As respondents to travel surveys often make clear, parking in America is free 99 percent of the time. But building it is expensive. Surface parking can cost $5,000 a space. Even in low-cost cities like Phoenix, the median cost of a new structured parking space is more than $19,000. Meeting Phoenix’s super-high parking requirements on the lower floors of an office building takes the cost of the project up by 45 percent. The parking scholar Todd Litman estimates it costs $4,400 to supply parking for each vehicle every year, with drivers directly contributing just 20 percent of that—mostly in the
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