Free parking comes at a price

　　IN our society, cars receive considerable attention and study—whether the subject is buying and selling them, the traffic congestion they cause or the dangerous things we do in them, like texting and talking on cellphones while driving. But we haven’t devoted nearly enough thought to how cars are usually deployed—namely, by sitting in parking spaces.

　　Is this a serious economic issue? In fact, it’s a classic tale of how subsidies, use restrictions, and price controls can steer an economy in wrong directions. Car owners may not want to hear this, but we have too much free parking.

　　Higher charges for parking spaces would limit our trips by car. That would cut emissions, alleviate congestion and, as a side effect, improve land use. Donald C. Shoup, professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, has made this idea a cause, as presented in his 733page book, “The High Cost of Free Parking”.

　　Many suburbanites take free parking for granted, whether it’s in the lot of a bigbox store or at home in the driveway. Yet the presence of so many parking spaces is an artifact of regulation and serves as a powerful subsidy to cars and car trips. Legally mandated parking lowers the market price of parking spaces, often to zero. Zoning and development restrictions often require a large number of parking spaces attached to a store or a smaller number of spaces attached to a house or apartment block.

　　The subsidies are largely invisible to drivers who park their cars—and thus free or cheap parking spaces feel like natural outcomes of the market, or perhaps even an entitlement. Yet the law is allocating this land rather than letting market prices adjudicate whether we need more parking, and whether that parking should be free. We end up overusing land for cars—and overusing cars too. You don’t have to hate sprawl, or automobiles, to want to stop subsidizing that way of life.

　　Under a more sensible policy, a parking space that is currently free could cost at least $100 a month—and maybe much more—in many American cities and suburbs. At the bottom end of that estimate, if a commuter drives to work 20 days a month, current parking policy offers a subsidy of $5 a day—which is more than the gas and wearandtear costs of many roundtrip commutes. In essence, the parking subsidy outweighs many of the other costs of driving, including the gasoline tax.

　　Imposing higher fees for parking may make further changes more palatable by helping to promote higher residential density and support for mass transit.

　　As Professor Shoup puts it: “Who pays for free parking? Everyone but the motorist.”

　　1. The word “alleviate” (Para 3, Line 2) most probably means ____________.

　　A. eliminate B. control C. relieve D. devastate

　　2. According to the author,____________.

　　A. there are too many parking spaces

　　B. more suburban parking spaces are still needed

　　C. a powerful subsidy should be given to drivers

　　D. the value of parking spaces is underestimated

　　3. Free parking will finally lead to ____________.

　　A. serious environment pollution

　　B. bad urban planning

　　C. severe financial difficulty

　　D. overusing land and cars

　　4. According to the passage, the author thinks the parking subsidy ____________.

　　A. unnecessary B. insufficient C. unreasonable D. impractical

　　5. Facing the problems brought about by free parking, the author suggests ___________.

　　A. increase the subsidy for parking

　　B. charge higher fees for parking

　　C. develop the mass transit

　　D. force the motorist to pay for parking