Should Cities Get Rid of On-Street Parking?

this video is sponsored by brilliant have you ever thought about how many people Park in one parking spot over the course of a day or how many people stay longer than they should and potentially get a parking ticket believe it or not the answer to these questions can have a major impact on Street design which is why we conducted a study to find out I say we because I hired a team of student assistants to count the number of parked cars in these 40 spaces in downtown San Luis Obispo here's a roll call of all the students who help me out hi I'm Sabrina hello I'm Tiffany hi my name is Isabel hi I'm Hannah hi I'm Colin thanks team they each took a two hour shift from 9am to 9pm on a Friday the entire length of time the city charges for on-street parking what did we find well first of all the number of cars parking in an on-street space depends on how long people are allowed to park there this isn't a big surprise we tracked parked cars in 10 spaces with a 10 hour limit on average four to five cars parked in each space over the 12-hour period most of the spaces we tracked had a two hour limit those spaces on average hosted seven cars over the course of the day some counts were far higher like for this spot here 13 cars parked in that spot which makes sense as the library was hosting its annual book sale and it was busy all day we also tracked two spaces that had a 30 minute limit and the average number of cars hosted per space was six one less than the average two hour spot why well one of those spots had 11 cars parked in 12 hours the other spot had one car parked there all day 12 hours of parking in a 30-minute spot that's a bold move but that car wasn't the only one overstaying their welcome while nobody overstayed in the 10 hour spaces 34 cars in the two-hour spaces did that's just over 15 percent of all cars parking in those spaces I don't know about you but that's higher than I expected I do want to give this study one big caveat we studied a few dozen spaces over one 12-hour period this is not a study worthy of a journal article or even a city internal parking study and they do do those by the way but this is a true account of what happened in those 12 hours on a Friday night in San Luis Obispo and we did notice that there were significant number of people who could have potentially gotten a parking ticket now a couple minutes ago I mentioned that these parking Studies have something to do with Street design and City Planning and I'll explain after the bike Bell Street space is a limited resource particularly in busy downtown areas streets as narrow as 60 to 80 feet need to accommodate the needs of drivers cyclists pedestrians delivery trucks Transit and car parking Street design is a representation of a community's transportation priorities some cities want to move cars through town as fast as possible and design streets with lots of car Lanes others prioritize Transit and have Transit only Lanes or entire Transit only streets each city is doing a form of cost benefit analysis is it better to have parking a bike lane bus lane or more car Lanes that's what this parking study is all about I wanted to understand how many people actually use on-street parking if it's less than say the number of people who use a bike lane maybe a bike lane is a better use of that space now the parking survey we did didn't count people it counted cars we're gonna have to use a multiplier to estimate the number of people who benefited from those 40 spaces in the 12-hour period the easiest way is to Simply assume that there's only one person per car the vast majority of cars on the road have exactly one occupant the driver but some people do carpool so the average occupancy used by planners is somewhere between 1.25 and 1.7 occupants per vehicle let's use 1.5 as a nice middle number if that's the case about 417 people benefited from those parking spaces in that 12-hour period let's compare that to how many people drove walked and biked and let's focus on Palm Street right here on that street an estimated 176 people use those parking spaces according to a city traffic study on average just over 4 000 cars passed that segment as well as 1200 pedestrians and 78 bikes at face value it looks like those parking spaces serve more people than people on bikes it's a reasonably good use of space as the car lanes and sidewalks are not over capacity but it's important to note here that there are no bike Lanes if the parking spaces were replaced by bike Lanes more people would bike one study found that installing bike Lanes on a street increased the number of cyclists by 75 percent in the first year this would mean that there will be 137 cyclists on Palm Street still less than the number of people benefiting from those parking spaces but that's only within the first year and some protected bicycle Lansing double or triple the number of cyclists which are what the number of cyclists at or above the number of people using parking on Palm Street but it's not that simple drivers are the only ones who benefit from on-street parking nearby businesses prefer having parking right in front of their shops and when we drive there's this expectation that there will always be a relatively convenient place for us to park and we get annoyed when this isn't the case business owners don't want it to be a hassle for customers to get to their store but his on-street parking actually better for businesses than say a bike lane maybe not one study of this Street in Toronto found no negative economic impacts associated with removing 137 parking spaces and replacing them with these bike Lanes monthly consumer spending and the number of customers served both increased after the lanes were installed they proved this by surveying merchants and Shoppers before and after the street redesign and by comparing it to a comparable street that didn't remove parking another study of a corridor in Seattle found sales increased when a bike lane replaced on-street parking I'm not cherry picking studies that agree with me either the most common impact of bike lands on businesses is positive and the most rigorous studies of bike Lanes replacing parking are consistent but there's another group that doesn't want to see on-street parking disappear local governments parking revenue is not an insignificant source of Revenue the city of Los Angeles makes 57 million dollars a year from its parking meters this is why many cities have been reluctant to keep the covet era parklets that have been synonymous with outdoor dining in urban areas that parking space is now earning money for the restaurant and not the city government some cities are now asking business owners to pay for the spaces to help the city recoup its lost Revenue greedy greedy government right well there are actually some benefits to charging for parking as we've established Street space is valuable if you want to store your private vehicle there you better be willing to pay up free or low-cost parking encourages drivers to stay in one parking spot for a longer time and leads to less available parking spots those who get lucky enough to find a parking spot closer to their destination benefit from this but everyone else will need to continue driving around for a spot that is farther away this causes the unintended effect of cruising for parking where drivers end up using more gas emitting more carbon and causing more traffic congestion while they search for a parking spot to avoid cruising for parking a street parking vacancy of 15 is needed which is more easily done when parking costs are higher you probably don't want to hear that what is important to remember that essentially all other aspects of car ownership aren't free either and offering free or underpriced parking disproportionately shifts part of the cost of car ownership to everyone regardless of if they own a car or not even parking fines make sense as they discourage people from staying too long in this space overstays can reduce the number of customers a nearby business can conveniently serve and decreases the odds of you finding a space overstays also reduce the total number of people who can use the space throughout the day which again makes parking seem like a bad use of Road space compared to say a bike lane there are other ways to optimize on-street parking besides just eliminating it and replacing with a bike lane or charging higher fines and fees cities could turn curb parking spaces into pickup and drop-off zones this would be a particularly useful option if Rideshare continues to be in demand or if autonomous vehicles become widespread in the future some studies on this topic believe there could be an 85 percent reduction in needed curb parking spaces if autonomous vehicles and public trans become main forms of transportation another option would be to convert 10 hour and two hour spaces to 30 minute spaces which can help delivery trucks in my video on that topic I pointed out that many drivers illegally Park in commercial loading zones forcing trucks to block the roadway but adding more 30-minute spots instead means that there are more options for delivery drivers and cars alike and it could increase parking turnover which increases the number of people using a parking space I'm not arguing that on street parking is never The Right Use of Street space but providing parking incentivizes driving which leads to more traffic and carbon emissions so cities need to think critically about when they offer on-story parking and be willing to evaluate Alternatives understanding the true costs and benefits of on-story parking is certainly more complex than it appears on the surface and requires a skill set that includes logic critical thinking and reasoning if you need to practice as a problem solver you're going to need problems to practice on and you'll find those problems over at brilliant active courses you will find the challenges you need to become a better creative Problem Solver you'll also be learning things like probability and statistics logic and scientific reasoning all of which could help you redesign your local street but you can also learn calculus chemistry and computer science which could lead you to a career that pays more than you're earning now which means you'll be able to afford those higher parking fees the best thing about brilliant though is that every single one of their courses is built upon the principle of active learning you're not going to be passively watching a video or reading text but instead writing code solving problems taking quizzes it's super interactive this is a proven technique that helps you stay engaged learn more and complete your objectives brilliant is running an offer where the first 200 people to sign up will receive 20 off their annual premium subscription now is the best time to sign up and take advantage of that great deal if you want to maximize your creative problem solving and support this channel head over to brilliant.org citybeautiful to start learning today I'll post a link link on screen too thank you so much for your support

Channel: City Beautiful

Views: 180,513

Keywords: city planning, town planning, urban planning, urban design

Id: oohnfpBL9uE

Length: 10min 56sec (656 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 25 2022