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this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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Because the majority of people park their car and their homes where they don't have to pay for a space.
Then they have proof of owning a space. Japan outlaws overnight street parking to prevent cheating the system.
How specifically
You either own a space or you don't. I edited it earlier about overnight street parking being outlawed if that's what you're talking about. I don't know what you mean by parking at their homes. Driveways? That's owning a space. The key point here is if a house/apartment isn't built with a space you need to get one either from someone who isn't using it or a commercial parking structure. If a municipality wanted to dole out street parking in residential areas they could do that too.
It won't work in the U.S. because people still have to drive everywhere anyway. Go over to a friend's house? Get fucked I guess.
I should have said "it won't work in the united states without decades of work undoing car centrism"
Also in its current state there's no good way to actually ensure that an address has a parking space. And what do you do with large families? Or people registering multiple cars at the same address otherwise?
They rent or lease spaces if they don't have enough. It means they're paying for the infrastructure they use. The alternative is the above system that just enforces car centrism. I don't consider it particularly hostile myself. Parking would be dirt cheap in rural areas and very expensive in urban. And inacessable suburban hellholes would be penalized. As it should be.
and this is the key point i think: it would be incredibly easy to transition to this system, because the easy way is simply allowing people to pay extra for a “street parking” version that’s essentially paying extra for road maintenance to “rent” the street spot… nothing changes except there are no externalities, and there’s control over the situation: over time you can disincentivise street parking and eventually drive it down to acceptable levels
You're being downvoted but what you're raising is a common argument point. I'll put in some effort here to explain what Japan's system is trying to achieve. Let's start with a simple concept: someone has to build and pay for each parking spot. That is, it's impossible to order a parking spot to have it delivered and maintained to you for free.
If you have a home that you bought, then it was included in the price of the home. That garage and driveway was built on land you paid for and poured by the developer.
If you don't have a driveway, then you'll park on the street. That street was bought and paved by the developer or the city. Each year you'll pay taxes to cover the expense of maintaining that street spot (sweeping, drainage, chip sealing, etc).
These two cases present the same utility: a place to store a car. The difference is in how it's priced: one is internalized and one is externalized. You directly pay to repair your driveway but you don't directly pay to repair your street spot. Your neighbors, no matter if they drive or how many cars they own, pay for your street spot when it needs a repair.
Japan's system is designed such that the general public is not burdened with your choice to drive. Your choice to drive is yours to make, but it's not something that you get to externalize onto others. If you wish to drive, then buy that extra lot of land and put a driveway on it. Heck, make it extra wide so you can park your daily driver and your fancy classic for nice weekend days. Do what you wish with your property.
Japan enforces their system through registration. A permit is needed to buy and register a car. These permits are issued by officers who will measure your private parking space. A dealer will not sell you a car larger than your space nor will you get tags for your car without sufficient space.
States in the US also have registration but don't require proof-of-parking to register a car. The change to adapt to Japan's system would be to make a proof-of-parking permit a requirement to register a car.
Each car gets a permit (it's a sticker on the window). If you have a two car garage, then you can get two permits for each spot in that garage to stick on your two cars.
It's very similar to permitted street parking in the US. Typically you'll get issued X number permits per house that you can affix to your car's bumper. Japan simply takes parking permits a step further by including your car's size and requiring a permit before registration rather than issuing permits post registration.
There's no limit in Japan (that I'm aware of) regarding how many permits a household can get. If you have a four car garage, then you can get four car permits. Or if you only have two garage spots, then you can lease two spots from a neighborhood parking lot to get to your ideal four car permits.
Japan has metered general-public parking lots and there are not restrictions preventing a friend parking on your property.
This is not too dissimilar from HOA developments in the US. Most HOAs require owners to put their cars in their garage and disallow cars sitting in the driveway, but are fine with guests temporarily parking in the driveway. They'll also issue a limited number of daily permits for guests to use in a neighborhood lot.
My point is that it would take a wildly disproportionate amount of work that other things (public transportation, bike infrastructure) are almost infinitely easier to do.
Not necessarily. The easiest thing to do is remove or severely limit parking minimum laws, like Washington state's recently passed SB 5184. No infrastructure to build nor required enforcement. This one step removes parking's negative externality, it didn't cost a single dollar, and it can go into effect immediately. Building good public infrastructure is important, but it's not the only thing we can do.
Oh I also agree but I was referring to the parking space registration specifically in my original comment.
I realize you’re getting downvoted with a lot of comparisons to Japan, and I wanted to lend a real life example.
In Chicago, it’s not uncommon for the parking space to have a separate title not tied to the people who live there, and each vehicle also has to register for a city sticker, which is basically an annual tax. Most parking is street parking, a house would have like 2 spots in the alley, but that might be for a 2 unit building.
It’s not the same as what others are suggesting, but a bit scaled back from what Nashville is requiring.
Yes, we already do, it's called "housing code inspection". If you register a vehicle, the home would be inspected to register a space for parking that vehicle. You either have it or you don't. If you do, it is registered to that property. If you don't, gotta go find one.
Bigger families would purchase more spaces, since they use more space. Fair is fair.
You just wouldn't allow multiple cars to be registered at the same parking space. You would need to own additional parking for each additional vehicle. Otherwise you don't get to register additional vehicles.