Skip to Content
Streetsblog San Francisco home
Streetsblog San Francisco home
Log In
ITDP

Fun Facts About the Sad State of Parking Policy

9:24 AM PST on February 24, 2010

Wichita_Surface_Parking.jpgSurface parking stretches halfway to the horizon in the heart of downtown Wichita, Kansas. Image: Wichita Walkshop via Flickr.

If you haven't checked out the ITDP parking report we covered yesterday, it's a highly readable piece of research, walking you through parking policy's checkered past and potentially brighter future.

In
addition to describing six cases of innovative parking strategies, the
authors draw from a wide-ranging body of evidence about the woeful
state of most current parking policy, marshaling revealing facts and
figures. We culled some of the ones that leap out the most. Enjoy:

  • Ninety-nine percent of U.S. car trips begin and end in a free parking space.
  • The average automobile is parked 95 percent of the time.
  • Although
    many businesses today believe they benefit from free parking, curbside
    parking meters were actually introduced in 1935 by an Oklahoma City
    department store owner. He wanted to increase parking turnover so that
    there would always be spaces available for his customers.
  • Conventional
    parking policy counsels providing enough spots to handle car storage on
    the 30th busiest hour of the entire year, usually the weekend before
    Christmas. That means intentionally planning for an oversupply of
    parking the other 8,730 hours of the year.
  • At free parking spaces, 40 to 60 percent of vehicles overstay posted time limits.
  • Parking typically represents a full 10 percent of development costs.
    What's more, the people who actually park only pay 5 percent of the cost of non-residential parking,
    meaning that public subsidies and developer capital pay for the rest.
  • In
    San
    Francisco, parking requirements have reduced the number of affordable
    housing units nonprofit developers can build by 20 percent,
    with each residence costing 20 percent more to build than it would have
    without parking.
  • Seventy percent of Southern California suburban office developments built exactly
    the number of parking spaces required by law, suggesting that parking
    minimums are forcing developers to build more parking than they want
    to.
  • How
    much space does parking eat up? Office space typically requires 175 to
    250 square feet per person. In comparison, curbside parking requires
    200 square feet per vehicle, and garages require 300 to 350 square feet
    per vehicle.
  • Even in the Park Smart pilot areas of
    Greenwich Village, where peak hour meter rates have been raised,
    on-street parking still costs $12 per hour less than off-street
    parking. At that rate, cruising for 15 minutes to find an on-street
    space pays off at the equivalent of a $100,000 annual salary.
  • NYC has 32 fewer meters per capita than Chicago.
  • Only
    two major U.S. cities, Houston and Chicago, are adding more metered
    parking. In Houston's case, they are more than doubling their metered
    spaces in coordination with the city's light rail project.

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog San Francisco

See all posts