High cost of parking

Donald Shoup has loads of statistics to share in his recent book, the "High Cost of Free Parking," all of which are surprisingly interesting to read. For drivers everywhere, parking is a paramount issue, and municipalities have tried to accommodate drivers to instituting policies that require parking spaces per something built.

We've been bantering around some much less scientifically founded statistics recently, just based on presentations we've seen or what we heard talking to transportation engineers. For example:

the number of parking spaces per car in Seattle - 8
the percent of land in average size cities paved by asphalt - 50%
the subsidy per parking space in Midtown Manhattan - $18
(feel free to dispute these claims)

There are working alternatives to providing parking and braving the anger of irate drivers. Missoula, Montana has a terrific parking management program. Instead of subsidizing parking (which they've calculated to cost the city $20,000 per space), they poured their resources into transit incentives, employee transit card subsidies, even picking up the cab fare if you're stuck somewhere and transit doesn't get you back to where you want to go. It's called Missoula in Motion, and I love it.