New Blog to Watch: Paul Barter on Parking

IMG_0179[1]Paul Barter, an Australian transport expert based at the National University of Singapore, has a new blog project, Reinventing Parking.  From his Introductory message:

A key aim of this blog is to help inform the parking policy choices
confronting decision-makers and communities. I have my own views of
course and I will not be shy to share them. However, I mostly want to
help you to clarify your own thinking on parking policy. I want to help
you understand the implications of the various parking policy choices,
so you can choose your own, with ‘eyes wide open’.  If you have very
firm ideas on parking policy, this site may shake them up a little
perhaps.

Parking policy plays a huge role in shaping metropolitan areas and
their transport patterns, yet parking is usually planned with little
thought for its power. It can create enormous cross-subsidies in
society, yet most people hardly notice. Parking policy choices can be
pivotal for cities, yet there is widespread confusion over the nature
of those choices and what they imply. We need to do much better.

Just today I was in a meeting where I was asked for my opinion about the transit ridership we might get out of a new suburb.  My response was that it’s a little bit about the carrots — the service we provide — but sadly a lot of it is about the sticks: how bad the alternatives are.  The fastest route to high transit ridership, if that’s your goal, is to constrain road space and constrain parking, so that both become expensive in either time or money.  That’s why Sydney’s CBD has Australia’s highest percentage of commuters using transit.  It’s not that the transit is wonderful; it isn’t.  It’s that parking all day in the Sydney CBD can cost $60 or more, and road tolls can easily add another $10.

Parking is also the main reason that so much of our urban fabric is so unfriendly to pedestrians.  If you’ve ever relied on transit in any typical North American suburb, you’ve spent a big chunk of your life walking across parking lots.  Parking demand pushes buildings further apart, defeating the pedestrian.  It also raises the cost of high-density living. (When I lived in Vancouver in 2006, I could not find an apartment in a highrise building that didn’t require me to rent a parking space that I wouldn’t use.)

Remarkably, these decisions are often not based on the developer’s assessment of parking demand, but rather on minimum parking requirements imposed by local governments.  Increasingly, we’re seeing a new focus on turning that around:  Eliminating minimums, selling parking places separate from apartments, and even, in San Francisco, a serious effort to let the free market set parking rates.

So, parking matters.  That’s why I’m watching the SF Park experiment in San Francisco.  And it’s why you should be reading Reinventing Parking.

8 Responses to New Blog to Watch: Paul Barter on Parking

  1. Chris B August 31, 2010 at 7:39 am #

    Interestingly, Vancouver is allowing a building with NO parking! The builders estimate it will save $40K a unit for the 40 units being proposed.

  2. Sarah August 31, 2010 at 9:20 am #

    A friend of mine lives on a bike route, only a 5km cycle from her job at Granville Island in Vancouver. The route is almost entirely along a seawall path. She rides her bike. Except for this past August when a colleague was on holiday leaving her parking spot available for my friend’s use. So she drove instead of riding. An anecdote that demonstrates how powerful free an available parking is.

  3. EngineerScotty August 31, 2010 at 10:06 am #

    One other factor that merits mention: Many commercial lenders, when financing new commercial (retail, office) construction–particularly retail, frequently impose parking minimums (often above and beyond any local legal requirement) as a condition of a construction loan.
    From the lendor’s point of view, the calculus is obvious: Repayment depends on the business thriving; thus it is not acceptable were the business to lose customers due to inadequate parking (i.e. customers unable to find a space and not patronizing the business as a result). Given that asphalt is cheaper than many other uses for a given chunk of real estate (such as a larger building), requiring large parking lots is a cheap way of protecting the lender’s interests.

  4. anonymouse August 31, 2010 at 10:09 am #

    It’s not so much “parking demand,” which sounds like an economic term for drivers wanting to park as “parking demands” imposed by governments and banks. And if banks really do do this, then that’s a good reason to support parking maximums.

  5. Zoltan Connell August 31, 2010 at 11:49 am #

    “If you’ve ever relied on transit in any typical North American suburb, you’ve spent a big chunk of your life walking across parking lots.”
    And oh, I have. I feel like two-thirds of my recent stay with a friend in a distant corner of Indianapolis was spent either in parking lots, or waiting in the dirt at the side of roads without sidewalks for buses.

  6. Nwali September 1, 2010 at 5:12 am #

    However, I mostly want to help you to clarify your own thinking on parking policy. I want to help you understand the implications of the various parking policy choices, so you can choose your own, with ‘eyes wide open’.
    Sounds like Jarret when he says this.

  7. ws September 2, 2010 at 6:54 pm #

    To add to the discussion, market based solutions like land value taxation (LVT) instead of arbitrary assessed values can create better use of the land. Very few places in the US practice this mode of taxation, and in most areas is a combination of land + building assessment.
    LVT essentially takes the property tax off the structure(s) and taxes solely the land it’s on, nothing else. Parking lots would obviously cost a lot more than they do now, and no land developer would want to put their land with higher taxes to poor revenue generating uses like a “free” parking lot.
    Hence you will get natural density increase.
    This isn’t meant to be a punitive scheme to get people to drive less or force people on transit; it’s more of an equity and fairness standpoint regarding taxation. Consume more land, pay more taxes. Consume less land, pay fewer taxes.
    I think this video highlights the issue well:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grJJds_G6uc

  8. www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=892245480 November 25, 2012 at 3:16 pm #

    In Australia, property taxes are based on what we call the Unimproved Capital Value (UCV), the same concept as LVT. The problem is that when there is no, or little, vacant land in a suburb, valuations become quite arbitrary as there is very limited opportunity to make valid comparisons with recent sales of improved properties.