Bicycle Network: Skill Up
Car parking policies
Massive amounts of space is provided free by the community to subsidise the parking of cars that are only ever utilised for a few per cent of their lifetime. The result is poor civic amenity and economic inefficiency.
Bad parking policy costs the economy dearly
1 September 2010. The man whose ideas have overturned 50 years of policy on car parking requirements is coming to Melbourne to challenge our thinking. His key idea: all those cheap car spaces are actually bad for business.
Professor Donald Shoup has set the world of town planning on its head by establishing that ample cheap parking, always subsidized by ratepayers and taxpayers, leads to less business for retailers, not more.
His research also shows that the requirements by councils for high levels of car parking in new retail, office and housing developments is leading to badly designed development, excessive property prices, more congestion, and less spending per customer trip.
His book, The High Cost of Free Parking, examines the real world economics of car parking provision and finds that the accepted wisdom about parking was mostly wrong.
Shoup's ideas at first appeared so unconventional they were initially ignored. Now cities have started to adopt them and the whole world is beating a path to his doorstep.
He will be speaking at Melbourne Town Hall on 4 November at a seminar produced by the Institute for Sensible Transport and supported by the City of Melbourne and GTA consultants.
For further information.
A recent New York Times article on Shoup's work is here.