Originally Posted by
sauerwald
Squirt
I saw the article in the Sunday Merc. One thing that frustrates me is that we heavily subsidize private vehicle use in this country, and then we wonder why other modes of transportation have such a hard time. As an example, my employer provides 'free parking', the local grocery stores and other retailers also provide 'free parking', and even on the street in front of my house, there is 'free parking'. Beyond that, local (San Jose) codes require that my house have a two car garage, so I am required to pay for parking for a car myself. It is not free, the roads need to be built and maintained, parking lots take up space that could be much more productively employed etc. Who pays for it? - We all do, through higher taxes, higher retail prices, lower wages. Since I don't own a car, I am being forced to subsidize the use of private automobiles in my society. After we provide all of these subsidies for private motor vehicle use, we wonder why people tend to prefer this form of transport.
There are two households in my house, one upstairs and one downstairs, neither drives at the moment, the single car garage is neatly (okay not so neatly at the moment), divided in half, and used for storage. With your 2 car garage, you could use 1/2 for storage and rent the other half to someone who needs an extra parking space. Around here there are a some people who have a summer car and a winter car, because their summer car is fancy or rare (read expensive), they have an old beater they drive in the winter, would love to have indoor storage for the winter without "wasting" their own garage space. If you don't want to do that, you can put in some nice shelving a work bench, add a bike repair stand and use the garage as a bike work shop.