The Boston Globe’s Tim Logan writes about a study by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, which surveyed nearly 200 apartment buildings inside Route 128 and found that about 30 percent of their parking spaces go unused, even in the wee hours of the morning, when most residents are likely home.
Building parking garages is expensive, and unused space devoted to cars can’t easily be repurposed for parks, plazas or larger housing units. Yet officials in many cities and towns, pressured by residents worried about losing on-street parking to newcomers, require new buildings to include a parking space for every unit, and sometimes more.
……The researchers found empty spaces just about everywhere, with the average building’s parking lot about 30 percent vacant. Buildings with easy MBTA access to job centers, or with more affordable housing, tended to have more empty spaces. Buildings in higher-income neighborhoods, and — perhaps ironically — those that provided more parking per unit, tended to have fewer.
It’s worth looking at the data and presentation by the study’s author, including data showing Newton properties surveyed were using only 1.2 spaces while the supply was 1.8.
Are these mixed use? Mixed use may have different requirements. Seems like he’s talking about pure residential.
Rick, mixed use may segregate parking for residential and commercial. I believe the Northland plan does that (I don’t know if it changed recently).
Riverside, on the other hand, doesn’t split the two types of parking.
Commercial parking would be harder to analyze in a blanket study like this because different commercial uses have different parking requirements (count, pattern of use, number of trips, etc). It can be done (and usually has to be done at development time), but you won’t get a single number that can be compared across different communities.
Mike:
It is usually done incorrectly. For instance, a gym will pencil out with a lower impact use if it is a standard gym, but a much higher use if it hosts classes. A restaurant is a high impact use, but actually a fast casual joint or diner may cause far more parking problems.
Straight retail (think clothing shop or jewelry store) is very low impact. Banks are very low impact now, but didn’t use to be.
Plus, commercial use constantly changes. Today it could be a kitchen cabinet store, but last year it was a restaurant.
Parking study experts get paid money for a reason, and even they struggle with it.
Like almost every development study that V14 links to, this is NOT a scientific study by an impartial organization. This organization has an agenda and, no surprise, their studies always support their agenda.
I have 4 toilets in my house. Right now, none are being used. I own 30 shirts, but I am only wearing one right now. MAPC might think that I have 4 toilets too many and 29 shirts too many, but I don’t.
@Jeffery: Did a government body require you to have four toilets and 30 shirts?
That’s how this is different.