But that reality doesn’t often translate into policy choices that take parking costs into account, experts say. In fact, many cities not only keep street parking cheap, but also require businesses and residences to have a certain number of parking spaces before they can open their doors. This not only encourages driving, but also incentivizes drivers to remain in their parking spots for long stretches of time and entices drivers to endlessly circle the block, waiting for a free spot to open up.

Meanwhile, land that could have a host of other uses instead gets paved over to create the required parking spaces. “When cities just require it, so then it’s provided ‘freely’ – and free has to be put in quotation marks because that just means it’s subsidized by every other thing. You have all kinds of distortions in how people decide to build or not and how people decide to travel or not,” says Weinberger.