The principle of mixed primary uses

In Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs writes about Pittsburgh's Oakland district to explain the point of mixed primary uses. She said that if the arts institutions were located downtown (now they are by the way) then parking structures used by office workers during the day could be used by arts patrons at night, thereby not requiring specific investment in the creation of parking lots dedicated to a single use, as required for the Carnegie institutions in Oakland.

The Austin American-Statesman reports, in "Austin considers entering the parking business: City would build and own garages, primarily downtown," (registration required for article access) that the City of Austin is considering the creation of a parking authority which would build and operate public parking structures. Laudably, they would dedicate the revenue stream not just to parking for cars, but would support investment in other transportation modes as well.

But here is the real problem. From the article:

"There are tens of thousands of parking spaces downtown that don't get used after hours even as we have remarkable demand after hours," Wynn said.

If you deal with that first, maybe you don't need to spend a couple hundred million dollars on parking structures to begin with.