Parking

A Marin County shopping mall hopes to be the first LEED-certified mall, partly by reserving parking space for low emitting vehicles. All spaces, for guzzlers and green vehicles alike, are unpriced, perhaps pointing to shortfalls of green building.

April 1, 2010 - Marin Independent Journal

Very few large cities can claim to know how many parking spaces they have. San Francisco has counted its publicly accessibly parking supply and released the data to through Data SF website.

March 30, 2010 - Streetsblog San Francisco

Local governments are increasingly encouraging or even requiring LEED certification in new development, which is nice, but most continue to require generous minimum parking supply, which contradicts their goals.

March 15, 2010 - Todd Litman

Planning policies that produce cheap, abundant parking are fundamentally at odds with efforts to promote transit, biking, and walking. A new report from ITDP shows how some cities have started to align parking policies with sustainable transport.

February 26, 2010 - Streetsblog

This post from GOOD looks at a bill from California state senator Alan Lowenthal that seeks to incentivize cities into reforming their parking rules.

February 26, 2010 - Good

The Victoria Transport Policy Institute has released this report to guide municipalities to transition from 'free' parking (though author Todd Litman is quick to point out that it is never free) to charging for parking directly.

February 21, 2010 - Victoria Transport Policy Institute

Hoboken, New Jersey's Department of Transportation and Parking Director Ian Sacs offers this profile of his city and discusses how the dense but car-enamored city is trying to tackle the contemporary urban parking problem.

February 8, 2010 - Ian Sacs

Los Angeles explores the possibility of selling off parking garages to manage a budget crisis.

February 1, 2010 - Los Angeles Times

Having stalled in the state Senate last June, a bill that aims to "reduc(e) governmental or government-required subsidies for parking" passed out of the senate on Jan. 28. Parking strategies would be eligible for cap & trade credits under the bill.

January 30, 2010 - Los Angeles Times

An interdisciplinary team of urban designers, architects, and analysts have proposed a neo-retro-futurist scenario for making downtown Portland nearly car-free by 2050.

January 18, 2010 - Hugeasscity

Last week I attended the Transportation Research Boards (TRB) 89th annual meeting, which attracted approximately 10,000 transportation professionals from around the globe to Washington DC. More than 2,000 papers were presented at more than 700 sessions, plus several hundred committee meetings took place. Let me share some highlights.

January 18, 2010 - Todd Litman

Instead of encouraging shopping, as the city had hoped, free downtown parking has been occupied by downtown workers.

December 24, 2009 - NBC News - Providence

Queens and Brooklyn homeowners may soon be prohibited from converting front yards into parking pads if a set of regulations is approved. The loss of street parking from new curb cuts was cited as a reason, along with aesthetics.

November 23, 2009 - New York Times-N.Y./Region (blog)

Parking by the Giants Stadium costs $1 less an hour than before the pilot program began, but on 'game days', the rate shoots up four-fold. Parking rates are not set daily but hourly by time of day, and have become quite profitable.

November 12, 2009 - San Francisco Examiner

Santa Monica, CA is making the move to market-based parking in order to reduce congestion, reduce pollution, and make alternatives more appealing.

October 16, 2009 - Los Angeles Times

As demand for parking at transit nodes has increased, developers have looked for ways to make their garages more 'green'.

October 15, 2009 - USA Today

Transit oriented development is having a hard time taking hold in Salt Lake City. Some say the parking preferences of lenders are to blame.

October 12, 2009 - The Salt Lake Tribune

A 42-storey condo building to be built in Toronto will include parking for nine car-share vehicles and 315 bicycles but no on-site parking spaces for residents’ private automobiles.

September 17, 2009 - Toronto Star

Using a mishmash of highlights from cities around the world, musician and artist David Byrne talks about his personal vision of a perfect, livable city.

September 14, 2009 - The Wall Street Journal

Parking guru Don Shoup was invited to speak in Santa Rosa as an expert on parking policies. Though the city is the only one in Sonoma County to charge for parking (to the chagrin of downtown merchants), it is considering building a 545-space garage.

August 14, 2009 - The Press Democrat