But to say parking has zero cost is only true for those people using on street parking, which does have a cost to others and by using it for "free" is a subsidy on the operating cost of a vehicle.
Unless you are building a new civilization on Mars or are just waxing eloquent on philosophical economics, you need to talk about incremental costs when it comes to changing the status quo. I have a garage, a driveway and available street parking. My current and future incremental costs for these are zero regardless of what the inputs were long ago or what expenses might be attributed to them in the future as they aren't going away even if my cars do. Many people will be in this same boat.
That is your
choice of accounting method, which does nothing to make my explicitly stated
choice of accounting method any less correct. Parking space has a market cost, if someone parking a car in a garage left it empty with nothing in its place that's a poor use of a resource, which has a opportunity cost since there are other productive (and paying) uses for that space. Incremental cost of nothing is plainly wrong when land and buildings have a cost, that should be amortised/apportioned over their use.
If the council stopped all free on street parking and charged residents permits (as other areas do) I would pay lower rates or the services would increase, nothing needs to be rebuilt from scratch. Again, opportunity cost, vs your misleading assertion of no incremental value. Free parking is a huge subsidy to those who use it when land prices are around $1000/m
2. An on road car parking space needs 14m
2 in the local regulations, so for an 8% return (with zero other costs) around $840 per year for the crappiest form of parking. I'd happily buy the street parking space in front of my house and extend the verge.
Common situation in Australia where there is free on street parking... people fill their garages as storage and park in the driveway or on the street. People dont leave their buildings empty and derive no value from it.
That doesn't say that the Australian tax department has a bad handle on what a car costs to operate, its very very close to real world figures (have checked with an accountant who do this for their clients).
It isn't necessary to change countries to prove this wrong, at least in the way that I meant that it was wrong--there is no single number that works for everyone. All you would have to do is drive twice as far every year and your numbers would change drastically. So their numbers may work for many 'average' cases, but they can't work for everyone.
I explicitly stated average, and it happens that the vehicles here are almost on that average. Of course other country, other situation, other economics radically change the numbers.
they know what it actually costs
No, they really don't.
The Australian tax department do know what it costs to run a car in Australia, its very very close to the fairly average use case of the vehicles I operate.