3 February 2025
Automobiles are essential to life in the twenty-first century. For most of us, especially in the US, that comes in the form of a personal vehicle. Even those without their own vehicle rely on automobiles for public transportation and the transport of goods. I understand this need, and why the government-mandated parking requirements that we currently have seem necessary. But it’s not necessary, and it’s not good for us as parking requirements over-allocate land and money to parking in new development.
Even though free parking is convenient, I think it’s pretty clear that we don’t want to pave the entire earth for parking. I think it’s also a bad idea to go ahead and just cut parking spaces away – showing up downtown or at the store and having to turn around because you got unlucky in the parking lottery is another bad outcome. So how can we better balance a good parking supply with limited money and land?
First off, the numbers behind our parking lots are staggering. Construction and maintenance of parking can cost anywhere from $600-$5000 per space per year, depending on land costs and parking type1. This effectively inflates the cost of the typical US urban residence by $140,000 per parking space in 2024 dollars2 – a staggering cost to a public already burdened by unprecedented high housing costs. In Denver, WGI estimates that one space in a parking structure costs $27,448 to build3. Calculated as a part of construction and land costs, a resident spends around $300 per month in their rent for a single parking spot whether or not they own a car4. Worse, this money is often spent needlessly. According to the Denver Metro RTD, 40-50% of metro area parking near transit stations goes unused at peak times5.
The cost of “free” parking is bundled into every purchase we make. A business pays for the parking lot as a part of its lease, construction loan, or as part of the building amortization. This cost is then directly passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices for groceries, goods, and services. When most of that parking is unnecessary it produces a hidden tax on consumers and residents. Still, enough parking must be provided that people don’t have to turn around when they arrive. This is why we need some form of pricing. When parking is free we will see the absolute maximum amount of parking consumed that people can manage. With priced parking we suddenly have a mechanism to make sure that our right sized parking remains right sized. Is your store crazy busy on Saturdays? Post a sign that says your parking is cheaper all other days of the week. If we let people choose the amount of parking to provide, and charge for the use of valuable land, we would be able to balance the needs of everyone. We would be able to do more with less land. We would be able to charge less for goods if parking isn’t included in the store’s rent anymore. We can let people who drove together, biked, or walked pay their fair share for parking rather than subsidizing the parking lot. Instead of paying for the cost of parking baked into every product and service, we would be able to choose how much parking to consume and thereby pay for.
Strong Denver endorses a market solution for parking. People building houses or starting a restaurant know much better how much parking they need than the city government. They know what the tradeoffs are. Telling every person, business, and organization how much parking they need to build is a fool’s errand that can only succeed by oversizing every parking lot. Let us instead build the amount of parking that’s necessary and nothing more.
- Litman, T. & Victoria Transport Policy Institute. (2023). Comprehensive Parking Supply, Cost and Price Analysis. Transportation Research Procedia. https://www.vtpi.org/WCTR2023_parking.pdf ↩︎
- Greenberg, A. (2004), How New Parking Spaces May Effectively Increase Typical U.S. Urban Housing Total Unit Costs by $52,000 to $117,000, TRB Annual Meeting (www.trb.org); at https://bit.ly/3REnFEp. ↩︎
- Parking Structure Cost Outlook. (2024). WGI. https://publications.wginc.com/hubfs/WGIs%20Parking%20Structure%20Cost%20Outlook%20for%202024.pdf ↩︎
- Parking Costs, Pricing and Revenue Calculator. Todd Litman, Victoria Transport Policy Institute.
http://www.vtpi.org/parking.xls
Assumes land cost of $1.7M / acre ↩︎ - Residential Parking in Station Areas: A Study of Metro Denver. (2020). Metro Denver Regional Transportation District. https://wp-cpr.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/12/RTD-Residential-TOD-Parking-Study.pdf ↩︎
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