Critical Reasoning: Investigation Questions
The municipality of the town of Calabia has allocated 50,000 parking spaces to be used by the general public. Cars owned by Calabian residents number 45,000, but every day more than 15,000 vehicles that are not owned by Calabian residents enter the town. It is quite clear that the town will suffer from an acute lack of parking spaces.
Which of the following would it be most useful to establish in order to evaluate the argument?
Incorrect.
[[snippet]]This answer choice does not pose a significant question since it deals with traffic whereas the argument deals with parking alone.
Incorrect.
[[snippet]]Determining this fact would make no difference to the argument. The argument focuses on how the commuting behavior of people affects parking, and not on what the law allows/prevents people from doing.
Incorrect.
[[snippet]]The argument deals with whether Calabia will have parking problems. Although charging for parking may deter non-Calabians from parking, we cannot be sure of this. We do not have enough information to assume that paid parking will not be readily accepted (and the car has to be parked somewhere!).
Besides, we are not supposed to be looking for a solution. We are supposed to find a way to determine whether there is a problem at all.
Incorrect.
[[snippet]]This would be an irrelevant piece of information. If a Calabian drives from one parking spot to another, then the town's parking status is not changed in any way.
Terrific!
[[snippet]]This answer choice may determine whether Calabia really has a parking problem. If only a few Calabians drive their cars out of town while non-Calabians enter, then there will surely be traffic problems since there are simply not enough spaces. However, if enough Calabian cars (~10,000) are out of town while the cars from outside are in Calabia, then there should not be a parking insufficiency.
