NO ONE is going to buy an apartment with out parking in downtown Miami. Unlike SoBe where kiddies buy studios without parking because they can work (usually not at all) and party locally. The grown ups who live and work downtown rarely do both and rarely can consider their life’s without some amount of travel.

I live downtown and work from home. I have a car and use the metro mover and frequently go whole days without using my car. On the other hand, there are MANY days when I need it since Miami (and the region) is fundamentally not dense outside the corridor.

Downtown is only on the cusp of achieving the critical mass of succeeding as a downtown urban core area. If you have ever been in the Flagler area on a weeknight, you can CLEARLY see that we aren’t quite there yet. Eliminating cars would create a huge loss of revenue for the building owners as commercial rents will be lower (less business) and in residents, the market will be much smaller.

If you look at a little differently, that economic argument you mention is already skewed. The whole point about supply and demand and the cost of parking is irrelevant because the cost of car ownership is already skewed toward wealthier, more affluent people.

In a city like Miami, where over 1/4 of the population is poor and nearly 65% of renters pay >30% of their median household income on housing (above the threshold for affordability), there is already a severe transportation equity problem if these people still feel the need to take on the additional financial burden of car ownership. When you go a step further and see that about 40% of the population is elderly (65+) or kids (-18), I hope you begin to see the problems with continuing to subsidize unimodalism. It’s borderline discriminatory.

Therefore, policies that further subsidize this unimodal transportation imbalance (such as increasing or excessive minimum parking requirements) only continue to skew transportation inequity in favor of the wealthy over the poor.

Of course you are right, however, that expanding and improving our transit system is the other critical component of fixing the transport equity equation to be more egalitarian. Also, changes in land use policy (e.g. Miami 21) are important because they’ll help the city become denser and more pedestrian-friendly with more mixed use zoning. This will improve accessibility by proximity, meaning that people will now be able to travel shorter distances (often feasible by foot or bike) to handle their employment, recreational, commercial, retail, and residential business.

Here is an example that reflects what I mean:

Say you are a middle class resident that lives downtown in an affordable building and work in Miami Lakes. Now assume that as downtown is being increasingly developed, the marginal rate of parking capacity increase diminishes. Supply and demand would dictate that parking would become significantly more expensive. This middle class person would no longer be able to afford parking in the area where he lives. Parking and car ownership would become skewed towards the more affluent. There are no public transportation options for this person. He would be squeezed financially to find a way to get to work.

Point is, before we restrict new parking supply, we must build out the public transportation system so that is actually has value. As it currently stands, it is worthless. After an effective, countywide system has been developed, then you can make the argument to restrict new parkign supply.