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- Some shop owners fear that reducing street parking will hurt their sales.
- A new study found the opposite: the more pedestrianized an area is, the better for business.
- Retail rents increased in places with mass transit, pedestrian zones, and public parking garages.
In cities and suburbs across America, some shop owners have fought new bike lanes and pedestrian zones when it means reducing street parking out of fear of losing business if customers can't easily drive to their stores.
Protesters recently took to the streets of the nation's capital — along a bustling stretch of Connecticut Avenue — to voice their opposition to a planned bike lane on the Northwest artery. "Save our businesses! They need customer parking," one demonstrator yelled.
But there's mounting evidence that street parking isn't necessarily good for business. Academics at RWTH Aachen University in Germany found in a new study that mass transit, pedestrian zones, and public parking garages attract more shoppers to retail, while an abundance of street parking actually hurts businesses.
The study notes that shop owners often oppose removing street parking around them because they're "afraid of deteriorated accessibility, declining pedestrian frequencies, and lower revenue." But the researchers, who looked at rent for retail spaces in the city center of Aachen, Germany between 2015 and 2022, found that those fears are largely unfounded.
"Our model indicates that removing on-street parking does not impact retail performance negatively and can even lead to more attractive shopping areas and higher rents, given there is enough parking capacity within walking distance," the researchers wrote.
Previous studies have shown that bike lanes and more pedestrian-friendly, walkable, and car-light areas are better for business. The New York City Department of Transportation released a report in 2013 finding that "improved accessibility and a more welcoming street environment created by" bike lanes and other road re-designs "generate increases in retail sales in the project areas."
It's relatively intuitive that pedestrian-friendly street design makes for happier customers. Shopping districts are much like outdoor malls, which are most convenient and popular when they have both adequate garage parking and are accessible by mass transit. And business improvement districts — the associations that represent a neighborhood's businesses — are starting to catch on.
BIDs across New York City — from Times Square to Park Slope, Brooklyn — are getting behind car-light streets, while the city's mayor is calling for a "culture shift" from centering cars to prioritizing pedestrians.
Times Square and other busy New York neighborhoods have undertaken a range of projects to pedestrianize their streets, build bike lanes, and reduce car traffic.
Retail is a key component of a city's economic health, but shopping habits and needs have changed significantly over the years. US consumers are increasingly abandoning malls and other in-person retail experiences and shopping online. That trend was hyper-accelerated by the pandemic, when so many stores shut down or operated with limited capacity.
Major shopping districts, including Times Square, are moving away from big box stores to more restaurants, bars, and other food and beverage-oriented businesses, Times Square Alliance president Tom Harris recently told Insider.
These findings are particularly crucial for urban centers that are struggling to bounce back from the pandemic as remote and hybrid work keeps office workers out of downtowns. As cities figure out how to revitalize and reinvent their business districts, they could consider the impact that cars and parking have on their retail shops, restaurants, and other businesses.