The book and the ideas within it had a big impact on me as I finished my university studies and was becoming more and more interested in the interface between traffic and transport engineering and urban planning. The following is largely based on a paper I wrote on his work as part of an Urban Planning degree I was doing back in 2014 – and touches on some of the concepts that stuck with me. This seems even more important now as the NSW and Victorian State Governments embark on planning reforms to increase housing supply near transit nodes, with the expected public backlash around the lack of car parking.
Setting the Scene
Statutory minimum parking requirements haven’t always existed. In the early 20th century, before the era of mass car-ownership, it was common for homes to be built without any requirement to provide car parking. However things changed beginning in the early 20th century with mass car production. Then, in the 1930s, planning visionary Frank Lloyd Wright formulated his plan for ‘Broadacre City’ that foresaw the mass suburbanisation that was a hallmark of the decades that followed. Technical, modern solutions, such as those proposed in Wright’s Broadacre City, were seen as the solutions of the problems of the future.
This is shown in the response to the skyrocketing car ownership of the 1950s. Traffic engineers and planners adopted the modernist ideology in the creation and design of the extensive freeway expansions utilising a “predict and provide” approach. They studied the characteristics of traffic behaviour with the certainty that traffic is a scientific phenomenon that can be ‘described with the precision of science’. However, building freeway capacity wasn’t the only challenge that came from rising car ownership, there was also the problem of parking the cars. To ensure sufficient parking spaces, statutory minimum off-street parking requirements began from the 1950s.
This was the starting point for Donald Shoup. He pointed out that parking is a virtually unstudied link between transport and land-use, which lies between traffic engineers and planners, with neither sure who should be responsible, going on to describing mainstream parking policy as ‘an elaborate structure with no foundation’. Shoup has also ‘asked many professors of urban planning if their departments offer any instruction on how planners set parking requirements, and the answer is always no’. The unquestioning application of these rates is symptomatic of a process that doesn’t consider the origins, rationale, or repercussions of minimum parking requirements and sets the background to Shoup’s critiques.
Shoup challenged the idea that the abundant provision of free car parking is a public good. He identified and quantified the wider economic, social and environmental externalities which are subsidised by the wider community. Four key themes are outlined below.
Financial Implications
Higher levels of car parking increase construction costs and decrease housing affordability. Moreover, the benefits of ample car parking are not available to those that walk or use public transport; however they still incur the costs. For example, the author shops at a large supermarket in inner-metropolitan Melbourne that includes a two-level basement car park. Parking is free (or at least there’s no financial cost at entry or exit) if you shop at the supermarket. However, the parking is not actually free. Each car parking space represents a significant construction cost (including excavation, land acquisition, construction materials, and so on). These costs, one way or another, are passed on; the free parking is effectively subsidised by those that shop at the supermarket. This may be appropriate for those that drive to the supermarket, but those that don’t are still effectively forced to pay for parking. There is also the additional traffic and congestion that is a result of the construction of such a car park, the negative effects of which are incurred by the immediate and wider community. Shoup contends that there appears to be no significant economic benefit to an area through the provision of ample parking.
Harm to the Urban Environment
Minimum parking requirements increase the physical space required by a development. High minimum parking requirements therefore lower the resultant density and work to exacerbate urban sprawl, which in turn leads to greater car ownership and use. They also work to discourage development at infill or historical sites by making them less practicable and attractive through high statutory car parking requirements. Car parking also increases the amount of land that is impermeable, leading to greater stormwater runoff.
Travel Behaviour
Ample free parking encourages people to use their motor vehicles more frequently. Research confirmed that free parking encourages solo driving to and from work, and a study completed in 2001 indicated that the availability of car parking had a large influence on people’s travel mode choice to and from work. Therefore, any policy that provides high levels of car parking works against encouraging more sustainable transport alternatives and increases traffic congestion and transport energy use. There may seem to be an implication that an ample supply of car parking is required to ensure the success of a commercial area – but actually indicates that people simply make different travel mode choices, such as utilising public transport or car-pooling to travel to an area with low parking availability.
Aesthetic and Safety Consequences
Expansive parking facilities can often represent a poor outcome with regard to aesthetics and urban form as well as increasing the chances of conflict between pedestrians and motorists and prevents the use of public and private space for other more desirable purposes.
Summing Up
Shoup’s ideas challenged the application of minimum parking requirements and demonstrate the negative role car parking policy has in land use and transport patterns. However, in Australia, save for some CBD areas, minimum car parking requirements apply. A number of factors exist that work against a change. There is a lack of strategic framework directly related to parking and the difficulties related to significantly change policies related to an issue that has become inherently political – this can be seen in the recent discussions around land-use changes for increased housing around transit nodes in Victoria and New South Wales. Pleasingly, Shoup’s ideas have lead to changes to parking policy overseas (e.g. San Francisco and Los Angeles), most notably the SFPark, which manages on-street parking using a dynamic pricing model.
From a personal perspective, I find Donald Shoup’s ideas compelling – most significantly because they challenge pre-conceived notions that are widely accepted. His book and legacy are built upon the analysis of data and research to develop his ideas, as evidenced by the length and breadth of The High Cost of Free Parking.
