Did you know? The amount of public subsidies given to free parking far outweighs federal funding for the National Park Service.
In a sendup of America’s parking obsession in Streetsblog, Kea Wilson invites the reader to visit one of America’s “internationally infamous” parking lots through a series of posters designed to look like vintage National Park Service posters.
“Fun fact: the National Park Service only gets about $3.6 billion a year from the federal government, while free parking alone draws between $102 and $374 billion in public subsidies annually, depending on how you calculate it.”
“Residents of St. Louis, for instance, can take a sweet staycation on 105 acres of lots in the downtown core alone, according to a recent analysis from the Parking Reform Network.” In Arlington, Texas, a whopping 42 percent of downtown land is dedicated to parking.
Not interested in touring your local parking lots? Well, Wilson notes, “you could visit an actual National Park … but you’d probably still have to drive.”
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City of Albany
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research