn't there---something the ordinarily pro-free-market Times should be willing to get behind.
(The free market, by the way, actually doesn't agree with the Times ' assessment. According to a hot-off-the-presses report, people younger than 30 are driving less than ever before---a trend that the report concludes is not likely to reverse itself.)
If the council lifts its parking requirements, the Times predicts, the city will become even more "utopian and anti-family" than it is already. Hmm. Had Times editorialists read their own front page today, they might have noted this story, about the school district's plans to open a new elementary school---in utopian, anti-family downtown Seattle.
But the Times ---echoing its totally nonbiased front-page coverage of the issue a few weeks ago, complete with the headline, "Parking around Seattle may get worse as city planners favor transit"---insists on government intervention. If homebuyers don't want parking, and developers want to give homebuyers what they want, then only city bureaucrats can force developers to provide the unwanted parking spaces.
"It is utopian," the Times writes, "to think that many people will abandon their cars. A few will, but the vast majority who can afford market-priced housing in Seattle will have a motor vehicle, now and always. If they have a vehicle, they will park it — somewhere."
If the Times is right, of course---if "the vast majority" of Seattle residents are "always" going to have a car---then the market, being the market, will provide parking for them. Nothing in the legislation the council is considering prevents that. All the proposal does is give developers some flexibility to provide less parking in cases where the demand for one parking space per unit isn't there---something the ordinarily pro-free-market Times should be willing to get behind.
(The free market, by the way, actually doesn't agree with the Times ' assessment. According to a hot-off-the-presses report, people younger than 30 are driving less than ever before---a trend that the report concludes is not likely to reverse itself.)
If the council lifts its parking requirements, the Times predicts, the city will become even more "utopian and anti-family" than it is already. Hmm. Had Times editorialists read their own front page today, they might have noted this story, about the school district's plans to open a new elementary school---in utopian, anti-family downtown Seattle.
