Parking
Parking is the act of stopping and disengaging a vehicle and usually leaving it unoccupied. Parking on one or both sides of a road is often permitted, though sometimes with restrictions. Some buildings have parking facilities for use of the buildings' users. Countries and local governments have rules for design and use of parking spaces.
Car parking is essential to car-based travel. Cars are typically stationary around 95 percent of the time. The availability and price of car parking may support car dependency. Significant amounts of urban land are devoted to car parking; in many North American city centers, half or more of all land is devoted to car parking.
Parking facilities
Parking facilities can be divided into public parking and private parking.- Public parking is managed by local government authorities and available for all members of the public to drive to and park in.
- Private parking is owned by a private entity. It may be available for use by the public or restricted to customers, employees or residents.
On-street parking
On-street parking can come in the form of curbside or central parking.Curbside parking may be parallel, angled or perpendicular parking. Parallel parking is often considered a complicated maneuver for drivers; however uses the least road width.
On-street parking can act as inexpensive traffic calming by reducing the effective width of the street.
On-street parking may be restricted for a number of reasons. Restrictions could include waiting prohibitions, which ban parking in certain areas; time restrictions; requirements to pay, e.g., at a parking meter or using a pay by phone facility, or a permit zone, restricting parking to permit holders – often residents – only. Parking restrictions may be applied across a whole zone using a controlled parking zone or similar.
On-street parking is often criticised for being a bad use of high-value public space, especially where parking is free. In some cities, authorities have replaced parking spaces with Parklets.
Parking lots and garages
s generally come in either a structured or surface regime.Structured regimes are buildings in which vehicles can be parked, including multi-storey parking garages, underground parking, or a hybrid of the two. Such structures may be incorporated into a wider structure.
In the U.S., after the first public parking garage for motor vehicles was opened in Boston, May 24, 1898, livery stables in urban centers began to be converted into garages. In cities of the Eastern US, many former livery stables, with lifts for carriages, continue to operate as garages today.
Surface regimes involve using a clear lot to provide a single level of parking. This may be a stand-alone car park or located around a building.
There is a wide international vocabulary for multi-storey parking garages. In the Midwestern United States, they are known as parking ramps. In the United Kingdom, they are known as multi-storey car parks. In the Western US, they are called parking structures. In New Zealand, they are known as parking buildings. In Canada and South Africa, they are known as parkades.
Fringe parking
Fringe parking is an area designated for parking, typically located on the outskirts of a central business district or just outside a city centre. It is primarily used by suburban residents who commute to urban areas for work, shopping, or other activities.These parking areas help reduce congestion in downtown areas by encouraging park-and-ride systems, where commuters leave their vehicles in fringe car parking lots and continue their journey using public transport, shuttles, or walking routes.
Park and ride
is a concept of parking whereby people drive or cycle to a car park away from their destination and use public transport or another form of transport, such as bicycle hire schemes, to complete their journey. This is done to reduce the amount of traffic congestion and the need for parking in city centres, and to connect more people to public transport networks who may not be otherwise.Bicycle parking
Parking lots specifically for bicycles are becoming more prevalent in many countries. These may include bicycle parking racks and locks, as well as more modern technologies for security and convenience. For instance, one bicycle parking lot in Tokyo has an automated parking system.Certain parking lots or garages may contain parking facilities for other vehicles, such as bicycle parking. Underneath Utrecht Central station, there is a three-storey underground bicycle park which can store 12,656 bicycles.
Types of parking
In addition to basic car parking, variations of serviced parking types exist. Common serviced parking types are:- Carport
- Valet parking
- Meet and Greet Parking
- Park and Fly Parking
- Peer-to-peer shared parking
Economics
Parking is one of the most important intermediate goods in the modern market economy. Early economic analysis treated parking only as an end-of-trip cost. However, later work has recognised that parking is a major use of land in any urban area. According to the International Parking Institute, "parking is a $25 billion industry and plays a pivotal role in transportation, building design, quality of life and environmental issues". Annual parking revenue in the US alone is $10 billion.In urban areas, car parks compete with each other and curbside parking spaces. Drivers do not want to walk far from where they have parked, giving car parks local monopoly power.
Pricing, fees and subsidy
Urban parking spaces can have a high value where the price of land is high. The price to buy a parking space in Boston, USA, in August 2020 ranged just under US$39,000 in the West End to almost $250,000 in the South End.Rather than buying a space, motorists often pay hourly or daily fees for short-term use of a space. According to Parkopedia's 2019 Global Parking Index, the cost for 2 hours of parking in US dollars for 25 cities is as follows:
| Country | City | Price |
| United States | New York | $34.94 |
| Australia | Sydney | $27.37 |
| Australia | Brisbane | $20.55 |
| United States | Chicago | $20.08 |
| Australia | Melbourne | $19.87 |
| United States | Boston | $18.36 |
| United Kingdom | London | $16.92 |
| United States | Washington DC | $15.56 |
| United States | Philadelphia | $14.77 |
| Japan | Tokyo | $12.09 |
| United States | Denver | $11.87 |
| Netherlands | Amsterdam | $11.11 |
| United States | Miami | $11.10 |
| United States | San Francisco | $10.99 |
| United States | San Diego | $10.80 |
| United States | Baltimore | $10.45 |
| France | Paris | $10.10 |
| United States | Newark | $10.10 |
| New Zealand | Auckland | $9.77 |
| Canada | Calgary | $9.69 |
| Canada | Montreal | $9.66 |
| United States | Los Angeles | $9.56 |
| Canada | Toronto | $9.51 |
| United States | Seattle | $9.34 |
| Norway | Oslo | $9.25 |
The costs of parking include the construction, maintenance, and operation of parking spaces, as well as indirect environmental and social costs.
The extent to which these costs are recouped by user fees, taxes, tolls, or else simply sustained through public subsidy is variable.
As shown in the associated figure, when cities charge market rates for on-street parking and municipal parking garages for motor vehicles, and when bridges and tunnels are tolled for these modes, driving becomes less competitive in terms of out-of-pocket costs compared to other modes of transportation. When municipal motor vehicle parking is underpriced, and roads are not tolled, the shortfall in tax expenditures by drivers, through fuel tax and other taxes, might be regarded as a very large subsidy for automobile use: much greater than common subsidies for the maintenance of infrastructure and discounted fares for public transportation.
Parking price elasticity
The average response in parking demand to a change in price is -0.52 for commuting and -0.62 for non-commuting trips. Non-commuters also respond to parking fees by changing their parking duration if the price is per hour.Performance parking
in 2005 argued in his book, The High Cost of Free Parking, against the large-scale use of land and other resources in urban and suburban areas for motor vehicle parking. Shoup's work has been popularized along with market-rate parking and performance parking, both of which raise and lower the price of metered street parking with the goal of reducing cruising for parking and double parking without overcharging for parking."Performance parking" or variable-rate parking is based on Shoup's ideas. Electronic parking meters are used so that parking spaces in desirable locations and at desirable times are more expensive than less desirable locations. Other variations include rising rates based on the duration of parking. More modern ideas use sensors and networked parking meters that "bid up" the price of parking automatically with the goal of keeping 85–90% of the spaces in use at any given time to ensure perpetual parking availability. These ideas have been implemented in Redwood City, California and are being implemented in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
One empirical study supports performance-based pricing by analyzing the block-level price elasticity of parking demand in the SFpark context. The study suggests that block-level elasticities vary so widely that urban planners and economists cannot accurately predict the response in parking demand to a given change in price. The public policy implication is that planners should utilize observed occupancy rates in order to adjust prices so that target occupancy rates are achieved. Effective implementation will require further experimentation with and assessment of the tâtonnement process.