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- The US is awash in parking. It takes up as much land as Connecticut and Vermont combined.
- Devoting this much land to parking makes housing more expensive and hurts the environment.
- Removing some of our parking could boost our quality of life, according to a former Google exec.
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We've all had the headache-inducing experience of trying to find a parking space while running late to an appointment or perhaps gotten red in the face attempting to maneuver into a parallel spot while onlookers mutter, "That'll never fit."
But for all the everyday complaints, the US's real parking problem is that we simply have too much of it. Recently, Insider took a deep dive into parking through the eyes of Jeral Poskey, a former executive in Google's real-estate division.
Poskey, whose job entailed finding ways to accommodate all the Googlers commuting to the company's offices, said America was so enamored with parking that, by some estimates, the country had a staggering 2 billion parking spots — more than six spaces for every registered car. Put another way, these endless rows of parking gobble up as much land as Connecticut and Vermont combined.
All this parking is a burden on our environment, government budgets, affordable housing, and, ultimately, quality of life, Poskey said. He pointed to onerous parking requirements as a reason for the country's lack of affordable housing. By one estimate, Poskey added, renters who don't own cars — primarily lower-income residents — pay almost half a billion dollars each year to subsidize parking they don't use because zoning rules often require a minimum number of parking spots with residential projects.
Not all these critiques of parking are new, but they seem to be taking on more urgency as the US and other countries look for ways to lessen dependence on transportation that comes with a hefty environmental and social price tag. And even a full-scale switch to electric vehicles that doesn't address parking would miss part of the problem.
Poskey contends the land could be put to better use, such as for much-needed housing or businesses that generate far higher tax revenues than oceans of asphalt. Freeing our cities from the yoke of parking would also make them denser, more walkable, and more livable.
The good news is that some cities and even some states, such as California, are ditching or at least easing rules that require a minimum number of parking spaces for many projects. This allows more housing units to be built and reduces costs.
And the resulting density creates economic zones that punch way above their size, Poskey said. Areas of Plano, Texas; Springfield, Massachusetts; and New Orleans with a mix of commercial buildings and stores accounted for 3% of those cities' land but 40% of their jobs, the Brookings Institution found.
These dense areas often correlate with fewer car trips, more walking, and greater use of public transit — all wins for the environment and quality of life.