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Parking

From Mandates to Management: A Smarter Approach to Parking

Rules setting minimum parking requirements for land development remain pervasive. This report from one of Australia's leading think tanks makes the case for removing parking minimums for housing.

Key Takeaways

• State and local governments typically require new housing to include off-street parking, often much more than residents want.
• When cities removed minimum parking policies, new residential developments include parking at around half of the rate, or sometimes less, than previously required.
• In areas where parking can become congested, parking minimums mostly don’t achieve their aim.
• Most on-street car parking is free to use and is typically occupied by local residents who already have off-street spaces.
• Without measures to better manage on-street parking, both new and existing residents have little incentive not to park on the street, even if they have their own off-street space.
• Studies show that where free on-street parking is available, many households use their off-street parking spaces for other purposes, such as storage.
• Local governments should introduce residential parking permit schemes. These schemes can be highly discouraging for people who don’t need to park on the street.
• As on-street parking becomes especially scarce, offering permits cheaply is unlikely to manage demand effectively. In these areas, permit prices should rise to reflect demand.
• The revenue from parking permit schemes could be reinvested in the local community to fund various amenities.
• Reserving street space for car-share services, providing bike parking, and installing public charging stations for electric cars all reduce the need for off-street space.
• Better management of on-street car parking through permit schemes, time limits, and user pricing would reduce congestion on our streets.

Comment

Whilst this paper focuses on improving housing affordability, removing parking minimums and reforming on-street parking would deliver significant benefits to the transport system.

One of the underlying problems in almost every transport system in the world is the very heavy subsidies that taxpayers provide for driving. These subsidies lead to excessive driving.

Free or very cheap parking on public assets both cheats taxpayers out of revenues they should get and increases congestion.

Having been responsible for parking in an Inner London Council with an extensive residents' parking permit scheme, I have a good grasp of how these should work and how to make both the policy and the politics work.

What Next?

Are you advocating for the removal of parking minimums and encouraging and implementing residents' parking schemes?

Equity

Still Stuck at the Curb: How Urban Environments Fail People with Disabilities

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How well are we doing at ensuring our urban environments work for people with mobility and vision disabilities? This research looked at 60 academic studies to find out.

Key Takeaways

• Barriers in the urban built environment shape the daily lives of people with disabilities.
• Barriers can be infrastructural, environmental, transitional, technical, and/or attitudinal and are often systemic, embedded within urban design, policy, and practice.
• Sidewalk barriers are among the most consistently reported obstacles, arising from poor design, inadequate maintenance, and inconsistent surface quality.
• Barriers related to curbs and curb cuts include their absence, obstruction, poor placement, excessive slope or height, and deterioration.
• Ramp issues include problems with slope (gradient), width, landings, surface treatment, and edge protection.
• Grates can trap wheelchair wheels, particularly when surrounding surfaces are uneven or not flush with the grate, effectively creating pits.
• Road conditions, street design, traffic speed, volume, and congestion carry multiple intersecting effects.
• Parking - Inadequate accommodation for adapted vehicles can restrict ramp deployment, door opening, and wheelchair maneuvering.
• Crossings - common barriers include missing or degraded markings, absent Tactile Walking Surface Indicators (TWSI), short crossing times, and crossings obscured by objects such as vehicles.
• Platform gaps, inconsistent floor heights, and out-of-service elevators or escalators disrupt the continuity of travel chains and can compel detours or trip abandonment.
• Construction barriers include, for example, vehicle obstructions, loose materials, limited visibility, unclear navigation, faulty temporary ramps, and scaffolding.

Comment

As an article from last week highlighted, despite being at the top of the transport hierarchy, walking gets the least attention.

This translates into poor outcomes for many people, but especially those with disabilities.

I have previously written about how policy often makes this worse by prioritising very expensive accessibility investments in public transport, but fails to make it easy for people to get to stations or bus stops.

What Next?

Are you getting the most out of the funding going to enable disabled access?

Strategic Planning

A Framework for Human-Centred Mobility Planning

A lot of transport/mobility planning happens around transport modes. This paper proposes an alternative model based on the fulfilment of human needs.

Key Takeaways

• The HUMAN Model (Human-centric Urban Mobility through Adaptive Networks) is built on eight foundational principles and operates through a three-tier hierarchy that prioritises needs over modes, proximity over mobility, and accessibility over speed.
• Needs-Centred Design: Mobility systems exist to enable human flourishing, not to move vehicles efficiently.
• Proximity Before Mobility: The best trip is the one that doesn't need to be taken.
• Accessibility Over Speed: Success is measured by opportunities reached, not by vehicle velocity.
• Context-Sensitive Differentiation: One size never fits all; mobility systems must serve diverse circumstances and identities.
• Habit-Aware Implementation: Most travel is habitual, not consciously chosen; work with habits, not against them.
• Multi-Temporal Integration: Mobility decisions operate across three time scales that must be addressed coherently:
  • Strategic Level (Months to Years)
  • Tactical Level (Days to Weeks)
  • Operational Level (Minutes to Hours)
• Seamless Integration: Multimodal journeys must be effortless, not burdensome.
• Continuous Learning and Adaptation: Systems must learn from lived experiences and evolve accordingly.
• The HUMAN Model has a three-tier needs-based hierarchy.
  1. TIER 1: NEEDS FULFILLMENT. Ensure access to nine essential human needs.
  2. TIER 2: PROXIMITY & SPATIAL ORGANIZATION. Minimise travel necessity through urban planning.
  3. TIER 3: MODAL FLEXIBILITY & INTEGRATION. Provide abundant, integrated options.
• The implementation of the HUMAN Model follows a structured twelve-step process organised into four phases:
• Assessment and Baseline (Steps 1-3)

1. Needs and Accessibility Mapping
2. Emotional Tribes and Context Analysis
3. Decision Process Analysis

• Strategic Planning (Steps 4-6)

4. Set Accessibility Targets

5. Develop Proximity Strategy

6. Design Modal System

• Tactical Implementation (Steps 7-9)

7. Pilot and Iterate

8. Scale and Mainstream

9. Monitor and Adapt

• Governance and Participation (Steps 10-12)

10. Establish Participatory Structures

11. Foster Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration

12. Communicate and Celebrate

Comment

This model has a lot to recommend it. It focuses on people's needs, not the needs of a motor vehicle. It recognises the importance of integrating transport and land use and that people have different wants and needs.

However, I wonder how practicable it will be. The public debate around mobility isn't around accessibility; it is always mode-based: a wider road, a new metro line or a cycle lane.

The modal hierarchy model is often adopted as a strategy, but is rarely implemented successfully in practice. Will the HUMAN model suffer the same fate?

What Next?

Would you benefit from exploring the HUMAN model further?

Quick Adventures in Transport Wonderland

Here is what else I came across this week:

• ​Opinion: It's Time to Rethink Our Congestion Obsession - A Streetsblog USA opinion piece on how we should really tackle congestion.
• ​Generational change now vs. Waiting generations for change - An Andy Boenau blog arguing that we do not need to wait for large pots of money to make our streets safer.
• ​Could Delivery Robots Help Pay For Better City Sidewalks? - An article highlighting that sidewalk delivery robots share a common need with pedestrians for better sidewalks, and they might help pay for them.

Tools

Complete Streets Hub

The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has created a Complete Streets hub, a repository of active transportation resources.