My sis had a condo on mag mile in Chicago, I think a purchase of a parking spot in the condo was 35 grand, then 1400 a year in taxes. She gave up her car. moved to the burbs and sold the condo 2 years ago, and got a car and now parks for free.
I probably spend $40 a trip to chicago for parking, lucky only once or twice a year with the family, If I am going solo for conventions or whatever I use public transportation.
When my son lived in Boston he paid a high price for a parking spot. People living in the big cities usually have to. But to extrapolate from that the statement in the alleged USA Today headline is ridiculous.
I still suspect that āarticleā is actually a paid advertisement.
In the not so distant past I made a post on my disgust with the hassles of living in the SF Bay area and leaving 40+ years ago and reading this threads just confirms that my decision was good. For nearly 40 years I drove less than 10 minutes to and from work and never paid a dime to park anywhere. until last year when I went on a cruise and left the car at the dock side parking lot. That bill was an eye opening experience. Oh well, my annual registration and all taxes on 2 vehicles was less than $55 and I drive enough to fill a vehicle about once a month. Financially, considering the cost of living and time consumed commuting and working, I earned considerably more down here in Mayberry II than I could have if I had remained in San Leandro.
I thought I spent about nothing a year for parking but forgot I spent $25 to park at a Buffalo Bills game last year, but I had free tickets.
There if paid parking in downtown Buffalo but there is free parking usually within 2 blocks if you know where to look.
Also Metro Bus or Metro rail are only $2 each way with free parking at the city line stations. $1 each way for seniors.
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I agree, this was a very biased survey, and probably only applies to those living in large cities. Although on the face of it, it appears to be an overall average, but I doubt it.
I tried to find info on total cost of parking so I could divide by number of cars, but no luck.
But estimated number of cars in the US is 260 M in '15. multiply by $3000 and you get $780 Billion, seems a bit high.
I agree the vast majority of people donāt pay anywhere near that much. Most people donāt work in large cities. And not all large cities are like NYC or Boston where parking is a premium. I might pay a total of $100 a year for parking.
But people who work and commute into Boston pay dearly. Companies also pay more.
If 81% of Americans live in urban areas the parking statistics may be correct.
but Iām curious as to where they draw the line for urban residents.
My son has lived in southern California for years. In addition to living in an apartment in San Bernardino, heās owned homes in the San Fernando Valley and now in Santa Clarita. Heās never had to pay for parking out there.
Itās impossible to extrapolate from the Reuterās article that U.S. drivers on average spent more than $3,000 in parking expenses last year. Especially without knowing, as you pointed out, how the Reuterās article defined āurban areaā.
Thereās an old axiom I like that says āstatistics donāt lie, but liars often use statisticsā. I suspect that what we see in the āarticleā in U.S.A Today (which I suspect is a paid advertisement) is an illustration of this axiom in action.
I disagree about the endorsement. There is a parking app at the top of the story, but it isnāt the INRIX app. How do you see it as an advertisement if the product isnāt advertised? I went to the INRIX web site, and their app is entirely different.
I do think the article is poorly written. It should have said that big city drivers have the parking cost problem, yet the author didnāt. Note that they only list big cities as examples, indicating to me that when the author says average, he doesnāt mean average driver throughout the USA. I also think that most of the US geographically canāt be included because the column graph shows costs pretty close to $3000 on average.
Iām sure glad I live in fly-over country.
It said exactly what it intended to say. Follow the link and youāll find the parking ap connection.
Or, you can add facts of your choice, believe that the writer of the article simply overlooked something as important as saying that the statistic was about people living in big cities, and/or believe that the average driver in the U.S. spends $3,000 a year on parking. Your choice.
I still think it was a paid advertisement. I regularly see advertisements in magazines written in the format of and disguising themselves as āarticlesā. Itās common.
Yes @the_same_mountainbike. Commercials for all manner of products and services are produced to appear to be news or public service announcements.
This is a little bit off the subject but you need to realize that some (and I canāt say for sure how many) of those parking lots are owned by the local government and are leased out to private operators. At any rate in the local red star paper Sunday, was a column talking about how to deal with affordable housing. And instead of more subsidies to the poor, it was suggested to look at all the regulations, local and state, that have substantially raised the cost of housing making it unaffordable to lower income folks. I thought it was an interesting point. Increased regulations yields higher cost yields the need to provide more subsidies.
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Just to illustrate how bad government is at doing some things. In last Sundays Buffalo News there was an article about the city of Buffalo using a contractor to rehab 7 houses on Buffaloās East side. This is the area that traditionally has the highest proportion of black residents and low home prices. These homes probably average 95 years old.
The average cost for each homeāe rehab was just under $500,000 . The average selling price about $100,000.
One of my favorite President Ronald Reagan quotes:
āGovernmentās view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases:
If it moves, tax it.
If it keeps moving, regulate it.
And if it stops moving, subsidize it.ā
CSA 
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Just what low income people need, to be gentrified out of the neighborhoods that they can afford to live in.
I have watched the television show PARKING WARS several times and recognized that it really is a COLD WAR in Philadelphia. Like so much of local governments in many cities āIāve got you now suckerā is the cheer that bureaucrats want to hear. And ITāS MY JOB is somehow supposed to make confiscatory enforcement of petty, often meaningless regulations acceptable. Itās a shame that so much of government spending is so poorly managed and the people government is tasked with protecting are caught in a Catch 22 cat and mouse game that they cannot win.
Would you believe 50,000 defines āurbanā ? I was curious, too.
https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/urban-rural.html
I donāt know about you all but I donāt consider 50K residents much of a city nor very urban. That would include Lima, Ohio, pop 37K. If any of you have driven through Lima, it is a stretch to describe as āurbanā
I live in a town of ~40,000 and the downtown is so dead the council would consider paying people to park on Main St in hopes they might buy something. Many $millions have been spent downtown on bike lanes, dressing up sidewalks, improving the traffic lights and giving tax breaks to anyone willing to rent one of many vacant store fronts but no one wants to go there. and the old established retailers there refuse to spend their own money to improve their situations but instead use their influence on city hall to get continued tax funded improvements made.
I used to live near Troy, Ohio with a population of 25,000 and a total county population of 102,000. The ācityā center is a vibrant place with good restaurants and a large round-a-bout that confused every outsider that came in. The county was well run as was the city. You didnāt need to bribe any business to move into the city and working with the county services was quite easy.
Not at all like my hometown. A city of 145K in a county of 500K. My hometown did all the things your town did, @Rod_Knox, with essentially no good results. The government doesnāt work very well, the city has been in decline since the 70ās and is still in decline.
My current residence is in a county of 670,000 that works really well. All my dealings with the county have been surprisingly good. The closest city has 75K and it works really well.
Two work, one doesnāt. Any guesses as to why that is?