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| Parking lots, like this one in Worcester, Mass., are raising some environmental concerns. Nicole Hill |
He tallies hidden costs of free parking – one space at a time
A researcher is counting parking spaces to determine if America has a surplus.
from the September 24, 2007 edition
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Early indications point to a lot of asphalt out there. If a single parking space averages 9-feet by 19-feet, then Tippecanoe County's 355,000 spaces translates into two square miles of pavement, the equivalent of about 1,000 football fields. If Tippecanoe is typical, that would mean the US has paved over roughly 6,000 square miles – an area larger than the state of Connecticut – to accommodate cars or trucks.
That's a conservative estimate, Pijanowski stresses, since he has not yet included on-street and residential parking or any other floors of parking garages except the rooftops, which are visible by air. In a nation with nearly 250 million registered vehicles, a few extra Rhode Islands of concrete might not seem to matter that much.
But a key finding in Pijanowski's research is the ratio of parking spaces to vehicles. In Tippecanoe County, at least, there are three times as many spaces as registered passenger vehicles. And there are 11 times as many spaces as families, his yet-to-be-published study found.
Does America's four-wheeled fleet really need all that extra elbow room?
Some activists in Los Angeles don't think so. Dozens of people – many of them involved in issues ranging from affordable housing to creating urban farmland – temporarily set up "parks" in scores of parking spaces throughout the city in honor of Friday's Park(ing) Day LA. The effort was, in part, to highlight how much of the public landscape is dominated by automobiles.
But most local governments think the space for cars is necessary, since they often set minimum parking requirements for stores and businesses. And retailers may be happy to spring for the extra cost of a megalot if it means no customer will be turned away even during the busiest shopping days, such as the day after Thanksgiving.
Nevertheless, some cities, including Pasadena, Calif.; Seattle; Portland, Ore.; and Boston, are making progress by revamping parking regulations, charging more for on-street parking, and adjusting the amount of parking required in new developments. In Portland, for instance, maximum parking limits vary with the distance from light-rail stations. There's less parking required to be built near the stations, more several blocks away, the EPA reports. In Palo Alto and Iowa city, the idea of "land banking" – or setting aside land for parking to be built only if it is really needed has meant minimum parking requirements are waived or relaxed.
Car sharing, in which two cars share one space at varying times of day, has worked well in some parts of San Francisco. In its rich Sorro Commons area, 17 fewer parking spaces created space for a childcare center and retail stores.
These are moves Pijanowski applauds.
"I worry about our society being so disconnected from nature that we surround ourselves with concrete," he says. "I just don't think we really want to pave it all over."
Material from wire services was used in this report.
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