Donald Shoup

THE TROUBLE WITH MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMENTS

Urban planners typically set the minimum parking requirements for every land use to satisfy the peak demand for free parking. As a result, parking is free for 99% of automobile trips in the United States. Minimum parking requirements increase the supply and reduce the price - but not the cost - of parking. They bundle the cost of parking spaces into the cost of development, and thereby increase the prices of all the goods and services sold at the sites that offer free parking. Cars have many external costs, but the external cost of parking in cities may be greater than all the other external costs combined. To prevent spillover, cities could price on-street parking rather than require off-street parking. Compared with minimum parking requirements, market prices can allocate parking spaces fairly and efficiently.

EVALUATING THE EFFECTS OF CASHING OUT EMPLOYER-PAID PARKING: EIGHT CASE STUDIES

California law requires many employers to offer commuters the option to choose cash in lieu of any parking subsidy offered. This report presents case studies of eight firms that have complied with California’s cash-out requirement. For the 1,694 employees of the eight firms, the number of solo drivers to work fell by 17 percent after cashing out. The number of carpoolers increased by 64 percent, the number of transit riders increased by 50 percent, and the number who walk or bike to work increased by 39 percent. Vehicle-miles traveled for commuting to the eight firms fell by 12 percent. Carbon dioxide emissions from commuting fell by 367 kilograms per employee per year. The eight firms’ spending for commuting subsidies rose by

Getting the Prices Right

2 per employee per month because payments in lieu of parking increased slightly more than spending for parking declined. Federal and state income tax revenues increased by

An Opportunity to Reduce Minimum Parking Requirements

65 per employee per year because many commuters voluntarily traded tax-exempt parking subsidies for taxable cash. Employers praised the cash option for its simplicity and fairness, and said that it helped to recruit and retain employees. The benefit/cost ratio of the eight cash-out programs was at least 4/1. In summary, these eight case studies show that cashing out employer-paid parking can benefit commuters, employers, taxpayers, and the environment. All these benefits derive from subsidizing people, not parking.

WAITING FOR THE BUS

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Underpriced and overcrowded curb parking creates problems for everyone except a few lucky drivers who find a cheap space; all the other drivers who cruise to find an open space waste time and fuel, congest traffic, and pollute the air. Overpriced and underoccupied parking also creates problems; when curb spaces remain empty, merchants lose potential customers, workers lose jobs, and cities lose tax revenue. To address these problems, San Francisco has established SFpark, a program that adjusts prices to achieve availability of one or two open spaces per block. To measure how prices affected on-street occupancy, we calculated the price elasticity of demand revealed by over 5,000 price and occupancy changes during the programs first year. Price elasticity has an average value of –0.4, but varies greatly by time of day, location, and several other factors. The average meter price fell 1% during the first year, so SFpark adjusted prices without increasing them overall. This study is the first to use measured occupancy to estimate the elasticity of demand for on-street parking. It also offers the first evaluation of pricing that varies by time of day and location to manage curb parking. Takeaway for practice: San Francisco can improve its program by making drivers more aware of the variable prices, reducing the disabled placard abuse, and introducing seasonal price adjustments. Other cities can incorporate performance parking as a form of congestion pricing. Research support: University of California Transportation Center.

Employer-Paid Parking: A Nationwide Survey of Employers' Parking Subsidy Policies

Abstract Employer-paid parking subsidizes about a third of all automobile travel in the United States, and about two-thirds of all automobile travel during the morning peak hours. To reduce traffic congestion and air pollution, California has recently enacted legislation requiring employers who subsidize employee parking to offer employees the option to take the cash value of the parking subsidy, in lieu of the parking itself. The legislation also requires cities to reduce the parking requirements for developments that implement a parking cash-out program. This study estimates how the option to cash out employer-paid parking will reduce commuter parking demand, and recommends a corresponding reduction in minimum parking requirements. To deal with spillover parking problems that may occur if cities reduce parking requirements, the article concludes with a proposal to create “Parking Benefit Districts” where the revenues from market-priced curb parking are dedicated to paying for neighborhood public service...

Graduated Density Zoning

In a natural experiment, college students riding public transit to UCLA were presented with the opportunity to pay for time savings. They could pay 75c to travel right away, or wait an average of 5.3 minutes for a free ride. 86% of riders chose to wait rather that pay. Their behavior suggests that the disutility of time spent waiting for a free ride is less than

Turning Housing Into Driving: Parking Requirements and Density in Los Angeles and New York

8.50 per hour. Riders overestimated their wait time by a factor of two when it was imposed by the transit system, but accurately estimated their wait time when they chose to wait for the free bus ride.

The High Cost of Minimum Parking Requirements

Ninety-five percent of automobile commuters in the United States have free parking at work. To deal with traffic congestion and air pollution caused by parking subsidies, California law now requires many employers to offer employees the option to cash out their parking subsidies. Similar Federal legislation has been proposed. The paper reports on a nationwide survey that found that employers in the United States offer employees 84.8 million free parking spaces. Employers own 65,3 million of these free parking spaces, and rent the other 19.5 million. Employers of fewer than twenty employees provide more than half of all employer-paid parking spaces.

Putting Cities Back on Their Feet

The difficulty of assembling sites large enough to redevelop at higher density can impede regeneration in city centers and accelerate suburban sprawl onto large sites already in single ownership. One promising new planning strategy to encourage voluntary land assembly is graduated density zoning, which allows higher density on larger sites. This strategy can increase the incentive for owners to cooperate in a land assembly that creates higher land values. Graduated density zoning will not eliminate the incentive to hold out, but it can create a new fear of being left out. Holdouts who are left with sites that cannot be combined with enough contiguous properties to trigger higher density lose a valuable economic opportunity. This article examines the difficulty of assembling land for infill development, and explains graduated density zoning as a way to encourage voluntary land assembly. Finally, it presents the results of graduated density zoning in practice.