That is an important discovery which reverses the consensus of the mid-20th century, when it was felt more parking would get traffic off the streets as that traffic was being caused by people looking for parking. “Also, the more parking you build, the more people will drive. “The other consideration is climate, obviously.Ī parking lot is self-evidently a blight on the environment. “Housing is a big concern in the US and I know that’s the case in Ireland as well, and the cost of housing is forcing people to reconsider the importance of parking. “One of the major motivations of parking reformers is housing - parking makes housing more expensive, it encourages low-density development, and it makes it hard to build some forms of low-cost, vernacular infill building - the kind of buildings we had before the arrival of the automobile. When parking isn’t about temporary space, but a more permanent proposition, it’s no less troublesome. “Unfortunately, over the years they’ve come to be seen as a way to make money - and not just from parking itself, but from the chaos when people park illegally.” “Parking meters are the only way we have to impose some kind of order on how long people park their cars in those spaces. “It was originally intended to organise this precious interface between streets and buildings,” says Grabar. Privatising services doesn’t always work out well - at least not for the local authority - but there can often be a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of paid parking also. There’s a lesson here for local authorities. The company which bought the rights earned its money back within 15 years, so all revenue since is pure profit for that company, and revenue which the local authority has lost for municipal works. Six months after the Chicago deal was signed, a report found that the real value of parking in the city over 75 years was between $2bn-$3bn. “Parking rates in Chicago had been so low for so long that the city didn’t have a good sense of what parking might be worth, which is something Chicago has in common with many other cities.īy keeping rates low, cities don’t get a sense of what people are willing to pay for parking on the open market.” Either the company had a say in that work, or it would charge the city for what it calculated as the difference. “The company which owned the parking meters had the right, if the city wanted to install bus or bike lanes or pedestrianise streets, to say that that change was affecting revenue. “When they did so, however, not only were they on the hook for very high parking rates, but they had also lost control of the streets," he said. Grabar told me that in 2008 the city of Chicago sold its 36,000 parking meters for a lease term of 75 years to a consortium of investors, getting $1.1bn in return. And what happens when parking gets privatised, which I found very interesting given the ongoing debate in Cork about parking. Then there’s the commercial side of parking. A playing field, a playground, an urban plaza - once some person parks there, then it becomes a parking lot.” We’ve all seen places which didn’t seem meant for parking, but as soon as one person parks there, then it’s open season. “The other obvious point is that as a driver, there isn’t always a hard line between what is a parking space and what isn’t. “This shows the extent to which parking is an afterthought with planning, how little it’s been considered as a subject for systemic study - we haven’t even counted the total number of spaces. “But the whole point is that we can’t be that clear and we don’t keep better track of this. “I think 2bn is pretty unlikely,” Grabar said. For instance, it’s not known if there are 1bn or 2bn car parking spaces in the US. Kudos if you can answer, because this is a notoriously difficult question. How many parking spaces are there in Cork? It seems to be this grey area, stuck between architecture and transportation.”ĭubious about parking as a topic? Here’s a simple question. “The emblematic anecdote is that when you type in directions on Google Maps, it can tell you what roads are crowded and which are not, how long it’ll take to drive there to the minute - but with parking, you’re on your own. “That uncertainty is the key part of parking, what makes people get upset about parking, and in conversations I’ve had since it came out, that keeps coming out. “If aliens were looking down at us they’d see us take our means of transportation somewhere without knowing where we’ll leave it - do you take off in a plane not knowing if there’ll be an airport for it at the other end?’
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