Under utilized parking lots......
Submitted by: jemayes
28 July 2008 - 11:12am
I vaguely remember a study and I think it was out of Washington University on how parking lots are grossly overcompensated (real shocker) for the amount of use. Does anybody know of a study that show or proves that:
1. Parking lots are typically larger then they need to be
2. A certain percentage of surface parking goes un-used most of the year
3. How much of typical parking lot is wasted space.
Thanks in advance for the help!
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Check out ITE (Institue of
Check out ITE (Institue of Transportation Engineers) Trip Generation book.
www.ite.org
ULI book on shared parking, and Shoup's work
Hi you probably want to start by looking up Donald Shoup's work. Check out his voluminous book "the High Cost of Free Parking" Then google scholar his individual papers. Basically the argument comes down to this. Parking minimums define the amount of required parking as the amount to satisfy the peak demand, not the average demand. So if you build enough spaces for the day before Christmas, what will it look like on a Tuesday afternoon when kids are in school?
Shoup's second point is that the parking generation studies used by most cities is not very rigorous. Some of the parking factors are based on fewer than 30 studies. That means a city planning department in an Urban are may be basing their parking requirements on those of a suburban area, with no transit access. that paper is called something like "Precise but not accurate..."
Urban Land Institute and the Institute of Parking engineers have both started publishing engineering based works on shared parking, and the intros may have some material on nationwide numbers of under-utilization.