Downtown Austin has a parking problem. Anyone who has every tried to go there at any time other than 3:00 a.m. on a Wednesday knows that parking is a challenge. (Also, I am only assuming that parking is easier in the wee hours of mid-week, but I could be wrong.) To hear some city officials and business leaders describe it, though, you would think that we have too much parking downtown, thanks to antiquated government regulations. The city is prepared to respond, too:

Austin might soon ditch a three-decade-old policy of requiring downtown buildings and tenant businesses to have a minimum number of parking spaces tied either to square footage or the number of condos and apartments in a building.

Supporters of the move say the minimum requirement has caused a parking surplus downtown, encouraging people to use their cars rather than bikes, buses and rail. Take away that requirement, they say, and eventually garage parking will become a more scarce (and expensive) resource, encouraging people to use alternative transportation. [Emphasis added]

I must have missed this glut of downtown parking somehow. Admittedly, I do not spend as much of the evening hours downtown as I used to, say, ten years ago. In fact, I’m not certain of the last time I went downtown at night with the intention of doing anything other than improv or a movie.

The real question is about this “alternative transportation.” What “alternative transportation”??? Yes, we have buses, and yes, we have a nascent commuter rail system, but Austin is part of the grand western American tradition of drive-your-damn-self-everywhere.

Perhaps this is the Invisible Hand at work. If we remove the ability of consumers to park downtown, then the Invisible Hand will create a shiny, efficient transportation system to get people to and fro. I hope the mayor has an Adam Smith Signal, because we need to light that thing up!

Photo credit: © Copyright kim traynor and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.