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Parking round-up

by Stephen Smith At the risk of beating the parking theme deader than the Ground Zero Mosque, here are some recent parking-related stories published around the world: The NYC DOT’s Park Smart program has been called a success in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, and officials are considering making the program permanent and expanding it to more streets. Donald Shoup is quoted as saying that rates may still be too low, and the DOT has suggested raising the rate even further. The Park Smart program also expanded to Manhattan’s Upper East Side in June, with rates ranging from $2.50 to $3.75/hour. As Streetsblog points out, though, this is still a steal compared to the $22/hour that one private garage charges, indicating that street parking is still massively underpriced. Towns and cities across the UK (“at least 150 councils”) are raising the price of on-street parking and yearly parking passes in order to plug budget deficits. The Telegraph article makes no mention of any Shoupian benefits, and small businesses and “motoring organisations” are, predictably, opposing the moves. The Independent claims that many cities, including Bristol, York, and Leeds, are planning “to charge for parking at workplaces.” Pittsburgh is considering a 50-year concession agreement for its on-street and garage parking assets, which would almost certainly involve raising rates, although “the city would retain the right to revise fees.” City-owned garages currently charge 25% less than private garages. As in the UK, this deal is mostly out of fiscal necessity. Here is an article comparing the proposal to Chicago’s parking concession, which we discussed in 2008. Philadelphia apparently has about 400 illegal parking lots according to local news reports. The city’s Licenses & Inspections office, charged with regulating lots, apparently doesn’t have a single inspector looking for them. This wouldn’t normally bother […]

New empirical evidence that parking minimums encourage sprawl

by Stephen Smith Although we at Market Urbanism are big fans of Donald Shoup’s work on parking minimums, we have to admit that rigorous econometric evidence that parking minimums mandate more parking than the market would otherwise supply has been a bit lacking. Randal O’Toole at The Antiplanner quite rightly asks to see empirical proof that parking minimums are binding. Tyler Cowen appears to have found this proof, in the form of paper posted online very recently which seeks to determine whether or not non-residential developers in Los Angeles County build more parking than they would in the absence of minimum parking mandates. Here’s the second half of the abstract, emphasis mine: [To] our knowledge the existing literature does not test the effect of parking minimums on the amount of lot space devoted to parking beyond a few case studies. This paper tests the hypothesis that parking space requirements cause an oversupply of parking by examining the implicit marginal value of land allocated to parking spaces. This is an indirect test of the effects of parking requirements that is similar to Glaeser and Gyourko (2003). A simple theoretical model shows that the marginal value of additional parking to the sale price should be equal to the cost of land plus the cost of parking construction. We estimate the marginal values of parking and lot area with spatial methods using a large data set from the Los Angeles area non-residential property sales and find that for most of the property types the marginal value of parking is significantly below that of the parcel area. This evidence supports the contention that minimum parking requirements significantly increase the amount of parcel area devoted to parking. The study ends up finding that at least half of all non-commercial properties have more parking than they […]

NYC’s lingering obsession with parking minimums may come to an end

by Stephen Smith Back in February Streetsblog had a good three–part series on planning changes in New York City since the beginning of Michael Bloomberg’s term, and while they had a lot of praise for upzonings that have occurred throughout much of the four urban boroughs, they highlighted minimum parking regulations as the biggest impediment to walkable, transit-oriented development. The series ran a few months ago, but I was reminded of it because of Tyler Cowen’s article in the New York Times a few days ago, in which he made the same general Donald Shoup-esque arguments about parking that readers of Market Urbanism are familiar with. But back to the Streetsblog series – the second part is mostly about parking minimums in NYC, which haven’t been lowered despite the upzonings and other policies that emphasize mass transit over cars. The article has a great map which shows that, outside of areas south of Central Park, parking minimums are barely relaxed at all in areas of all five boroughs with the best transit access, and this paragraph sums up the paradox of New York’s planning regulations pretty well: Perversely, because you can build more densely near transit, parking minimums per square foot of land are actually higher where transit options are most robust. So even as the planning department tries to concentrate growth near transit lines, it is simultaneously filling that valuable real estate with unnecessary parking. As one commenter points out, the Department of City Planning probably isn’t intentionally sabotaging its walkability goals – many current residents own cars and want to continue to use them, and a development’s car-less residents from the hypothetical future don’t get a say in local politics. Fast-forward a few months, though, and it looks as though the City Planning Department may be reconsidering its […]

LA’s partial parking privatization

by Stephen Smith The LA Times reports that Los Angeles is considering “privatizing” ten public parking garages to fill a budget shortfall. The story is, unfortunately, a reminder of how infrastructure “privatization” is often little better than the status quo, and how media reporting of the issue can doom real reform. Whereas pure privatization would mean selling the buildings and underlying land to anyone for any use, this scheme is actually a 50-year outsourcing of the garages’ management (mostly, at least) and profits (again, mostly). The new “owners” could only use the structures to park cars, and using them to house people and businesses that would increase the walkability of the areas where the garages are located is out of the question. True privatization would also bring in more money for the city, which is the stated goal of the privatization. The garages would be worth more if they were being sold with complete development rights, and the tax revenues from whatever’s built on them (not to mention possible increases in adjacent properties’ values) would probably exceed the “small negotiated share of future proceeds” that the city “could retain.” The only possible benefit I can see to this plan is that parking rates will move upwards towards the true market price. But even that would be too much for the city to stomach, as the city would “retain authority over parking rates at the garages” – and who wants to guess which way they’ll be pressured to push prices? The potential downfall of this plan, however, is that the public may forever associate privatization with this pseudo-corporatism, as happened in Russia in the early 1990’s and Chicago’s parking meter privatization scheme last year, which could impede future, more truly libertarian urban reforms. Originally posted on my blog.

Chicago Privatizes Parking Meters

Of course, Chicago is just privatizing the revenue from meters, not the actual parking spaces. Plus, the city will regulate rate increases, but it’s a step in the right direction. (right?) For today’s politicians, this is a great way to get windfalls of money today for revenues of future generations in order to mask their fiscal irresponsibility. I think we’ll see more of this during the current mess as other municipalities catch on. Ideally, cities should auction off the spaces (including the land), with no regulations on rates or use of the land. Let market mechanisms determine the highest-and-best use of the spaces and land. Chicago Tribune: Most city parking meters to cost $1 an hour [Hat Tip: reader, Dan M] City Hall officials said that after the first five years of the 75-year parking meter lease, rate hikes will be subject to approval by alderman and are expected to be at the rate of inflation. The $1.1 billion to city coffers will come from Chicago Parking Meter LLC, which is made up of two Morgan Stanley infrastructure funds. The Daley administration said $400 million will go into a long-term reserve, $325 million will be spent in city budgets through 2012 and $100 million is earmarked for programs helping low-income people. An additional $324 million is headed toward a fund city officials said “may be used to help bridge the period until the nation’s economy begins to grow again.” and a video:

Parking Minimums Hamper Development and Affordability

Thanks to Dan and Benjamin for separately tipping me off to this link: AP: Cities rethink wisdom of 50s-era parking standards Like nearly all U.S. cities, D.C. has requirements for off-street parking. Whenever anything new is built — be it a single-family home, an apartment building, a store or a doctor’s office — a minimum number of parking spaces must be included. The spots at the curb don’t count: These must be in a garage, a surface lot or a driveway. Parking requirements — known to planners as “parking minimums” — have been around since the 1950s. The theory is that if buildings don’t provide their own parking, too many drivers will try to park on neighborhood streets. In practice, critics say, the requirements create an excess supply of parking, making it artificially cheap. That, the argument goes, encourages unnecessary driving and makes congestion worse. The standards also encourage people to build unsightly surface lots and garages instead of inviting storefronts and residential facades, they say. Walkers must dodge cars pulling in and out of driveways, and curb cuts eat up space that could otherwise be used for trees. “Half the great buildings in America’s great cities would not be legal to build today under current land use codes,” said Jeff Speck, a planning consultant. “Every house on my block is illegal by current standards, particularly parking standards.” Opponents also say the standards force developers to devote valuable land to parking, making housing more expensive. “We’re forcing people to invest in spaces for automobiles rather than in spaces for people,” she said. “There’s no way to recover that use.”

“Green” Parking Garage in Chicago. Oxymoron?

Developer, Al Friedman plans to build a “green” parking garage in Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood, where development has replaced many surface lots. (Crain’s) Environmentally speaking, it’s probably better than a surface lot and frees up more space for productive development. But, can the structure itself being green offset the environmental effects of the cars using it? Is this a lesser of evils? Or is making a parking structure “green” a wasted effort? What do you think?

Markets for Parking

Matthew Yglesias: Parking How much will they pay? Well, it’s hard to know in advance which is why you need markets. But that’s what you should have — as much parking as the market will bear. Not government-mandated parking, and not government-provided free or discount parking. Let people build garages and if it’s more economical to provide less parking, let there be less parking. SFGate: SFpark would micromanage city’s scarce spaces As SFpark is envisioned, parking rates would be adjusted based on time of day, day of week and duration of stay. People would be able to pay not just with coins, but with credit cards, prepaid debit cards and even by cell phone. If a meter is set to expire, a text message could be sent to the driver. More time could be purchased remotely. It’s a step in the market direction for public parking spaces, but why not privatize all those spots? chicagobusiness.com: City links CTA improvements, higher parking fees While proceeding with these plans, the city also is privatizing operation of its thousands of parking meters. That could provide the city with a substantial cash infusion.

North Carolina’s Surreal Housing Spring

With a divided and highly polarized state government, North Carolina hadn’t gotten much done on housing and land use policy in the past few years. That changed unexpectedly last fall, when S 382, a controversial bill that combined hurricane relief…

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