Sustainable Parking Management

Practices, Policies, and Metrics

Nada Milosavljevic, Jelena Simicevic

• Publisher: Elsevier
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780128158005
• eBook ISBN: 9780128162613
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Civil Law
• Index: Law

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

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 ...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Parking requirements
• Chapter 3: Parking demand
• Chapter 4: Parking dimensions
• Chapter 5: Key parking performance characteristics
• Chapter 6: Data collection
• Chapter 7: Parking strategy
• Chapter 8: Parking regulation
• Chapter 9: Parking enforcement
• Chapter 10: Mobility management
• Chapter 11: Parking guidance and information system
• Chapter 12: Communicating parking policies
• Chapter 13: Parking indicators
• Index