Sustainable Parking Management: Practices, Policies, and Metrics

By Nada Milosavljevic and Jelena Simicevic

Sustainable Parking Management provides the latest research findings in the field, encouraging transport planners and policymakers to use parking policy as a tool for managing parking and transport systems. The book teaches up-to-date parking management techniques for selecting parking policies and understanding parking behavior when faced with policy interventions. It shows when to apply each policy, how to include user attitudes in policy definition, and how to model user behavior when refining parking policies. In addition, it stresses the need to reduce overall city driving and the need to allow users to choose the transport mode that best suits their needs.

As the growth of cities and car dependency worldwide has led to parking problems resulting in increased traffic congestion, pollution, and overall urban chaos, this book creates a model to help deal with the fallout.

• Offers step-by-step procedures for defining sustainable parking policies
• Synthesizes the latest research into one source
• Links theoretical knowledge with hands-on best practices from around the world
• Includes learning aids, such as chapter openers, textboxes, end-of-chapter review questions, and a glossary

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Release date: May 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9780128162613

Nada Milosavljevic

Professor of Transport and Traffic Engineering at the University of Belgrade, has 20 years of experience in parking management and design. She is the author, co-author, and reviewer of numerous journal and conference papers for Elsevier’s Transport Policy, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, and Cities journals.

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Chapter 1

Introduction

Abstract

The introduction shows the motivation for writing the book: from the occurrence of transport (parking) problems in cities and towns, through paradigm shift, to the need to apply sustainable parking management. Special attention is given to reasons behind the parking problem, to the need: the need to shift the parking management paradigm and to understanding the need to apply sustainable parking management. Importance is placed on parking management strategies and transportation demand management policies are promoted to support parking management policies. A new paradigm of meeting only the qualified demand in central and highly attractive areas is promoted and a set of measures required for implementation thereof is suggested. Moreover, the introduction defines the objectives and book topics.

Keywords

Parking problem; Quality of life; Urban livability; Sustainable development; Sustainable transportation system; Parking management

In mid-20th century, the passenger car earned an important place in modal split. In addition to area for movement, each car needs space for parking. Any trip by car requires at least two parking spaces, at both ends of the trip (with minor exception of trips made just to pick up or drop off persons or objects). Hence, cars occupy space even when they are not moving, i.e., when parked, and cars are parked on average 23 h a day. In case of on-street parking, a parked car occupies on average 10 m² and utilizes the adjacent traffic lane to enter/leave the stall, while in off-street parking lots, the average area occupied is around 20 m².

Large surface areas required for car traffic (for both car movement and car parking) require more and more urban land to be allocated for traffic operations. However, a city where most surfaces are intended for roads and parking capacities can be neither human nor convenient for living. Increasing number of cars in the network affects positive car characteristics (high speed and short travel time) while reinforcing the negative ones (noise, pollution, etc.). In critical cases, when the number of vehicles in the network exceeds the network capacity, traffic congestions arise; traffic congestions have negative economic and social impacts not only upon individuals but also upon the society as a whole as well.

Increase in the number of passenger cars (particularly in cities) and increase in the number of car trips underline the mismatch between spatial and functional traffic components. Population and intensity of social and private life in cities grew and developed. On the other hand, urban traffic infrastructure did not follow this population growth and their travel demand accordingly. The most pronounced traffic infrastructure mismatch is seen in parking. Parking problem is one of the problems integral to urban growth and is expressed through irrational use of urban spaces, irrational use of other urban resources, decrease in transportation service quality, negative environmental impacts, etc.

The above problems arise to a great extent from the increase in passenger car numbers; increase in car trips; and, lately, increase in population’s dependence upon cars, particularly for movement at short distances.

Possibilities for providing capacities to satisfy the population’s parking needs are limited by organizational, spatial, and financial factors. These needs grow indefinitely, leading to a situation when parking requests exceed available parking spaces. This mismatch is the birthplace of elements of urban chaos, which is the subject and the starting point in planning.

In other words, parking problems originate from all the spatial elements of urban structures and people in these urban structures. In particular, the following are the two important causes of parking problems:

•The mismatch between spatial needs and capacities to accommodate parking.

•Disadvantages or deliberate omissions when programming, planning, and constructing new or rehabilitating existing urban structures and facilities, either as consequence of inadequate consideration of the immediate or distant future or as a consequence of insufficient funds required to implement urban planning concepts in full.

Both these causes are particularly characteristic of central urban areas¹ and highly attractive areas, while the second cause is related to primarily single-use class activities.

In all countries worldwide (particularly in those countries with car manufacturing industries, such as Italy), national economies emphasized the car industry as a position of distinction for participation in the international division of labor. Each car—either imported or from the national car industry’s assembly lines—is most often owned by residents of cities and built-up areas. In parallel, these national economies could not invest the same amount of funds into construction of necessary roads, while parking capacities have been at the very end of investment allocations ever since, with minimum or no parking investments at all. Over the last few decades, this has been evidenced by the degradation of the traditional streetscape due to parked cars. This is why provision of parking capacities and parking problem solution are set as the starting condition to enable any urban transportation system to operate properly. Whenever new traffic infrastructure, including parking infrastructure, was constructed, this resulted in new demand, so the supply could never manage to satisfy this demand.

The mismatch between the number of cars and surfaces where cars move or remain stationary has been growing; until only a few decades ago, it seemed that it was not possible to contain the problem even within the existing situation. This increased demand process is ongoing, while the mismatch between the number of cars and surfaces prescribed by moving traffic and parking requirements is growing.

In addition, changes in the societal environmental awareness, increasing noise and air pollution in highly urbanized areas, and poorer financial situation in many cities/areas led to the transformation of parking issues from civil construction regulations (with the primary objective to construct parking spaces) into urban and transportation planning aspects—with emphasis on considerations of the connection between transportation and other urban aspects.

The pronounced mismatch between the number of transportation requests (demand) and transportation infrastructure capacities (supply), with all its negative implications, generated a change in the attitude toward solving traffic problems and consequently parking problems, in cities and particularly in central and highly attractive areas.

In order to match parking demand and supply, previous concept of adjusting the city to the traffic was replaced with the concept of adjusting the traffic to the city. The concept of adjusting the traffic to the city should provide for realization of population mobility, but it entails controlled car use. To implement this concept, it is required to, inter alia, manage parking properly in terms of managing parking demand on the one hand and managing available parking capacity operation on the other hand.

Reasons for the change in the attitude toward this basic conception lie in the following: in the last decades, cities of developed countries have been paying more attention to the quality of life or urban livability concept. Urban livability is not possible to neither define precisely nor measure quantitatively; it has to be accepted as a concept for considering and solving modern society problems.

According to the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), urban suitability, rather generally, includes the following elements: housing, immediate surroundings, safety, economic possibilities, healthy living, mobility, recreation and leisure, etc. The position of transportation or traffic as an integrator of all activities in a city is proportional to its significance for performing main urban functions. In terms of transportation, quality of life in cities, again rather generally, may be defined as enabling mobility of the population with controlled car use.

In order to implement this concept that prioritizes the quality of life in a city or area, cities/areas strategize toward sustainable development concept. In essence, this concept strives toward balancing social, economic, and technological development with the existing environment. The concept was created in the second half of the previous century by spreading concerns about the accelerated degradation of the environment and consumption of natural resources due to economic and social development. Since sustainable development prioritizes transportation system (it has an important role in the economy due to its omnipresence in the production chain and other human activities), increase of negative impacts generated by transportation activities gave rise to the awareness about the necessity to apply solutions that promote sustainability, including sustainable transportation systems. Implementation of sustainable transportation system emphasizes improvements in managing urban resources, managing the modal split,² and investments into development of a selected transportation subsystem (alternative to car travel). Parking management strategy has to constitute an integral part of the sustainable urban transportation system. Parking management strategy has to embody the basic methodological step for commitments and actions in order to regulate the state of parking aimed at developing a sustainable urban transportation system and, beyond, a sustainable city on the whole.

In this regard, the approach to defining parking requirements has also changed. Until recently (and in many cities around the world, this is still the case), requirements were interpreted as minimum parking requirements (MPR) for the whole urban territory, i.e., MPR governed the minimum number of parking spaces that a developer had to provide on-site for a particular use class development. However, parking requirements have to be interpreted flexibly, prioritizing maximum possible requirement implementation in central and highly attractive urban areas. These areas, as a rule, are characterized by high transportation demand that needs to be limited, as they are well supplied with public transit or some other alternative modes of transportation.

In addition, it has been recognized that the number of and the manner of providing parking spaces can be used as a considerable influence upon selection of destination and transportation mode, upon the quality of traffic flow, partly upon the land use in various urban areas, and consequently upon the quality of the environment. To achieve this with this modern concept, general parking demand (parking requests posed by all parking users) is replaced with qualified demand. Qualified demand is defined as traffic required for regular operation of activities in urban areas. This demand is granted privileges in most parking concepts with management characteristics.

Qualified demand, besides passenger cars, includes light-duty vehicles (with technically permissible maximum laden mass of 2.8 or 3.5 tonnes, depending on the national regulations), which are used to supply the activities in these areas and to dispose waste, goods, or other materials. On the other hand, in a sense, deliveries represent a problem as well, because it is not possible that delivery vehicles park immediately next to all facilities that need delivery. Numerous stakeholders (delivery companies, transportation companies, customer companies, city representatives, etc.) with conflicting demands complicate this problem, hence it has to be solved within city logistics.

Application of the modern concept (satisfying only the qualified demand in highly attractive areas) means there is a need to utilize management measures to maintain balance between the supply and qualified demand in order to use the finite number of parking spaces as efficiently as possible. This is the reason why parking regulations were developed to define regulations that control who, when, and how long vehicles may park at a particular location in order to prioritize parking facility use and can be considered as the very heart of parking policy/management. In other words, parking regulation is a set of administrative measures and engineering interventions aimed at more efficient utilization of available parking capacities. They typically include time restrictions, users’ restrictions, and pricing parking. In areas where parking charge is planned, parking regulations need to include a properly defined tariff system.

Efficient application of parking regulations is supported by efficient parking enforcement.

Parking enforcement includes activities to ensure that key metrics of performance established for the on-street parking subsystem are met as much as possible. Control of parking violations serves to sanction the violators appropriately so as to properly address their behavior toward parking management measures. Reduced number of violators leads to better parking management effects and vice versa; too many violators degrade the parking enforcement level and reduce the expected outcomes. Therefore enforcement system is considered the foundation of a good parking management.

Even though sound parking enforcement is vital, a certain degree of flexibility is necessary in its application as well, so that users do not perceive it as unfriendly. In this respect, parking management authorities need to define the level of compliance with parking controls that they want to achieve and, based on that, the level of enforcement necessary to get such compliance. Parking enforcement should be consistent and fair.

If, due to limitations, parking policies cannot achieve all goals defined in a parking management strategy, parking demand is reduced by selecting mobility management policy(ies). If urban development plans did not anticipate application of mobility management policy(ies) (which would lead to reduced parking demand as well), the parking subsystem alone can initiate introduction of some mobility management policies. In other words, mobility management supports and is supported by parking management.

Mobility management favors public transit and other alternative transportation modes over cars. Mobility management increases the assortment of transportation supply and incites users to take the most efficient mode of transportation for each trip. Mobility management does not eliminate car travel, since cars are the best transportation mode for some trips, but it does tend to decrease car use significantly. Improving the quality of alternative transportation modes and limiting the car use can benefit everybody.

Since mobility management is characterized by low implementation costs and multiple benefits, this should be recognized especially by cities in developing countries where streets are often narrow and congested and parking capacities are limited. It is estimated that efficient mobility management in early urban development stages would prevent problems that occur when the society becomes too car-dependent.

As explained, a constant mismatch between transportation demand (including parking demand) and capacities, reflected through traffic congestions (and high level of illegal parking), created the need for transportation management. The goal of transportation management is to utilize capacities of the existing infrastructure as rationally and efficiently as possible. This means that new construction, as a road capacity (and parking capacity) improvement measure, cannot be relied upon to rationally address the growing transportation demand. Development of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and their integration into traffic management helped address the constant need for real-time decision-making that stems from the nature of the traffic flow.

Providing the parking user with information on alternative parking lots and their current occupancies pretrip and on trip may influence the driver’s decisions about travel times and parking lots to use. Providing this kind of information to users is enabled through parking guidance and information (PGI) system application. PGI systems inform drivers about the state of parking in technically equipped and monitored areas or parking lots/garages in real-time and guide users to vacant parking spaces. PGI systems are typically designed for central and other highly attractive areas with several parking lots available. Since recently, PGI systems are being applied to guide users to on-street parking as well.

Because parking policy measures mainly require changes in user behavior, in order to produce positive effects, measures applied need to be accepted by parking users. Therefore, marketing has to be ceaselessly applied, so as to define and implement activities that will, through communication, encourage users to adopt more sustainable behavior, which will contribute to implementation and positive effects of adopted parking policies. Communication is directly related to user acceptance, and it needs to have a key role in parking policies.

Parking management is a continual (uninterrupted) process. As soon as parking policies for parking management strategy are selected and measures for their implementation take effect, it is required to supervise and monitor the parking subsystem state, i.e., to establish the effects of measures applied. This is required for the timely adjustment (redefinition of measures or their attributes) in order to achieve effects of their application as much as possible. Detailed evaluation of effects is an important component of sustainable transportation planning.

The city, as a complex spatial and operational system, interrelates with both its macro and micro surroundings.

Car parking, as a technological traffic phase between the origin and the destination, is governed by corresponding system laws. And yet, urban car parking is a far more complex phenomenon than the legislation could possibly regulate. A prerequisite for positive legislative effects is to communicate with users and to win user acceptance, i.e., to educate users and hence to create an ambiance in which users will understand and accept parking policies and thus comply with legal regulations.

In order to regulate parking as precisely as possible, city/local authorities in charge of parking management adopt decisions and parking rule books. These documents integrate specificities of the urban environment and parking conditions therein and elaborate in more detail on parking issues of the city or the built-up area in general, particularly in their centers or highly attractive areas.

Characteristically, these parking documents are tailored to local parking conditions and needs, so as a result of this approach, visitors from other cities may experience problems. Therefore, a unique parking management language in all cities should be the aim, in order to ensure understanding for all visitors.

Construction and regulation of parking spaces in parking lots and parking facilities require considerable funds to be allocated by city authorities and developers. To provide required and sufficient number of parking spaces, one has to find stable (sustainable) funding sources.

It is very important that before the city/local authorities choose to construct and regulate parking lots and parking facilities from defined funding sources, there is a clear commitment toward parking strategy in highly attractive centers.

Urban car parking has grown into a very complex and spatially diluted problem. This consequently entails the need to study and monitor the problem in order to apply modern procedures and methods to contain it.

As an area of study, parking phenomenon would belong to the group of technical and technological sciences, while its complexity between the traffic and the space and cities and built-up areas suggests its duality in transportation and urban planning.

If it is true that car parking and the study of car parking belong to technical and technological sciences, then surely, this book and its contents meet the basic requirements of these sciences: to bring spatial, technical, and technological systems and their subsystems into accord with the programmed, planned, and designed technologies of use according to human needs.

This book focuses on the study and methods to solve passenger car parking problems in cities and built-up areas, particularly in their central and highly attractive areas.

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¹ Central urban area is the core of the urban territory, most often the heart of business, commercial, financial and administrative activities of a city.

² Modal split is the percentual distribution of the total realized movement within 1 day or year, within a defined area, into modes of transportation used, i.e., mass transit, individual cars, walking, and other types of transportation existing/available in the area.

Chapter 2

Parking requirements

Abstract

This chapter deals with the definition, calculation methods, and application of parking standards. The concept of maximal standards is particularly promoted, as they encourage the use of alternative transport modes (such as public transit) instead of car travel, which is in accordance with principles of sustainable transportation system. Parking standards are employed with respect to public transport service coverage of the area where the facility is located and its attractiveness. Residential parking requirements are specifically elaborated, due to the specificity of this use and the status of its users. We suggest measures for mitigation of negative impacts of conventional residential parking requirements on costs, urban land, and transport. Examples of how to determine standards in relevant cities are presented.

Keywords

Parking requirements; Parking supply; Maximal parking requirements; Car-free neighborhoods; In-lieu fees; Unbundled parking

Parking requirements are also known as parking standards or parking norms. Parking requirements are used to calculate the number of parking spaces that the developer must supply for an area or development of a certain use class (Litman, 2006; p. 272).

Parking requirements are applied exclusively in cases when new developments are to be constructed, or when an existing development is to be regulated or extended, or its use is to be changed. Parking requirements do not affect the existing parking arrangements (they are not applied retroactively).

Parking requirements are a policy that is directly used to influence the key elements of parking supply.

They can be set up on a national, regional, or local level and in some cases on a local level based on a national guidance paper. Guidelines for urban planning of cities and their transportation systems that, inter alia, include parking requirements are usually published within national planning documents (development strategies), while specific parking requirements are issued in national, regional, or local planning documents. To date—and only in few cities worldwide until recently—the practice has been to interpret the existing parking requirements as minimum parking requirements (MPRs) for the territory of the whole city, i.e., they were seen as the minimum number of parking spaces that developers need to provide when constructing a development intended for certain use. These requirements were mostly applied inflexibly, with some or no considerations for and adjustments to local specificities and management practices that might affect the required number of parking spaces.

History of MPRs goes back to the 1930s Germany (Donovan and Nunns, 2016). Subsequently, they were adopted in California and elsewhere from the 1950s onward. Since the middle 1990s, a growing body of research has called into question the merits of MPRs (Shoup, 2005). Nowadays, the interest in the effects of minimum parking requirements (MPRs) on transportation and land use outcomes has been renewed.

Modern sustainable transportation concept requires modifications in the methods for both calculation and interpretation of parking requirements, especially in central areas and other areas of high attractiveness. As framework for new spatial development, key transportation policies focus on using the public transit system and other transportation modes as alternatives to cars. Under such spatial development, parking capacities should be limited correspondingly, so as to maximize utilization of transportation modes alternative to car transportation, to minimize car use and consequently traffic congestion, and hence to contribute to environmental protection. All these efforts resulted in defining the concept of maximum parking requirements. Maximum parking requirements prescribe the maximum number of parking spaces that may be constructed at a development for certain use. Such a concept is surely in line with sustainability principles. Under this new concept, requirements are flexible, considering the specific characteristics of each site and activity. Their advantages include also a more efficient utilization of space as a limited resource (Mingardo et al., 2015).

In practice, parking standards could be interpreted as both minimum and maximum requirements. Minimum parking standards are used typically in areas where cars do not have proper transportation alternatives, so sufficient parking capacities near a development are to be provided in order to meet the general demand and prevent parking spillover to neighboring areas. On the other hand, maximum parking standards are applied mainly in central areas and other areas of high attractiveness that are well served by either public transit or some other alternative transportation modes but where transportation supply should be limited.

2.1 Defining parking standards

Urban planning requirements are expressed as the required number of parking spaces per corresponding facility parameter unit (gross floor area (GFA), number of employees, etc.) (Shoup, 1999).

Most requirements refer to GFA. For example, when parking requirements regulate one parking space per 25 m² GFA and the corresponding usable area of a facility amounts to 185 m², by calculating 25 into 185, we get 7.4 parking spaces, and the resulting figure should be rounded to the nearest full higher number; hence, the total resulting parking requirement amounts to eight parking spaces. However, this parameter is not suitable for all land uses; therefore, adequate parameters need to be established (e.g., the number of seats in movie theaters/theaters and number of beds in hospitals). In addition, in transition countries where change of facility use occurs frequently, spaces not originally designed according to certain use class standards happen to now perform some other functions. Such cases also need to be treated separately, meaning that corresponding parameters need to be selected.

In most cases, regulations stipulate that developers who construct a new development are obliged to provide the site with the number of parking spaces as defined in planning requirements for that use class and size of the development expressed by a corresponding parameter. In order to obtain construction permit, the developer is obliged to plan the required number of parking spaces for the disabled and to prove that there are spaces available for loading, unloading, and maneuvering delivery vehicles.

When a development covers two or more use classes to which different parking requirements apply, parking requirements that refer to each use class have to be applied simultaneously in the corresponding ratio. In such a situation, three cases are possible:

1.When maximum attractiveness times of each use class overlap. In this case, the required numbers of parking spaces are calculated for both/all use classes and added up.

2.When periods of attractiveness of the use classes are completely separated (e.g., business offices with 9 AM–5 PM attractiveness and a theater in the evening hours). When feasible, the most convenient solution in this case is to apply shared use of the parking area without conflict. Conflict should not occur so long as the shared use developments operate at differing times of day or days of the week. Hereby, the reduction of parking spaces to be provided by the developer can be achieved. In this case, the numbers of parking spaces according to both use class requirements are calculated, but the larger number will be