Parking regulation
Car-parking policy is essential for influencing travel behaviour. Parking regulation can impact traffic, accessibility to destinations and land use, and can generate revenues for the authority.
Parking regulation includes all forms of parking measures intended to control the availability or price of parking spaces. It controls who, when and how long vehicles may park at a particular location. It typically includes time restrictions, user restrictions (e.g. parking only for residents or the disabled), limits on the number of parking spaces and their spatial distribution, and parking pricing.
Parking regulations also frequently refer to minimum parking-space regulations for buildings (e.g. for residential premises or at workplaces). These typically increase car dependency, hinder infill development, create urban sprawl, and make home ownership less affordable (given the additional space required).
Parking regulations, appropriately enforced, can be key factors for urban planning and for the expansion of public transport (PT).
Combined with other measures (e.g. pedestrianised streets, improvement of public transport), parking regulation can lead to significant modal shifts towards PT. For example, in Strasbourg, France, the modal share of PT saw an increase from 11% to 30% after the set-up of an integrated transport plan that incorporated access restrictions. Similarly, in Oxford, United Kingdom, the PT mode share increased from 27% to 44% after the roll-out of a similar strategy.
Parking regulation packages alone have been shown to lead to:
- a decrease in overall traffic (e.g. 5.5% in Salzburg)
- a decrease in vehicle-kilometres stemming from searching for a place to park
- a decrease in the mode share of car (e.g. a study for Helsinki found that if parking costs were at the same level as PT fares, the car share would decrease by 8%)
- an increase in vehicle occupancy (e.g. the share of single-occupancy vehicles dropped from 44% to 32% in Munich)
- an increased use of public transport (e.g. a 25% reorientation of visitors to public transport in Vienna).
Income generated from parking charges can be used to cover the costs of implementing the system. The introduction of parking regulation and/or pricing can be designed to bring significant financial benefits to the public purse in the longer run.
Parking regulation can:
- Increase the attractiveness and liveability of city centres
- Foster economic development and retailer activity
- Enhance the impact of public transport provisions
- Create a fairer transport system (i.e. non-drivers are not indirectly penalised).
Because parking regulation can influence mode choice, destination choice, trip timing, and car occupancy, as well as car ownership, it is a very powerful tool for policy makers working to improve transport systems in their areas of influence.
There has been a trend towards the use of more-expensive (often underground) off-street parking facilities for which cost recovery will be more difficult to achieve.
Tight parking control policies can shift traffic/parking problems to neighbouring areas. Such spill-over effects need to be considered and counterbalanced – by, for example, the introduction of residential parking schemes (i.e. parking permits for residents only).
Inefficient parking policies, e.g. low parking costs and excessive parking availability, can contribute towards urban sprawl, unsustainable travel patterns, increased car use and increase in land and fossil-fuel consumption.
A disproportional distribution of parking costs to low-income households – who may be forced to drive less, own fewer vehicles and make more use of alternative modes – may reinforce social inequalities.
ITF (2021) Transport Climate Action Directory – Parking regulation
https://www.itf-oecd.org/policy/parking-regulation
ITF (2021), Reversing Car Dependency: Summary and Conclusions, ITF Roundtable Reports, No. 181, OECD Publishing, Paris.
Christiansen, P., Engebretsen, Ø., Fearnley, N. and Usterud Hanssen, J. (2017) Parking facilities and the built environment: Impacts on travel behaviour. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2016.10.025
European Commission, Directorate-General for Environment (2004) Reclaiming city streets for people. https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/94a8a003-be86-467a-9a85-63a5d52bf7ae
European Commission, Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport, Directorate - Investment, Innovative & Sustainable Transport (2017) Sustainable Urban Mobility: European Policy, Practice and Solutions. https://ec.europa.eu/transport/sites/transport/files/2017-sustainable-urban-mobility-european-policy-practice-and-solutions.pdf
Mingardo, G, van Wee, B. and Rye, T. (2015) Urban parking policy in Europe: A conceptualization of past and possible future trends. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2015.02.005
Pitsiava–Latinopoulou, M., Basbas, S., Papoutsis, K. and Sdoukopoulos, E. (2012) Parking Policies for Supporting Sustainable Mobility. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.06.1067
Shoup, D. (2011) The High Cost of Free Parking. Amer Planning Assn
Shoup, D. (2018) Parking and the City. Routledge
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