Yes, because you don't need a car if you live in a well designed city.
I live in a UK city and I've read the plans for the building I live in, it was submitted twice before it was accepted. Nobody had a problem with the interiors, they're nice which is why I bought one. But the original plan was rejected in the 1980s for lack of parking -everybody needs two cars right?. The same plan (with internal upgrades, nobody wants 1980s bathrooms in a 21st century home) was submitted twenty years later and now it had too much parking. So they removed some spaces and it got the OK. Today it is 0.8 spaces per unit.
The Bay Area is far from a well designed city with fairly limited public transportation. Yes there is public transportation but it’s relatively limited compared to the places you may want to go.
Berkeley is 10 sq miles. That does not really say much to me. Yes it’s great but it’s also tiny. Yes, the Bay Area is composed of multiple counties and municipalities but I think it’s a better comparison when talking about transit.
I lived without a car in SF for years. You can certainly get by, especially with e.g. getaround. But there are many valid uses for having a car in the city, even if you live by transit. The primary one is that not everyone’s work will be transit accessible.
Mandated minimums for parking are stupid, but so are mandated maximums. This is one of those cases where the invisible hand will approximate an alright solution (and I say that as someone who finds market efficiency arguments generally uncompelling). Even along transit lines, some developers may choose to add extra parking as a unique value proposition to those who need it.
There’s a very real possibility it’s a tragedy of the commons. Each individual wants to be near public transit, but they also want a car to supplement weekend trips and such. But once everyone gets a car, ridership falls and the public transit disappears.
Only if people actually use those cars for trips they could use public transit for. If there's no convenient parking at their destination, they'll leave the car at home.
Here in Tokyo, lots of people have cars that just stay parked at home most of the time, only used for weekend trips. They don't use them for normal stuff because 1) public transit is generally convenient and 2) there's no convenient (or affordable) parking in most parts of the city.
The key to all of this is parking. Parking takes of a LOT of space in a city. Here, there's no requirements about parking: you can build as much or as little as you like. Land is highly valuable, so land owners generally only allocate as much land to parking as makes sense to them economically. So apartments don't have that much (and those spaces cost a lot), and most businesses don't have any. There are some privately-owned parking lots/garages, but they cost a small fortune, and might not be that close to your destination anyway. If you want to buy a building in a dense area, tear it down, and build a parking, lot, you're free to do so, but it would usually be a stupid way to spend your money, so it doesn't happen.
contra this - I tried this for a while and while getting around much of SF is fine, leaving the city basically became too much work to be worth it. there are also certain neighborhoods (especially in the northwest and southeast) that basically become inaccessible
getaround is quite expensive tbh, it was much better to just have a relationship with an existing car rental that you could just muni to and pick up - difference between ~$40 and ~$100
People like to do more things than take the train back and forth. I’ve spent a lot of time in the UK and I’ve had to use a car to go to most places outside of commuting to and within the city. In the USA there’s even more to do and see that requires a car.
I live in a UK city and I've read the plans for the building I live in, it was submitted twice before it was accepted. Nobody had a problem with the interiors, they're nice which is why I bought one. But the original plan was rejected in the 1980s for lack of parking -everybody needs two cars right?. The same plan (with internal upgrades, nobody wants 1980s bathrooms in a 21st century home) was submitted twenty years later and now it had too much parking. So they removed some spaces and it got the OK. Today it is 0.8 spaces per unit.