> In urban planning, one has to be careful to solve the correct problem. The problem is not too many cars parked on a residential street. The problem is getting customers to businesses with minimal bad side effects.

The problem is getting people to different places, without them using too much space within the city. This means as little car usage as possible.

The example I mentioned – combined with cheap public transit – is very effective.

Cheap public transit is an actual solution.

Parking meters are just one way to get people to use it, and not a very good one: by the time people find out there are meters (when trying to park), it's too late to take the transit!

The money it cost to install meters would have been better spent on a marketing campaign to raise awareness of the transit option, or subsidizing the transit prices.

It's the problem here in LA. Designed for cars, lots of permit parking in some areas (usually more well-off ones with pull) and metered places. We're trying to catch up public transit with demand but unfortunately it still makes sense to have a car to get everywhere you need to go. Buses are stuck in the same traffic (no designated lanes) as you are, cycling can be done but is extremely dangerous, and the metro's current hub-and-spoke is useful if you're going downtown but the amount of stations is less than ideal (some stops more than a mile or so apart).

Modern parking meter systems are very cheap — especially because you just put up one ticket automat every 200m where you can pay with cash, phone, debit card, etc and get a little printed slip of paper saying date and time until when you can park, and then put that in your car.

Veeery cheap compared to actual meters.

And no, no marketing campaign or subsidy can be as effective as the parking costs. As long as parking isn't at least twice or thrice as expensive as transit no one will use transit. Its a serious issue IRL here. For a while they even did free transit, ads on every single billboard, bus and train, and still people rather parked for 10$ a 30min in the cuty, or even parked illegally.

Alternative as used in for example Rotterdam is to have a similar machine where you input your license plate. Then you don't need the ticket.

And this enables apps where you basically press [start parking] and [stop parking] and you won't even need to walk.

It won't kill businesses, it will move them. No business has the right to a specific location if it requires it's neighbors properties to.

First of all, public street parking, even in front of houses, is not "property."

Second, if urban planning is done properly, residential streets don't experience parking problems. That's the whole point of this thread.

And if urban planning is not done well, then it doesn't matter where businesses move--they'll still run into problems.

Oh, and if they all leave, then the neighbors will have a nice blighted block with empty buildings next door. Problem solved?

Parking meters do not magically create more parking spots. They create an incentive to use an alternative, but first there needs to be a good alternative.

> if urban planning is done properly, residential streets don't experience parking problems. That's the whole point of this thread.

If urban planning is done properly, there are no residential streets. Every street mixes residential, offices, and commercial properties.