Price parking appropriately and make people pay for it. If land is cheap, parking is cheap, so not a big deal. If land is expensive, then no freeloading on the streets, which can be put to better use anyways (sidewalks, bike lanes, outdoor cafes etc...)
The car registration and gas taxes don't even pay for a quarter of all road-infrastructure-related costs. It boggles the mind to see free street parking in places like NYC, where a more reasonable cost structure would be something like other cities around the world (and Canada) do: divide the territory in parking districts. Locals can buy a discounted annual pass for the district where their main residence is located (should not cost less than $400/month in a place like Manhattan), while elsewhere the rate should be at least $10-12/hour.
> probably only be the best alternative on a densely packed island
So Manhattan or the San Francisco Peninsula?
I suspect the refusal to kowtow to car owners and the density are interrelated. Tokyo is more dense, in (small?) part, because there is far less space consumed by inanimate appliances.
No, it's in very, very large part due to this. You can see it not just walking around, but especially when you go up in one of the tall buildings or in SkyTree tower and look at the city from above: you can't see any parking lots anywhere, and most of the roads are pretty small (there's some large boulevards, but not that many). Compare to any American city that was built up after the rise of the automobile and it's staggering how much space is wasted on cars in those cities.
And those cost money. That is the crux here. Free parking is frankly insane. It became untenable in Amsterdam as early as the 1960s when most people could afford a car.
If you want trees, a sidewalk and bike lanes something has got to give.
