Free Parking Isn't Free

 

By Seth Zeren

 

When does a Prius have the same environmental impact as a Hummer? The 95 percent of the time it’s parked.

 

Most people don't spend time thinking about parking spaces unless they're looking for one. But these 9' by 18' rectangles of urban real estate have a vast impact on North American communities. They affect the economy, land use patterns, the design of cities and even individual lifestyles.

 

Read More

From Gothamist:

 

Map Of The Day: NYC As A Huge Parking Lot!

 

Mike Frumin at frumination created this map to illustrate what NYC would look like if there were no NYC subway. Specifically, it would need a lot of parking spaces. He recently wondered, after receiving subway passenger count data, " What would it take in terms of auto facilities to replace the morning rush hour carrying capacity of the NYC subway?"

 

Click on the link above for the full article.

 

State lawmakers take aim at free parking

There is too much of it, they say, and it encourages people to drive instead of taking the bus, walking or bicycling. A Senate proposal would prompt cities and businesses to reduce its availability.

 

By Patrick McGreevy

January 29, 2010

 

Reporting from Sacramento - State lawmakers are taking aim at what some of them see as a menace to California's environment: free parking.

 

There is too much of it, the legislators say, and it encourages people to drive instead of taking the bus, walking or riding a bike. All that motoring is contributing to traffic jams and pollution, according to state Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), and on Thursday he won Senate approval of a proposal he hopes will prompt cities and businesses to reduce the availability of free parking.

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-free-parking29-2010jan29,0,211620.story?track=rss

^ That's really cool. Although I don't like the idea of more laws, they are sometimes necessary when the private sector fails to deliver equilibrium -- equilibrium in this case meaning the right number of parking spaces for normal use, not just Black Friday.

 

Not to get too far off topic, but Black Friday is so stupid. Because of it, we have to deal with millions of extra acres of parking lot, have to drive farther to do anything (at least when we are forced to visit sprawl-land), have to look at a barren landscape and have walkability taken from us. You are not saving any money on Black Friday. The concept is costing you hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year. Luckily, most smaller locally-owned stres don't really have to deal with Black Friday. For them, sales are elevated somewhat from a normal day, but certainly not 5-10X like you see at the mall or big boxes. That allows their parking lot impact, both on rent/land cost passed through to the customer and environmental/sprawl factors to be much lower.

In many states, state statute specifies how property taxes may be assessed.

 

I think Indiana, the one I'm familiar with, is typical of many others. Property taxes for a particular parcel split the assessed value about 75% on "improvements," primarily meaning buildings, and about 25% on the land.

 

When a building is razed, the three quarters of the property tax revenue from that parcel disappears. When a business acquires property and and then clears away the buildings/homes for customer or employee parking, tax revenues plummet while the increased availability of parking encourages more individual driving and increased burden on infrastructure.

 

It doesn't stop there. While Federal tax codes place a specific limit on the amount a business can write off for subsidizing any employee's transit use, they place no such limit on the amount that can be written off for employee parking. The cost of maintaining, lighting, snow-plowing, and securing employee parking can be written off, along with property taxes paid on the land.

 

In a small or medium-sized city with a central business district comprised mostly of offices, and many workers living outside the city limits, city residents end up footing a bigger tax bill to subsidize driving and parking for people who live in the 'burbs and outlying bedroom communities. As a side benefit we experience heavy, noisy, aggressive traffic created by people who regard our neighborhoods as slums and us as inferior beings.

Interesting info about how property taxes influence how it encourages parking lots. Still, if anyone here is not familiar with Donald Shoup you absolutely need to check out his book.

 

I sent a summary of his ideas to the Public Service Department here in Columbus headed by Director Mark Kelsey who still wants to double the rate of metered parking in urban areas to go towards building the new Hilton on High St and a general fund, which is the opposite of Shoup's recommended parking benefit districts. This is especially crucial since the city is looking at installing meters in urban areas where on-street parking is free. Business districts that are trying to bounce back could benefit from meters, but only if the money they generate go back into the respective business district for improvements like streetscapes and enchanced pedestrian accommodations. Of course, I received no response and as I stated earlier Kelsey still wants to punish people for visiting businesses in the urban core.

 

Instead, why not target sprawling areas? Set up a toll road for those entering Polaris and Easton. Aftera all, if Polaris is such a boon for Columbus as Kelsey said, then surely it could generate revenue from all the drivers, same goes for Easton.

Interesting article from a couple of years ago:

 

 

Monday, Oct 1, 2007 05:42 EDT

We paved paradise

So why can't we find any place to park? Because parking is one of the biggest boondoggles -- and environmental disasters -- in our country.

By Katharine Mieszkowski

 

In Tippecanoe County, Ind., there are 250,000 more parking spaces than registered cars and trucks. That means that if every driver left home at the same time and parked at the local mini-marts, grocery stores, churches and schools, there would still be a quarter of a million empty spaces.

 

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/10/01/parking/

 

... The cost of maintaining, lighting, snow-plowing, and securing employee parking can be written off, along with property taxes paid on the land.

 

They'll plow the parking lot right down to the undulating acres of asphalt and push the snow onto the sidewalks. (I know that's slightly off subject, but it's a pet peeve of mine. More than a peeve, really.)

... The cost of maintaining, lighting, snow-plowing, and securing employee parking can be written off, along with property taxes paid on the land.

 

They'll plow the parking lot right down to the undulating acres of asphalt and push the snow onto the sidewalks. (I know that's slightly off subject, but it's a pet peeve of mine. More than a peeve, really.)

 

I've been tempted to go out early on snowy mornings and patrol for that. I fantasize about catching a plow operator in the act, taking photos, and badgering the police via cell phone until they come and ticket the offender for violating the local ordinance that prohibits obstructing a sidewalk or crosswalk. I'm 70 years old and not very big, though; I fear for my safety from possible battery by a plow operator, and I'd want an intimidating-looking companion in order to attempt it.

 

Ex-Ithacan, bring your shotgun and wear your security-guard getup! I got a gig for ya'!

New Study Reveals the Hidden Environmental Cost of Parking

 

Posted on Wednesday January 12th by Eric Jaffe | 2,590

 

The price of free parking keeps going up. One cost is painful urban congestion, which is made worse by drastically under-priced street parking. Another is a relative cost to the environment, which occurs when the near-certain prospect of free (or cheap) parking entices people into their cars and away from alternative forms of transportation. Recently a team of researchers from the University of California at Berkeley, writing in a recent issue of Environmental Research Letters, described a previously unknown cost — energy and emissions that come from building America’s vast parking infrastructure:

 

The environmental effects of parking are not just from encouraging the use of the automobile over public transit or walking and biking (thus favoring the often more energy-intensive and polluting mode), but also from the material and process requirements in direct, indirect, and supply chain activities related to building and maintaining the infrastructure.

 

To estimate just how great this toll is, the researchers first had to estimate exactly how many parking spots exist in the United States. Turns out that’s no easy task; in fact, according to the authors, no such “nationwide inventory” has ever been done. “It’s kind of like dark matter in the universe,” Donald Shoup, the so-called “prophet of parking” (and not part of the study), told Inside Science. “We know it’s there, but we don’t have any idea how much there is.” When the Berkeley researchers crunched the numbers, they came up with five scenarios of available U.S. parking that ranged from 105 million spots to 2 billion. Give or take, I guess.

 

Read more at: http://www.infrastructurist.com/2011/01/12/new-study-reveals-the-hidden-environmental-cost-of-parking/

Out, Damned Spot

Mandates on parking spaces are strangling America’s cities.

By Matthew Yglesias|Posted Tuesday, July 9, 2013, at 12:31 PM

 

The Chicago Architecture Foundation offers a boat tour of the city’s architectural highlights that made for a delightful way to pass the afternoon on the Fourth of July. One of the more interesting aspects of the tour, strangely enough, is in revealing how recent skyscrapers by the Chicago River deal with their parking needs. The famous Marina Towers flaunt their 19 floors of parking by leaving the cars exposed to full view from the streets. Many structures simply feature a flat, windowless parking pedestal, atop which an elegant structure is perched. But the tour leader also pointed out a more original configuration for residential structures: The parking pedestal is wrapped with pseudo-townhouses, and then an apartment tower is stacked atop it.

 

But why so much parking smack-dab in the middle of Chicago’s Loop, a walkable area that’s well-served by heavy-rail transit and many buses? The culprit is a regulatory scourge so ubiquitous as to be nearly invisible: regulatory parking mandates that tax the poor to subsidize the rich while damaging the environment and the broader economy.

 

Rules requiring that new buildings come with parking spaces attached are so omnipresent that their absence induces confusion. A recent Boston Globe article by Casey Ross about local parking regulation was headlined “City Wants a Cutback on New Parking” and described city officials as “deliberately discouraging construction of new spaces.” What’s actually happening, as Ross’ reporting makes clear, is that officials are allowing the construction of buildings with a lower ratio of dwellings to parking spaces than previously required. Specifically, “in most cases, officials are allowing the ratio to slip to 0.75 spaces per residence,” rather than the one or two spaces that had been the previous rule.

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/07/free_parking_isn_t_free_parking_mandates_hurt_america_s_cities.html

Great quote!

 

"@grescoe: "Americans require parking and limit density. Europeans require density and limit parking." -Donald Shoup (quoted by @JeffSpeckAICP)"

 

More......

 

Thursday, September 12, 2013 1 Comment

The Long, Painful History of Terrible Parking Policy in One 71-Second Cartoon

by Tanya Snyder

 

If you haven’t been keeping up with Sightline Institute’s excellent series on the scourge of parking minimums, you’ve been missing out. They’ve posted 11 readable and informative articles on the subject. From here, Sightline is pivoting from problems to solutions, and we’ll be sharing their next few posts on Streetsblog, as well as re-posting some of the most revelatory moments from their series so far.

 

Here’s a quick way to get caught up: 71 seconds of cartoon-watching to understand how such bad decisions get made. It’s the depressingly simple story of how the Institute of Transportation Engineers’ hugely influential “Parking Generation” manual came to cover our country with parking.

 

If you’d like to take the long way, you can also read roughly the same story in just 1,025 words in the eighth installment of the “Parking? Lots!” series.

 

Enjoy!

 

http://dc.streetsblog.org/2013/09/12/the-long-painful-history-of-terrible-parking-policy-in-one-71-second-cartoon/?utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=buffer33bea&utm_medium=twitter

From a parking preservation organization

Interesting thread... great title btw.

Some off the wall conceptual ideas to devalue surface lots:

 

1. Propose a law, to be phased in over a few years, that would make it illegal for private entities to charge for downtown parking. Allow exemptions for parking garages that are built or retrofitted with good urban design principles.

 

2. Make all public and on-street parking free. Utilize time limit enforcement for commercial districts. 

^Or just change the way we assess property values/taxes to make it less lucrative to hold the lots and never develop them.

Interesting thread... great title btw.

 

clvlndr[/member] The thread title borrows on a book by the same name, authored by Donald Shoup. Recommended reading for any urban planner, transportation planner or enthusiast of either.

 

My suggestion to increase density is to raise the property tax but exempt structures from their contributions to the taxable value of properties. Right now, a piece of land and any structures on it are taxed based on their market value. Property owners can petition the county to reduce their market value to reduce their taxes -- many succeed despite their questionable arguments (including being rewarded for not maintaining their property!). Instead, tax a piece of land based on its square footage. No ifs, ands, or buts on what the taxable amount is. If you have a 40,000-square-foot parcel, the tax would be about $3,000 per half. Doesn't matter if you have a building on it or not. And you can't petition to have it lowered. It's a hard, flat fee. The only exception would be for tax abatement purposes, which applies only to structures not land. That policy should be retained. If you already have tax abatement, it would be continued to apply to the building. New tax abatements would allow a property owner to get their land tax lowered by perhaps 50% for a limited period of time (5-10 years?) if they construct a building on their property.

 

I also think the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District should charge customers based on an impervious surfaces fee. Customers could petition to have their fee reduced if they use water recycling, rain barrels, swales, parking lots with porous/Permeable pavement, and other eco-friendly practices that reduce water run-off.

I also think the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District should charge customers based on an impervious surfaces fee. Customers could petition to have their fee reduced if they use water recycling, rain barrels, swales, parking lots with porous/Permeable pavement, and other eco-friendly practices that reduce water run-off.

Didn't they already try that? I thought that was their policy and that they got sued by some NEO suburb, so now it's in limbo.

Libertarians have been pushing that - Land Tax?

They don't want people "punished" for improving their property.

I also think the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District should charge customers based on an impervious surfaces fee. Customers could petition to have their fee reduced if they use water recycling, rain barrels, swales, parking lots with porous/Permeable pavement, and other eco-friendly practices that reduce water run-off.

Didn't they already try that? I thought that was their policy and that they got sued by some NEO suburb, so now it's in limbo.

 

Could be. But nothing worth doing ever comes easy.

Libertarians have been pushing that - Land Tax?

They don't want people "punished" for improving their property.

 

This proposal is far older than libertarianism (or at least that label).  It was originally John Locke's (or who knows, maybe even he cribbed it off someone, but his publications outlasted the other guy's).

Libertarians have been pushing that - Land Tax?

They don't want people "punished" for improving their property.

 

This proposal is far older than libertarianism (or at least that label).  It was originally John Locke's (or who knows, maybe even he cribbed it off someone, but his publications outlasted the other guy's).

I didn't say they invented it or lay any claim to it, I said they were pushing it.

Ronald Reagan didn't invent trickle down economics, he just pushed it.

I also think the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District should charge customers based on an impervious surfaces fee. Customers could petition to have their fee reduced if they use water recycling, rain barrels, swales, parking lots with porous/Permeable pavement, and other eco-friendly practices that reduce water run-off.

Didn't they already try that? I thought that was their policy and that they got sued by some NEO suburb, so now it's in limbo.

 

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2014/07/sewer_districts_stormwater_fee.html

All Aboard Ohio ‏@AllAboardOhio  1m

This is a city. Those are cars. This is what happens when your city is overdependent on cars. Any questions? pic.twitter.com/pYu6n7dZOm #Houston

^ Is that a recent photo?!

^ Is that a recent photo?!

 

No, early 80s.

^ Is that a recent photo?!

 

I believe that picture is pretty old. 1980's?

 

Edit: was too slow

I am looking at Google Maps aerials of downtown Houston right now and it still appears to be pretty heavy on the surface lots.

Would love to see what was there prior to this picture being taken and what it looks like now

Houston had some sort of weird water/sewer hookup regulation that worked sort of like liquor licenses.  So if you tore town a group of 10 small buildings and replaced it with one large building, you had 9 of these hookups to sell.  That's part of what motivated the tear-downs. 

Would love to see what was there prior to this picture being taken and what it looks like now

Going all the way back to 1953, it still seems very spread out. The historical aerials are tough to make out but it seems there were quite a few multi-story buildings and still quite a few parking lots.....but not parking blocks.

All Aboard Ohio ‏@AllAboardOhio  1m

This is a city. Those are cars. This is what happens when your city is overdependent on cars. Any questions? pic.twitter.com/pYu6n7dZOm #Houston

 

Wow, that Houston photo makes the WHD surface lot area look tiny in comparison.  Houston is the classic, ugly-American car-crazy, auto-oriented, sprawl city.  I understand the new LRT system is making some dent, but an over 1/2 century of low-density sprawl can't be cured overnight. 

That photo was used on the front cover of a late-80s/early-90s book on American parking lots.  I believe it was taken by a French photographer. 

Houston might be the worst (though Charlotte is up there too). It's certainly worse than much denser, and more historic Los Angeles. I've heard from Angelenos that LA has the highest percentage of its city dedicated to highways and parking lots, but I have always doubted that statistic since LA has a lot of density (many core neighborhoods over 20,000 people per square, and city-wide density now pushing 10,000 people per square mile). Even a lot of suburban LA has population densities significantly higher than central cities in Ohio. It's not sprawl in the middle American sense. I'd say the same about some of the Bay Area sprawl (though the Bay Area density gets lower). Houston is just far less dense and seems entirely car-dependent. I wouldn't even say that about San Jose, which now has a "big city"-like downtown and an increasing density in its urban infill zones. What's ridership in Houston?

 

I think Houston is worse than Dallas-Fort Worth too, despite being a bi-modal metro area (which seems to promote sprawl when there is substantial geographic distance between the two cities, like the area between DC and Baltimore). I've heard Austin is every bit as car dependent as Houston, so maybe that takes the Texas cake?

 

Texas really is the tale of suburban sprawl on steroids. You had explosive population growth coupled with suburban development and suburban-minded leadership. What held Ohio back from getting that bad is its stagnation and decline in some metro areas. Leadership in Ohio probably wanted (and some probably still want) Texas-level sprawl, but the wage stagnation, out-migration, and declining birth rates prevented some of the biggest sprawl disasters from happening.

 

For example, the reason metro Toledo is not very sprawled is because it basically peaked in the early 1970's. You don't see too much of the 90's and 2000's sprawl that most other metro areas have all over the place. Even metro Detroit was growing some during this time and continued to sprawl northward away from the urban core. I think there could be an argument that metro Detroit's growth led to even more disinvestment in the central city. That ridiculous sprawl in Oakland and Macomb counties sucked a lot of people out of the city. Metro Detroit didn't really start shrinking until the mid-2000's when things hit the fan in the auto industry. And the more low-density sprawl a metro area has, the more parking lots it ends up with at the urban core, and the less likely real transit can ever be built and be successful. It takes population density to make transit viable. That's why when a city like LA builds a light rail line, its ridership is high. When city like Salt Lake City builds light rail, ridership is low.

In the immediate postwar years, when the highway system was planned, it was expected that native population growth would continue at a high pace.  Instead it plummeted with the introduction of birth control pills in the early 1960s and then the legalization of abortion a decade later.  Most northern cities planned for *much* greater growth than they actually achieved and there was no anticipation that major growth would happen in Texas and the Sunbelt cities, in large part fueled by the migration of northerners. 

Houston also has been cited as one of the largest American cities without a comprehensive zoning code. I don't know if that is still true, but it might have something to do with the pattern of development there.

Actually, for all that Houston gets pilloried by urbanists, it actually has a surprising amount of density and walkability in many places.  Some of those places aren't connected because it's a multi-core metro, and it admittedly does have an incredible amount of highway buildout, but it's far from the worst of the lot.

The south side of Houston, just south of downtown, is surprisingly dense (to me, anyway).

 

Also someone tweeted a recent picture of downtown from the same angle as the early-1980s parking crater photo. I'll see if I can find it.

 

EDIT -- here it is:

 

Fascinating!

Houston and Dallas both peak pretty high in terms of population density, but dense pockets are largely disconnected in both cities.

 

The real reason Texas has so much space dedicated to freeways and parking is the suburbia outside of the annex zones. I've seen some denser redevelopments within the city limits, but the middle and outer ring Texas sprawl is really low density (even lower density than comparable stuff in Ohio). This leads to more driving and more demand for parking in the downtowns and core nightlife districts. Since these are economically healthy cities, there is a lot of movement of people, almost entirely by car.

 

With all this said, Gen Y in these cities is moving to the denser urban neighborhoods like expected. Texas is changing for the better, and it's a fair point that it's probably no longer the worst (cough, cough Charlotte). Texas cities do get credit for investing in transit and approving some dense mixed-use developments. They're ahead of some of the Sun Belt cities in the Southeast, and likely way ahead of Arizona.

Yeah, Texans are like "Just let the kids have their train". Whereas in Ohio the right-wingers think a train will be like the Coors Light Train of Communism unleashing Marxism wherever it goes rather than snow.

So Louisville has decided to finally enforce Saturday meters downtown, which has been the law in the books since the 70s. Now everyone and their brother is up in arms. I'm sorry that you were breaking the law before, people.

 

http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/traffic/2014/08/26/saturday-parking-enforcement-start-sept/14639965/

RideScout ‏@RideScout  3h3 hours ago

If a retailer's parking lot is not full to capacity today, it will never be! Take photos for #BlackFridayParking: http://bit.ly/1zqA6Fu

 

BLACK FRIDAY PARKING 2014 EVENT 

NOVEMBER 24, 2014

BY CHARLES MAROHN

 

Join us this Friday for #blackfridayparking, a nationwide event to draw attention to the ridiculousness of minimum parking requirements.

 

Minimum parking requirements are often justified by the notion that there needs to be enough parking for the peak shopping day. Under that theory, America’s businesses are required to set aside large amounts of land and make enormous capital investments in asphalt and concrete for the sake of a few hours each year. If the theory were true, parking minimums would still be a bizarre misallocation of resources. Unfortunately, our ability to predict peak parking demand is woefully inadequate.

 

What #blackfridayparking exposes is the systematic way in which cities across the country do harm to our businesses, our neighborhoods and our economy by enforcing arbitrary parking requirements. This practice needs to end.

 

Join us this Friday and help us show how destructive minimum parking requirements are.

 

MORE:

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2014/11/24/black-friday-parking-2014-event

Black Friday is kinda over with. With stores opening on thanksgiving, some staying open all night and others staggering sale events throughout the day on Friday that big surge isn't there. We opened with 3 people at 6am and the mall was almost empty! We could have gotten away with one until 10am. The real action now is during the last week before Christmas. The lots actually will be full then.

Cities that limited parking "have soared in terms of economic outcomes, in almost all measures of quality of life” https://t.co/7JFYyFye0X

It's so refreshing to read about the high cost of free parking from people who understand. It drives me crazy when people talk about how they resent having to "subsidize" transit with tax payer money. These same people think that the automobile is self sufficient and unsubsidized. They don't realize the real cost, parking, paving over lots of land, patching up people who have been in accidents, etc.  What about the cost of parking in Europe.  I would think that would discourage some driving.

I will leave this here

 

http://www.citylab.com/commute/2016/01/the-strongest-case-yet-that-excessive-parking-causes-more-driving/423663/

I'm a strong opponent of parking minimums and a strong proponent (and regular user) of transit. It's clear that parking requirements drive up the cost of housing, and affect developers' plans for housing and mixed-use projects. I'm an advocate of charging the true cost of parking. I think surface parking lots should be heavily taxed as a highly undesirable use of land.

 

But I don't see anything in this article that "proves" more parking causes more driving. And I think the effort expended to find some such "proof" is a red herring and a colossal waste of time. We already know free parking is a huge incentive for people to drive -- I don't think anybody seriously questions that. We know that drivers don't come close to paying the true cost of parking. We know that parking lots are a waste of space. We don't need this silly academic exercise to pursue good policy.

 

In this 1950-2000 study, there are too many unexplored variables and questions. How many of those former bus riders in those cities stopped riding the bus because they moved to a new community or subdivision that did not have bus service? How many started driving to work because cultural changes left them with the need to pick up kids at day care or do other errands not on a bus line? How many other bed land-use decisions made transit more difficult for people? New downtown parking spaces for commuters certainly were a factor -- but were one of many factors.

More Developers Kick Parking Lots to the Curb

Cities follow New York, San Francisco in opting to bypass building garages

By ESTHER FUNG

Updated Sept. 13, 2016 3:25 p.m. ET

 

Bad news for car owners: Developers in more U.S. cities are reducing the amount of parking spaces included in new projects as local authorities seek to encourage the use of mass transit and free up space for parks, housing or other uses.

 

In San Diego’s Little Italy neighborhood, architecture and development company Jonathan Segal FAIA ruffled feathers of nearby residents after it revealed plans to build an eight-story, 35-unit apartment complex with no parking spaces. Without the added costs of a garage, the studio units of around 400 square feet apiece would be more affordable, the firm said.

 

“It’s the future. There’s a strong demand for people who want to rent units that are efficient,” said developer Jonathan Segal, noting that digging underground parking lots for the building would drive up costs and take away space that could be used for more housing.

 

MORE:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/more-developers-kick-parking-lots-to-the-curb-1473759000

 

Big news: The White House is calling for ending parking minimums -- other key housing reforms for affordable cities

http://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/09/26/white-house-make-cities-affordable-by-building-for-walkability-not-parking/