Parking | A tool for transforming mobility

Parking management represents a real urban planning challenge for municipalities, given that a parking space requires nearly 15 m² of space and that a vehicle is immobilized nearly 95% of the time (Shoup, 2005). In addition to construction costs, parking generates water management, snow removal and maintenance costs, as well as tax losses in terms of unused real estate potential. Parking management raises political, social, environmental and economic issues, given its major impact on people’s mobility and the equitable appropriation of public space. With its potential to regulate behavior and contribute to modal shift, the issue of parking has an impact on optimal urban development and property revenues, enabling high-quality investments and services.

The consequences of applying ratios

Today, mobility is evolving towards new individual and collective forms, shaping urban space according to its needs. Despite these trends, current practice is still to establish minimum parking thresholds by type of use, while :

• Parking costs nothing in 95% of cases;
• the actual cost of off-street parking is greater than or equal to that of on-street parking;
• this service, which is often free of charge, biases travel choices against public and active transport;
• parking is detrimental to the development of a quality urban environment: if minimum thresholds were applied to old town centers, buildings would have to be surrounded by a pool of parking lots.

A recurring problem

According to Donald Shoup’s The High Cost of Free Parking, the automobile generates several issues, linked to accidents, pollution and many others. However, this everyday object spends 95% of its time stationary, in parking lots. As a result, many municipalities are facing ever-increasing demands, as this permanent standstill creates a false sense of lack, despite :

• a relatively low occupancy rate (<50%);
• no pricing;
• lack of regulation (employee parking vs. customer parking; no maximum duration to encourage rotation);
• under-utilization of adjacent, oversized streets.

Parking externalities:

• increased water management costs;
• increased road infrastructure costs;
• increased search traffic;
• rising housing costs;
• increase in suburban travel;
• reduction in property income;
• reduced density and urban compactness;
• reduction in the quality of urban design.

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