Why American Cities Have So Much Parking - Cheddar Explains

it's no secret that america's great love affair is with the automobile our country was practically purpose built for getting around via car we have extensive highways instead of bullet trains wide streets instead of bike lanes and so much parking it only makes sense of course when everybody has to use a car and then has to put that car somewhere while they do things you're gonna need parking spaces and lots of them especially in cities where there was no culture of walking or public transportation like los angeles seattle detroit and even canadian cities like ottawa and vancouver so it's no surprise that for a really long time urban planners thought our problem was that there wasn't enough parking cities passed laws that more parking had to be built businesses dedicated extra space and funds to parking all anyone could talk about was how the glut of people circling popular downtown areas looking for a spot was a death knell for the economy that was a big mistake the 1970s to the early 2000s the prevailing wisdom was that there was not nearly enough parking in downtown areas to support their economic growth the city's solution create something called parking minimums any new projects had to have a certain percentage of the project be off street parking even though the amount of parking increased substantially it seemed like there was never enough so city planners kept pushing for more parking this movement was responsible for the destruction of many historic buildings and neighborhoods across america check out this before and after from wisconsin and this one or like this theater in detroit now it's a 12 space parking lot but the cost of parking stems beyond the loss of historical sites in 2005 donald shu a professor from ucla published a 733-page magnum opus called the high cost of free parking professor chup waged war on the idea of parking minimums and looking back it was for good reason from his research shupe discovered that more than 30 percent of the area in many downtown commercial cores is taken up by parked cars and in many places there are four times as many parking spaces as there are vehicles shupe says that in los angeles parking takes up 40 percent more land than all the freeways and streets combined another more recent report from eric scharnhurst at the research institute for housing america used satellite imagery and tax records to tally on-street parking surface parking and garage parking in five cities new york seattle philadelphia des moines and jackson wyoming for example in des moines there are 18 times as many parking spaces per acre as households in philadelphia there are 3.7 times more parking spaces than households and to make matters worse most american parking garages sit relatively empty in des moines at midday one publicly funded parking garage was just eight percent full outside seattle it was only 43 full in contrast in amsterdam where 65 of daily trips are made by bike city officials hope to eliminate 11 200 parking spots downtown by 2025. it's clear that there is too much parking for the amount of people in each american city the ratios are all off not only is this a waste of valuable real estate but it's also really expensive if you built all the parking in these five cities today the study estimates it would cost 81 billion dollars a big reason for this is the lending industry they insist on outdated parking formulas as a condition for financing new construction which restricts small and local businesses some of these business owners and developers can't afford enough of the valuable downtown real estate to reach parking minimums so either their loans are more expensive or they are denied entirely and sometimes to afford all that parking they have to hike up their prices which doesn't help sales of course that's assuming that businesses can even overcome the last and possibly the most difficult problem it's actually easier to show rather than tell experts call this unwalkability in contrast a walkable area like say the west village in manhattan is much better for businesses and people like them a lot better it's why they're generally popular areas and lots of cities have them but they're usually in older neighborhoods because they would never make it past modern zoning regulations for parking even though they are some of the most enjoyable walkable and bikeable areas in the city so not only does all of this parking create an absolutely unenjoyable city experience it also encourages more people to drive instead of taking public transportation this creates a never-ending circling problem makes traffic worse hinders plans for bike lanes or public transport and causes lots more pedestrian traffic accidents it's in a word bad and by trying to solve these problems by doubling down on parking garages city planners have been making it worse and worse killing our downtown areas and destroying the integrity of our neighborhoods city planners began to realize that they'd spent 50 years digging a hole with parking garage shovels and shoop was the one holding a rope to get them out so a lot of them started advocating for what shupe had been saying for a decade reduced parking minimums check out this video that the city of ottawa put out in support of lowering them here's the thing when you decide that all development has to have lots of parking it creates an environment that's really difficult to walk in or bike or take transit so naturally everyone ends up driving that means traffic but it doesn't have to be that way thankfully this shift has led to legal changes for future building projects new york has passed laws that bar parking along the ground floor street frontage and have encouraged retail uses instead a draft rewrite of the parking regulations for much of manhattan would eliminate a key incentive to build ground floor parking a big step in the right direction so another fourth avenue isn't built in columbus ohio downtown business owners who also want parking spaces freed up for customers are chipping in 5 million initially for a program to pay for their workers to take a bus rather than their cars to work more than 40 000 workers would qualify starting in june a three-month test last year resulted in 12.2 percent of downtown workers taking the bus nearly double the 6.4 percent who did before this significantly reduces the amount of cars circulating in downtown areas and encourages less driving across the board so instead of driving straight into a downtown area visitors are encouraged to park at a public transport hub and take that into a downtown or to bike there city planners don't think that this is going to change overnight but they hope that moving away from the car will give downtown areas the room to breathe but what will be done with all the parking that already exists the national association of city transportation officials has suggested in a recent study that parking garages could be turned into bike parking small green spaces or parklets for pedestrians to enjoy or could be pickup and drop off areas for driverless vehicles and ride-hailing services like uber and lyft with the increase in use of ride-sharing apps and the potential for autonomous vehicles parking garages may become a drop-off and pick-up point for these purposes unfortunately there are still advocates for outdated parking garages and advocates for just not changing the status quo but that's not going to bring our downtowns back to life only stopping parking garages from taking up valuable ground floor real estate and killing our downtowns is going to do that how do you feel about all of this let us know in the comments and make sure you tune in to who new wednesdays at 8 pm we'll see you next time

Channel: Cheddar

Views: 227,832

Keywords: Cheddar, explainer, cheddar explains, urban planning, city planning, town planning, urban design, development, design, infrastructure, parking, parking lot, parking garage, the high cost of free parking, public transportation, mass transit, car culture, cars, united states, america, usa, cities, city, free parking, driving, urban, economy, economics, walkability, walking, sustainable design, sustainability, pedestrian, biking, retail, shopping

Id: IgA4FJWIjI8

Length: 8min 44sec (524 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 27 2021