This newsletter comes out every other Thursday and hopefully provides you with thought-provoking content about the mundane, wacky, and weird. I will be writing until the 75th edition (only 8 left). If you know someone who may enjoy the newsletter, share it with them here.
You may not want to hear this, but you are probably paying too little for parking. In America, we have dreams of an open road and a free spot to park our car when we arrive somewhere. However, our free parking obsession is killing cities, increasing air pollution, and making our commercial areas drab. There are 8 parking spaces for every one car in the United States. On top of that, a car spends 95% of its lifetime parked.
I first noticed how unusual America’s blind acceptance of free parking was after a trip to Japan. In 1957, Japan passed a law that essentially banned street parking. As a result, you get many streets and alleyways that look like this.
Where do they put all of their cars? Many Japanese park their cars in automated parking garages like this modern version (left) or smaller elevated parking (right).
As a result, Japan’s streets are lively, their public transportation is first rate, and for a super dense city like Tokyo, its streets are surprisingly quiet and safe.
Meanwhile, in America, we often build so much parking that it practically forces everyone to drive to get anywhere.
For example, Kansas City built their stadiums so far away from where people live, they had to build parking lots that dwarf the stadiums. On the right side, Baltimore’s baseball stadium has taken an integrative approach by building the stadium into the fabric of the city. There is some parking, but it doesn’t alienate the people from the stadium.
Why are there so many large parking lots across America? Legally mandated parking minimums have artificially supported America’s dependence on cars. For example, a gym in Silverton, Oregon requires one parking space per workout station or equipment. They also require restaurants and bars to provide 8 parking spots for every 1,000 square feet of floor space. That results in a parking lots larger than the restaurant. These parking minimums are a bit of a pseudoscience.
City planners are forced to take educated guesses with how many spots will be needed and then enforce them in perpetuity.
Parking minimums may seem sensible because people need to park their cars. However, it doesn’t allow for much flexibility. Sure, some places may need a lot of parking, but other places like downtowns are forced to build more than they need. Many of the most walkable and enjoyable parts of the United States would be illegal to build today. Acorn street in Boston is the most photographed street in the United States, but it is illegal to build something like it today in part because of parking minimums.
UCLA professor Donald Shoup wrote the definitive book on parking. It is a 700+ page book called the High Cost of Free Parking and is the standard on anything related to parking. A study in Brooklyn found that 45% of drivers were actively looking for a parking spot at any given moment. Similar results can be found all over New York because off street parking in garages is far more expensive than curb parking. Cruising around the block to find the perfect spot increased travel times and fuel costs for all drivers, and increased air pollution and safety risks for everyone.
One of Shoup’s proposals is to adjust pricing of parking so that ideally there are always 1-2 spaces available per block. You get this by pricing parking correctly, higher or lower. If it is too high for someone they will park a few blocks away where it is cheaper to park or consider other modes of transportation. Here’s a graphic showing the difference between typical parking today (left) and how dynamic pricing for parking will look (right).
Not a public good
Parking is paid for by everybody, but only used by the person parking there. The average on street parking space costs between $5,000-$10,000 to build and about $800 in annual maintenance.
If parking is so bad, why do we have parking minimums? Starting with the rise of cars and suburbs in the 1950s through the early 2000’s, city planners agreed that there wasn’t enough parking. But in the past 15 years, city planners have realized the negative consequences of continually pushing for more parking. There has been a movement to remove previous parking minimums and diversify transit.
San Francisco has been a pioneer in parking. The city enacted a supply and demand model that fluctuates the pricing based on demand. It ranges anywhere from 25 cents to $6 an hour. The pricing works similar to airfare or Uber which changes the price based on demand. Perhaps a Tuesday afternoon in a popular shopping areas is $0.50 an hour and on Friday night it is $5 an hour.
The dynamic pricing in San Francisco showed it reduced circling by 30%. This past week California’s governor Gavin Newsom banned parking minimums for new developments near public transit. This is an effort to build denser housing near public transit hubs.
What to do?
We still need cars and we still need parking, but we probably need to reevaluate how we think about parking. Here are a few solutions:
Get rid of parking minimums. Let the market decide how many parking spots are needed. Some places will increase their parking, but most will vastly reduce free parking. You then use the revenue from parking to go towards public goods on that block.
“Unbundle” parking. Stop apartments from including parking in the price of the apartment. For example:
Rent = $1,500. Parking = $100 a spot
Two parking spots for you and your partner = $1,700 total rent. If you decide you only need one car then you pay $1,600.
Today, many apartments just charge you $1,700 and assume you will use both spots.
Adopt dynamic pricing of curb parking. Ideally, it is priced so that there are 1-2 spots open on a block.
Parking isn’t bad, it is mostly just mispriced. Misguided policy’s and faulty public opinion have led to too much free parking in the United States.
Quote I’m pondering
“You can’t fire a cannon from a canoe”.
This is typically in reference to mobility and strength. You can be as powerful as you want (the cannon) but if you have an unstable core (the canoe) then you won't be able to use the strength you've built.
Power of preparation
In the 2008 Olympics Michael Phelps pulled off a feat that no Olympian before of since has achieved, win 8 gold medals. Phelps best race was always the 200 meter butterfly. His long feet, double jointed ankles and strong shoulders had propelled him to break the world record for 200 meter butterfly 6 consecutive times leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Out of all of the races he swam in, the 200 meter butterfly at the 2008 Olympics was supposed to be a blow out. However, he pulled out a miracle winning by 0.01 seconds. Check out the epic photo below.
Phelps is in lane 5 and the guy to his left is inches away from the finish. So what happened to Phelps? Why didn’t he win by a landslide? Seconds after his dive into the water, Phelps googles completely filled up. He was racing blind 👀
He kept his composure because he had rehearsed this many times in practice. So when his goggles filled up with chlorine water he was able to remain calm and counted his strokes until the end of the pool, flipped around and completed 3 more links before finishing with a bang. Preparation pays off!
Pic of the week
My Monday night soccer league won the soccer championship! I haven’t been on a championship soccer team in over 5 years and it felt surprisingly good. Playing intramurals in my adult life has been less intense than playing soccer did growing up, but still delivered a powerful feeling of group accomplishment.
Funny tiktok of Austin life, which granted does have a good cycling route. https://twitter.com/QAGreenways/status/1578020650970910722