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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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The world may be headed to two billion vehicles this century, thanks to the burgeoning love affair between the Chinese and the automobile. But consider this: where will all those cars park?
If urban planners are right, finding parking for all those vehicles might be no problem. City gurus estimate there are eight parking spots for every vehicle in the U.S. today. Given a U.S. fleet of 250 million vehicles, that means America already boasts some two billion parking spots—an area roughly the size of Massachusetts.
But according to the first nationwide count of parking spots, conducted by civil engineers from the University of California, Berkeley, last July, that might be a bit much, which is good news for the environment. It's more likely there are only three parking spaces for every car and truck in the U.S., or some 800 million spots to choose from.
Estimating the environmental cost of all that parking reveals that parking alone adds 10 percent to the CO2 emissions of your average automobile. And the amount of soot added to the atmosphere as a result of all our cars nearly doubles. That's thanks to all that asphalt and concrete and the emissions that go along with making it.
And then there are the millions of kilometers of roads in the U.S. to think about… In short, there's no such thing as free parking.
—David Biello
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4 Comments
Add CommentI would find it helpful if when using "facts" you quote your sources a little more specifically than "city gurus"; one might think you simply made it up to make your next piece of data more believable. Please, always quote your sources. Thanks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh and how is it "good news" that 250 million cars are still polluting the air, or that there may soon be 2 billion cars? That's TERRIBLE news, no matter how you try to spin it.
I think the "good news" was the UC Berkeley figure of 3 spaces per car, vs the "city gurus" figure of 8, thus less land is being used for parking than initially asserted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree that citing sources is important, but this particular author consistently produces sloppy articles (note the attempt to throw paved road surfaces into the parking space calculation), so I won't hold my breath.
Thanks for using the term 'vehicles' rather than 'cars' for the 250 million vehicles being used in this country of 310 million people. I haven't found how many of those vehicles are personal use cars and small trucks requiring mostly urban parking as opposed to trucks, trailers and buses, etc., that occupy more road space than parking spaces. Also don't know how many of those vehicles are bicycles and skateboards.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese discrepancies could easily account for the conflicting claims of parking spaces per car, or whatever.
Likewise, the current population of China is estimated to be 1.3 billion and is estimated to be 1.3 billion in 2050. It certainly seems that there will be an increasing number of cars in China, but the 1 billion 'cars' by 2050 estimated in your referenced article seems excessive unless they also include a large number of other business vehicles.
If you don't get the details right, it's difficult to produce meaningful conclusions.
P.S. I don't have any data, but having spent a little time in Japan, my impression was that (even middle-income) Japanese liked to possess cars more than drive them, saving most of that for special occasions. I haven't visited China.
There is something far worse than the energy put into making parking spaces and extra lanes, parking strips, barriers, etc; developing nations are building car-centered infrastructure that makes cities less walkable. Shopping centers and sprawling suburbs are too often being redesigned at scales that discourage walking. This has many cultural impacts (e.g. people knowing their neighbors, etc), but will also require a lot of time and energy to undo when people finally realize that they wanted walkable cities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the US, the vast majority of our urban public space is dedicated to paved roads and related barriers. Most of this is for private cars. This space makes up about half of the acreage of our cities, and increases the distance between points of interest. Since this public space is dominated by a dangerous and noisy form of transportation, many who might walk are discouraged. Is there a better example of the tragedy of the commons?