parking

The surface parking lot on the west side of the stadium has been transformed into the Park at Wrigley, a plaza and lawn that will function as public space for all Chicagoans when there aren’t events at the stadium.

When you think about appropriate uses for federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement dollars, pouring asphalt to make more room for warehousing automobiles is not the first thing that comes to mind.

Streetsblog reader Deni Mayer contacted us yesterday about an unusual car parking conundrum is his neighborhood. Last summer he and his wife moved into a condo on the 100 block of West Delaware in the Gold Coast, between Clark and LaSalle and just west of Washington Square Park. It’s a narrow one-way westbound street, and the east half of the block has townhouses on the north side of the street. Each of these homes has two parking garages and driveways that cross the sidewalk.

Austin is in the process of overhauling its zoning code -- an initiative called CodeNext -- and one of the most promising aspects is a major reduction in parking requirements. If the current draft holds up, the effects on walkability, housing affordability, and water quality could be impressive.

The federal government spends $7 billion annually subsidizing parking for car commuters -- almost as much as it spends annually on transit. No wonder cities are so congested. If we're going to cut traffic in major cities, parking subsidies have got to go.

We build parking that nobody ever uses because that's what American engineering standards recommend.

Parking lots make cities less walkable, bikeable, and transit-friendly. They crowd out space for housing. They erode the tax base.

Parking minimums make cities less walkable and less affordable. While many American cities are scaling them back, Buffalo is the only one to eliminate them citywide.

It's that time of year again -- time to show how much space we waste on commercial parking!