Parking structures are insanely expensive. Like, each parking spot in a parking structure costs like 30X what it costs to build a surface parking spot. It's a crapload of concrete, and with climate change, concrete ain't getting cheaper (concrete is extremely carbon-intensive, it releases CO2 intrinsically, not just from power-generation).

edit, since I'm getting downvotes and I assume this post is being read as an endorsement of city-destroying surface parking: The correct solution is just to not do parking at all except for extreme needs and focus on human-scale transportation.

I mean, yes.

To be fair, this is kind of a special case- it’s an area where it’s cheaper per square foot to build lots than buildings - but this is also a leftover of the 1960s-1980s. This aren’t done this way as much anymore, at least not in dense areas. You’ll never see this in New York City or in DC for example.

So much of America is so low density that it’s just a different set of issues than in other parts of the world. I went to visit family in West Virginia this weekend and it was literally 2 hours of driving through mountains and woods with no houses or towns in sight- no lots, no decks, no trains, you’re in the middle of nowhere.

Are you stupid? That picture is from the 70s. Here is an updated shot from the same general area: https://imgur.io/tWzvSWq

We do?

Major cities are packed with parking decks, but decks are expensive, so they'll only be built if land values are high. For most of America's history it was simply cheaper to build out than up in most places.

It may be ugly, inconvenient, and environmentally problematic, but it shouldn't be confusing.

Edit: it occurs to me that more parking, decks or otherwise, would actually be good for cars which seems antithetical to the point of this community... so I'm unsure what point is even trying to be made aside from calling America stupid

Pretty ironic to have obvious grammatical errors in a post calling an entire country stupid

It's an issue of cost and density.

This is like saying "why don't people build apartments in the suburbs"

Because if they did, it would be quicker to walk straight to the destination than to and from the parking spaces.

Car infrastructure generally ends up justifying itself.

The real reason? Bad, old parking regulations: https://youtu.be/OUNXFHpUhu8?si=sv3Rdh15Q0k5UHKU

No really. It's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever learned about my country.

But Cletus can't fit his 10-foot-tall, 8-foot-wide, cyclist-crushing, peelout-producing penis replacement in a normal parking garage! Who will think about poor Cletus?

Cities don’t tax only based on the potential for what land could be doing, but instead include taxes on improvements to the land as well. As a result, there’s incentive to sprawl rather than pressure to densify.

I used to work for a precast concrete company that alnost exclusively built parking garages. We made several of them each year.

A parking garage can cost tens of millions of dollars once its all built. A paved parking lot is cheaper, so normally that's what you see.

Like in Tokyo? That would allow cities to be denser and thus reduce the need of cars. Seems very unamerican.

I know a lot of folks on cummunities like this who do not like parking infrastructure of any kind. Personally I like efficient garages like this and lots of incentive to keep the cars parked. Also laws to allow condo owners and such to put in a storage pod in the space.

Is this a joke? Parking garages are heavily used here.

I'd be much more open to the idea if it wasn't for the fact that every parking garage I've ever been you've had to pay by the hour for the space.

I have often had this thought when driving around for parking at a mall in rural America. Wouldn't a parking garage greatly reduce walking time into the store and save enough space to add more stores? But you see tons of small towns in America with laws against parking structes to "protect their small towns appeal". Because as we all know the reason why people more to small towns is for the love of driving in a parking lot.

There's a huge amount of parking garages here, but many of them are also disguised to not be super obvious. There is so much parking, and it's never enough for the cars.

It's also going to depend a bit on the city. More suburby sprawling places will probably not build as many parking garages.

Cars stop scaling at tens of millions in a single city and actually make transit worse. Its stupid to rely on them in the first place.

Parking garages are not always that safe....

They forgot to even the odds and use the powerwinch to trigger a controlled explosion