Parking Management
Don't have time to read parking expert and UCLA Professor Donald Shoup’s book, The High Cost of Free Parking? Read TSTC’s four-part summary.
Part I: Oceans of Parking -- A Tragedy of the Commons
The High Cost of Free Parking, Part II: The Problem with Zoning
The High Cost of Free Parking, Part III: The Search
The High Cost Of Free Parking, Part IV: Distributing the Benefits of Parking Pricing
Parking supply is a major indicator of how people travel to a location. Free, unrestricted parking encourages driving and promotes congestion, even if mass transit options are available. Too much parking often results in vacant, unsafe, and unattractive areas that hurt a neighborhood's development potential.
The Tri-State Campaign supports innovative parking management techniques that reduce incentives to drive and promote alternatives. One example of this is parking cash-out, a program that allows employees to receive cash instead of a free parking space at work. Others include changing outdated zoning regulations that require extreme amounts of parking, market-driven parking fees, or sharing parking spaces with a nearby facility or store.
Resources
- Parking Management: A Brochure -- A primer on better parking management for local businesses and governments.
- TSTC Sample Parking Ordinance for municipalities interested in reducing traffic and allowing more walkable and transit-friendly development via parking reform.
- The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy's report US Parking Policies: An Overview of Management Strategies looks at municipalities across the country that are using cutting-edge parking management strategies to drive economic growth and gain environmental benefits.
- Recent blog posts on parking from TSTC's Mobilizing the Region.
- Coverage of parking issues from Streetsblog.
Related Campaigns
Smart parking policy plays a major role in some of Tri-State's other campaigns:
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Planning Issues in NYCMany of the economic development initiatives launched in New York City -– which include rezoning major districts for more intensive development, new sports arenas, and suburban-style big box stores -– have taken place without much thought for their transportation consequences. |
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Transit-Oriented Development ClearinghouseThis clearinghouse contains information for officials and stakeholders who are interested in bringing transit-oriented development to their communities. It is a repository of information from successful transit-oriented development efforts from around the region and the country. |
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