Washington, DC, just released the results from its four-year pilot program, parkDC, which applied dynamic pricing for on-street parking in Penn Quarter and Chinatown. Based on its success, the city is now working to expand the program beyond the pilot area. The program, which built upon the earlier success of those like San Francisco’s SFpark, achieved similar results with fewer resources.
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Planners reevaluate parking requirements for affordable housing
The most recent issue of Planning, the magazine of the American Planning Association, examines how cutting parking requirements can also improve the supply of affordable housing. Both cities and developers are recognizing that new projects may require significantly fewer spaces in the future as people eschew car ownership in favor of transit, ridesharing, carsharing, and non-motorized transportation options. Several cities have found that by reducing the requirements for expensive parking in buildings, the cost for the residential units is also reduced.
States and Feds explore solutions to truck parking shortfall
Federally mandated driver rest periods are coming up against a truck parking shortfall, and leaving drivers scrambling to find legal parking, or park illegally. When drivers need to rest, but cannot find suitable parking, they may choose to park in unsafe or illegal locations such as roadway shoulders or entrance and exit ramps. Several states are trying to solve this problem.
U.S. cities and developers beleaguered by too much parking, Mortgage Bankers report finds
There are 83,141 households in the city of Des Moines, and 1.6 million parking stalls. Even allowing that some of those stalls are occupied by commuters, that’s a pretty staggering disparity. And even accounting for commuters, peak parking occupancy rates are only 65 percent downtown. These are some of the eye-opening findings from a new Mortgage Bankers Association report on parking supply in American cities. The report argues that localities should do their own parking inventories rather than rely on rules of thumb for parking needs and risk squandering resources.
Cities and developers are preparing for a world with less parking
Chandler, AZ, may be the first city to recognize that apartment dwellers will need less parking in the future. In anticipation of autonomous vehicles, the city is changing its zoning code to loosen parking minimums in new buildings. Developers welcome such flexibility, as building parking can be expensive and AVs and other emerging technologies, such as ridesharing and bikesharing, are reducing the need for tenants to own personal cars.
Studies suggest autonomous vehicles will have reduced parking requirements
A pair of recent studies suggests that autonomous vehicles will revolutionize how vehicles park when not in use. As a result, parking structures will be able to hold far more vehicles than today, and some existing parking facilities may be repurposed to other uses and to take advantage of valuable urban land. Although not mentioned in the studies, AVs also will be less likely to be privately owned and will spend far less time parked than today’s vehicles do.
Parking and the City: A new book for practitioners
A new book from distinguished UCLA professor, Donald Shoup — a follow-up to Shoup’s acclaimed 2005 publication, The High Cost of Free Parking — outlines a three-step approach for reforming outdated parking policies: 1) eliminating off-street parking requirements; 2) charging the right price for on-street parking; and 3) putting revenues toward parking benefit districts. The book includes chapters from 46 contributing authors based on their own research and practical experiences.
Seattle's parking reforms
The Seattle City Council passed a number of parking reforms earlier this month to further support the city’s ongoing efforts to become less car-oriented, advance local climate change goals, and reduce housing costs in the city. Seattle is one of many cities to recognize that its parking regulations are outdated, but one of relatively few to take major steps toward reform.
Curbs: A new data frontier
State and local transportation agencies have long focused on what’s happening between the curbs—collecting data about the speed, volume, and types of vehicles moving along each road—but growing competition for curb space from parked cars, bikes, taxis, TNCs, and deliveries presents new challenges both in terms of data and policy. Fortunately, data experts are stepping up to the task.
Downtown parking: A declining business
What effect do Uber and Lyft have on parking demand in urban areas? Ace Parking has experienced a sizeable drop in demand for parking in the company’s San Diego location. Parking at hotels in San Diego has dropped by five to ten percent; restaurant valet demand has dropped 25 percent, and demand for valet parking at nightclubs has dropped a staggering 50 percent. While the timeline for these declines is unclear, an Ace Parking executive stated that similar or more severe trends have also been seen in the company’s parking operations, which number close to 750 locations around the United States.