September 23, 2016 - General

Parking Reform

Drivers cannot find parking as easily as they would like.

Cars are sitting unused on the street for long periods.

Neighbors fight a new development because it does not provide enough parking.

Parking in garages is more expensive than on street spaces. A new garage is built by the city, but no one parks there because it is too expensive and farther away.

Anger and rage: People fight, yell and scream over parking spaces. For a funny example watch this video

Wasted time: People circle the block cruising for parking– cruising for parking angers drivers, increases traffic congestion and air pollution, and wastes gasoline and time.

What kind of a parking problem?

Many times people say “there’s just not enough parking” in a neighborhood.

Usually the parking shortage is limited to specific parts of a neighborhood at specific times. If you think you have a parking problem, flesh it out by answering the following questions:

Where? – Close to theatres, popular shopping areas, schools, parks? Does parking free up as you get farther away from certain activity hot spots?

When?-Peak times of the week or year–the holiday Crush?

Who? – Residents, customers, students, employees? For each group, how long do they need the parking space and are they making the best use of valuable parking?

How long? – Are people staying in the parking space for minutes, hours, days, months or more?

Commuters on foot stay in an area the further they are willing to walk.

As a result, pricing should encourage long term commuters to park in less desirable parking locations.

Got options? – Is your neighborhood walk-able? Is there public transit? Is it safe to bike? Can people park farther away and walk?

At what price?- What is the price of parking in your neighborhood by location? Does the price vary by time of day and location? Is there either too much or too little parking available?

If all parking spaces are priced equally

Then an individual will choose the space that is closest or most convenient to their destination and will likely stay in that space longer than they may need to.

Studies show that the longer a person is staying in an area, the farther they will be willing to walk from a parking space to their ultimate destination.

Parking rates should encourage long term parkers to park in less desirable parking locations to reserve the most convenient parking for short term visitors.

Prices should also reflect the demand on those spaces based on the time of day or special events in the area.

By teasing out the issues above, solutions to parking problems can be narrowly targeted to address specific problems in specific places.

“No one goes there any more it’s too crowded” Yogi Berra

How often do we hear people complain about too much traffic and not enough parking? Parking is a scarce resource and, like any other resource, is subject to the laws of supply and demand. When parking is priced correctly, the cost of parking signals to drivers the relative value of different spaces, which encourages more efficient use of the overall parking supply.

When parking is not priced correctly we end up with either too much or too little parking. Too little parking results in”cruising” for parking

Free or under-priced parking causes people to…

–>park in the most valuable spaces (the most convenient), when they could park and walk from a less valuable space farther away

–>park during peak periods when they could travel at another time of day

–>drive and park instead of taking transit, walking, or biking to a destination

–>park in spaces better suited for customers (employees)

–>spend time looking for cheap or free curbside parking– which wastes gas, creates air and noise pollution and unnecessary traffic congestion.

–>store vehicles for months or years without using them– making it harder for people with more urgent parking needs to find a parking space

–>pay for parking spaces they actually never use through taxes and higher prices for products and housing

If parking costs more, what options are available?

Reduce time parked

Park further away for less and walk/ bike

Park at a different time of day when rates are less

Carpool and split the cost of parking

Park off street

Make trip on transit by bicycle or by walking

What will we do with the money?

Parking reform must be revenue neutral or dedicated to a popular project that benefits the whole community. When discussing changes to parking policy some will object that charging for parking amounts to a “new tax”. It is critical to engage the community to discuss how the funds generated can benefit the community through either funding specific popular programs or reducing taxes.

Good parking policies exhibit the following traits:

–>Cost effective
–>Fair to all modes of transportation and all income levels
–>Easy to administer
–>Green
–>Political winner

Cost Effective

In a world where free parking rules, people often forget that parking costs money. Usually lots of money! Surface parking, which is the cheapest type of parking to build starts at about $10,000(USD) a space, while underground garage parking in urban cores can approach $100,000 per space. Building parking is not usually the most cost effective way to solve a problem. Before building new parking, consider if there are there cheaper ways to free up parking spaces:

Step one:

price parking! Pricing parking encourages people to be creative and find a way to save themselves money.

Step two:

Provide and encourage transportation options. When compared to the cost of building parking, policies and projects that get people walking, biking and taking transit are almost always more cost effective. Options that move people away from driving and parking include:

Bicycle facilities:

striped bike lanes and bike parking
Improved pedestrian environment: A good walking environment helps all modes of transport. Everyone at some point walks.
Better or new public transit or shuttle service

Remember, you don’t have to get everyone out of their cars, just enough people to take the edge off of your parking crunch so that you always have just the right amount of available parking spaces– roughly 15% or one in every seven parking spaces.

Fair

Parking policies should offer a wide range of options for users so that they can make the best choice to fit their situation. Free parking penalizes people who do not drive by raising the costs of goods and services they do not use. For example, “free” parking is folded in to the cost of products, housing and taxes. Why should people who forgo driving pay for parking they do not use? The fairest thing is to require people to pay for what they use.

Look carefully at the transportation patterns of people in your community. Older people and low income workers rely primarily on walking, bicycling, and public transportation to get around. That said it is important to have some affordable parking for financially stressed people who have no choice but to drive. Generally there should be affordable parking within a ten minute walk of key destinations.

Easy to Administer

When implementing parking management tools it is important to devise programs and policies that are easy to administer. Options to manage parking include issuing permits, setting time limits for occupancy and the price of the parking space by the hour, day, month or year. Issuing permits require building a database, taking in and reviewing applications and answering requests for exceptions. Time limits and pricing require checking to see if someone has paid for the space and exceeded their permitted length of stay. The simplest solutions require the least amount of oversight and policing.

Probably the simplest path is to eliminate time limits entirely letting price insure that there are always a few spaces available. Then the only role of enforcement is to insure that someone has paid. They don’t need to worry about how long someone has occupied a parking space.

Green

Ideally parking policies are seen in the context of a larger transportation system. Do the parking policies encourage use of sustainable modes of transportation, reduce cruising for parking and the amount of gas used per person mile? By encouraging sustainable transportation policies, you will also reduce driving and green house gas emissions.

Political Winner!

Does your city’s parking policy energize people in both its goals and implementation? Since people understand that parking is a limited resource, they are willing to undertake changes. Same when they see how the changes can benefit them personally and society as a whole.

Parking can raise money for projects, but are the projects inspiring? Think of really exciting projects that parking revenue can fund– and will energize people to support parking reform!

Strategies for success

When we measure parking pricing against the goals above we see a number of opportunities and challenges. Pricing parking is should be easier to administer than time limits, sustainable and cost effective (in fact it generates revenue). The critical pieces are fairness and political acceptance. In fact, parking price policies need to be directly structured to address these concerns.

First, if charging for parking or increasing the price of parking becomes an instrument to simply raise money for a city’s general fund, it will immediately (and rightfully) be seen as a new tax.

Pricing parking—first and foremost—must be used as a tool to manage parking supply.

In this case, pricing is set so that there is just enough parking availability to meet demand. In other words, at least 15% of the spaces should be available at all times. This means that in areas with high demand prices will increase and people will begin to use other transportation options to get to their destinations and rates will fall in low demand locations.

Second, when parking prices rise, the revenues generated from the increased rates should be given back to the community so that people are more willing to pay for parking. It can be difficult for a city government to give up control of all or part of the revenues generated from parking. The overall fiscal impact of the changed parking policies must be quantified and weighed against the benefits to the community.

Other tools for success

Pricing parking correctly may be the simplest and most effective parking management tool out there. Several other parking tools are available to agencies and developers to reduce parking demand. These include:

Manage the entire parking supply as one unit: Often curbside spaces are priced the same as garage or outlying surface parking lots. Generally people prefer to park on street as opposed to a garage. Ironically, convenient curbside spaces are usually cheaper than garage spaces. Garage, surface parking lots, and curbside parking, should all be priced so that one in seven spaces are always free (15% vacancy). This will likely result in your curbside spaces being priced more than your garage spaces.

Unbundled Parking

The cost of parking is often included in the rental or sale cost of housing, retail, and office buildings. These costs should be separated from the costs a tenant or owner pays to better reflect the needs and demands of each persons use.

Park once and walk

A park once and walk management proposal uses publicly owned and maintained central parking facilities that allow municipalities to manage parking supply based on a desired level of automobile and transit use to an area. Visitors park once in an area and walk to make one or more trips. This system alleviates the need for each development to provide its own on-site parking, reducing development costs and retail rents.

Shared Parking

Many areas are characterized by land uses with nearly opposite parking demand schedules. For example, a bank parking lot is in high use during daytime business hours, while a restaurant has a high demand for parking in the evening. Shared parking between two such businesses can cut down on the amount of parking required for a commercial area, leading to a more efficient use of valuable land. Shared parking schemes can also utilize space in municipal lots as described above.

Reduced Parking Requirements

Most zoning ordinances require developers to provide a minimum amount of on-site parking as a ratio of the total square footage of a development. These requirements are meant to mitigate congested curb parking conditions. overflow parking in neighboring communities, and generally accommodate the highest projected level of visitors to a location. However, these minimum figures often do not take into account various factors like urban density, proximity to transit, or demographic characteristics that may alter the actual demand for parking at a locale. The result is often a sea of underutilized private parking at most commercial locations. Reducing minimum parking requirement can help to reflect the market reality of local conditions. An alternative to minimum parking requirements are parking maximums that limit the number of parking spaces allowed at a development site.

Parking Benefit Districts

These are business improvement districts that use parking revenues for area improvements

Cruising for Parking

How much cruising is there?

Professor Donald Shoup at UCLA reviewed sixteen studies that were conducted between 1927 and 2001 in several cities around the world. The studies showed that between 8 and 75% of the traffic on the streets (in the study areas) were cruising for parking. Taking data from all the studies, on average about 30% of the cars were looking for parking .

As drivers looking for parking spaces, we hate cruising! Consider that cruising Vehicles add to congestion, wasted fuel and air pollution.

Furthermore is the following calculation:

Suppose it takes 3 minutes to find a curb space, and one space accommodates 10 cars per day.

Moreover, cruising 3 minutes for parking at a curb space 10 times a day creates 30 vehicle-minutes of travel per curb space per day.

30 minutes of cruising at 10 miles per hour creates 5 vehicle miles traveled per curb space per day (10 miles and hour= 5 miles per thirty minutes).

Perhaps there are 100 parking spaces in this neighborhood, then 5 miles a day for 100 parking spaces creates 500 extra miles traveled per day.

In conclusion, that is 500 extra miles traveled a day for 365 days creates 182,500 miles traveled per year!

Therefore if the average car gets 20 miles per gallon, the gas wasted cruising for these 100 spaces would amount to 9,125 wasted gallons of gas!

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