NO PARKING: New research indicates reducing available parking spots leads a decrease in auto emissions
Image: CrazyPhunk, via Wikimedia Commons
With bicycle share schemes, smoothly running metros and pedestrian-only streets, Europe has an edge over the New World when it comes to alternatives to automobile transportation. A new study reveals that Europe has success with another tool designed to remove people from their cars: subtracting parking spaces.
Because every vehicle trip must end in a parking space, limiting parking through economic and policy changes has significantly reduced miles driven in 10 European cities, according to "Europe's Parking U-Turn: from Accommodation to Regulation," published by the New York City-based Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP).
On- and off-street parking is ultimately controlled by municipalities, and decisions at the local level can help boost citizens' adoption of car alternatives. In the cities studied, which range from Antwerp, Belgium, to Zurich, researchers assessed how parking policies have shifted to fit in with "alternative social goals," including walking, bicycling and increasing park and community space.
"European cities demonstrate that if you make a city center more convenient, people won't think that driving is the best and only alternative," said Michael Kodransky, co-author of the study and global research manager with ITDP.
Optimally, parking lots should always be 85 percent full to help reduce cruising for a parking space, said the study. The coordination of on-street parking supply with off-street parking supply through pricing structures is essential.
Europeans try 'cap and trade' with parking
Shrinking the number of parking spaces also helps. Hamburg, Germany and Zurich implemented a kind of "cap and trade" of parking spots, where for every off-street spot built, an on-street parking spot was converted into park or community space. Many cities in the study also abolished minimum parking standards for new developments, instead enforcing a maximum allowance. Zoning planners also gave priority access to popular spaces to pedestrians and public transit users.
Paris even invested €15 million ($20 million in physical blocks like bollards to prevent cars from parking. London was the only city in the study to charge parked vehicles based on their level of carbon emissions.
The results are positive. Take Amsterdam, a city that saw a 20 percent reduction in car traffic in the inner city, as well as a 20 percent decrease in traffic searching for a place to park, since strict parking enforcements were implemented. In Copenhagen, Denmark, traffic dropped by 6 percent in five years, despite a 13 percent increase in car ownership over the same period.
Parking charges are less controversial than congestion charges -- a tax to drive in city centers during peak hours -- and more likely to pass in a vote, said Kodransky.
Dealing with parking is also politically challenging, he added, but the public is more likely to accept it if they know that the revenues will be used to make public spaces more pleasant -- in Barcelona, Spain, 100 percent goes to the bike share scheme, for example.
Parking regulations work best when done in concert with other policies, said Deron Lovaas, federal transportation policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
"They have to be part of a package, and that has to be communicated to consumers," he said.
He added that the measuring of vehicle miles is a fair reflection of how emissions might stack up. "It doesn't make much sense to rank them in isolation," he said.
American cities mandate space availability
The fact that this study was done in Europe "points to the likelihood that there hasn't been much progress at all" in the United States, said Lovaas.
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7 Comments
Add CommentFollowing this brilliant line of reasoning, why not simply eliminate all urban parking?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust think - this generation could be the first to tear down a parking lot to put up a new building!
What they are not considering, at least in the article, is that fewer people may be going to the city center because a) you cant find a parking space or b) you've made it too expensive to park.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder how the local merchants feel about creating these parking obstacles? Less parking usually means fewer customers unless people are actually using the alternative transportation in the same volume that they are reducing parking.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe automobile has not merely taken over the street, it has dissolved the living tissue of the city. Its appetite for space is absolutely insatiable; moving and parked, it devours urban land, leaving the buildings as mere islands of habitable space in a sea of dangerous and ugly traffic. ~James Marston Fitch, New York Times, 1 May 1960.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe car: biggest mistake of the 20th century.
Removing parking spaces in itself will do nothing but frustrate people, increasing pollution as they drive around looking for space. Increasing the price of parking will further separate the rich from everyone else. Removing parking spaces while at the same time providing excellent, well-planned, comfortable, safe, cheap, frequent and clean public transit will do the job perfectly. This is what cities such as Vancouver are completely failing to realize. Toll bridges, roads narrowed for bicycle lanes, transit hours just for day workers and neglect of people not in the City core have made a real mess.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn many city centres around Europe the main commercial streets are pedestrian-only. In fact, some cities like the one I come from have pedestrianised more than 50% of their city centres, with the only exceptions allowed being light resupply vans, and only off peak. Apart from the obvious reduction in car pollution and noise, this has also created a high value commercial area with guaranteed high people traffic, and thus more revenue. The extra commercial traffic also allows the city to get a bigger amount of taxes, ensuring the health of the system.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for commuting, the local buses quite efficient at covering the city and the price of the bus ticket is much cheaper than the cost of petrol (at 0.90€ for every route, it is a bargain).
I suspect that since the city centers of most major European centers were never designed for automobile traffic that this had an impact as well.
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