edit tl;dr there is plenty of parking where it's not needed and too little parking where it is needed.

I think the main problem is not the amount of parking but the distribution of parking. I live in NYC and avoid driving around the city as much as possible except off peak and short local runs.

The big problem is commercial centers tend to be high density and clustered together. For example, queens boulevard between Forest Hills and Rego Park has dozens of restaurants and shops where the number of parking spots on the block vs. the number of people concentrated on that block is where the problem begins. A restaurant with one or two parking spots in front might have two dozen people people inside including staff requiring at least six parking spots (assuming couples).

My neighborhood Ozone Park is in south Queens and live is a part that is a block from the A train. Super convenient location as everything is in walking distance of a few blocks including the train. There is also a school around the block. So every morning dozens of commuters pack the neighborhood looking for parking for the train and then add the teachers and other school staff who only get about two dozen reserved spots and half are blocked by construction. Your driveway is frequently partly blocked and finding street parking during weekdays is brutal until about 7-8PM.

So the blocks along the train stations are municipal free-for all parking lots. As you push out into the back areas away from the commercial cacophony there is street parking so long as the neighborhood was built with sanity meaning homes have functional driveways (most don't or can only fit a single car). And there are plenty of those areas spread throughout the city but the parking goes to waste. Then throw in neighborhoods of row houses with no driveways and again, the housing density outweighs the parking.

Face it, no planning was done for the automobile in major cities. Parking allotment is abysmal and to make things worse, maximizing the dwelling square footage is what all developers aim for to maximize the value. So there is zero incentive to build in sane parking. This is an example of a nearby 10 apartment home that was built with parking for about 8-10 vehicles if people park front to back and side-by-side underneath the front half: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.683022,-73.8445675,3a,75y,75...

Not exactly a pretty example. Down the block from me a single story ranch with a big back yard was bought by a developer, demolished and three two family homes built with the easy ability to add an illegal basement apartment with a little modding (it was so obvious when we toured them during sale). There used to be more parking on weekends before those homes went in. Now even weekend parking can be tough. And this type of development is happening all over NYC. Single family homes are bought up demolished and replaced with 4+ apartments each of which usually bring one car into the neighborhood. They also build little or no parking in. The requirements for parking are easily cheated with a long driveway that is only practical for one or two cars to use as you can't practically park six cars back to back. No one is building single family homes anymore.

Summary: it's a damn mess.