High Cost of Free Parking

by Donald Shoup

Overview

Off-street parking requirements are devastating American cities. So says the author in this no-holds-barred treatise on the way parking should be. Free parking, the author argues, has contributed to auto dependence, rapid urban sprawl, extravagant energy use, and a host of other problems. Planners mandate free parking to alleviate congestion, but end up distorting transportation choices, debasing urban design, damaging the economy, and degrading the environment. Ubiquitous free parking helps explain why our cities sprawl on a scale fit more for cars than for people, and why American motor vehicles now consume one-eighth of the world's total oil production. But it doesn't have to be this way. The author proposes new ways for cities to regulate parking, namely, charge fair market prices for curb parking, use the resulting revenue to pay for services in the neighborhoods that generate it, and remove zoning requirements for off-street parking.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781351177818
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	02/25/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	752
File size:	12 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Donald Shoup (University of California - Los Angeles, USA) (Author)

Table of Contents

Preface , The Twenty-first Century Parking Problem , Planning for Free Parking , Unnatural Selection , The Pseudoscience of Planning for Parking , An Analogy: Ancient Astronomy , A Great Planning Disaster , The Cost of Required Parking Spaces , Putting the Cost of Free Parking in Perspective , An Allegory: Minimum Telephone Requirements , Public Parking in Lieu of Private Parking , Reduce Demand Rather than Increase Supply , Cruising for Parking , Cruising , The Right Price for Curb Parking , Choosing to Cruise , California Cruising , Cashing in on Curb Parking , Buying Time at the Curb , Turning Small Change into Big Changes , Taxing Foreigners Living Abroad , Let Prices Do the Planning , The Ideal Source of Local Public Revenue , Unbundled Parking , Time for a Paradigm Shift , Conclusion , Changing the Future , The Practice of Parking Requirements , Nationwide Transportation Surveys , The Language of Parking , The Calculus of Driving, Parking, and Walking , The Price of Land and the Cost of Parking , People, Parking, and Cities , Converting Traffic Congestion into Cash , The Vehicles of Nations , Afterword Twenty-First Century Parking Reforms

Editorial Reviews

Donald Shoup is like Jane Jacobs. He starts by exposing the blind spot of a generation and then marshals a new generation of urbanists to make things right. Now that The High Cost of Free Parking is in paperback, I look forward to replacing all the dog-eared copies that have gone missing from our office library.
-Paul Steely White, Executive Director, Transportation Alternatives

From the Publisher