parking

This article was cross-posted from City Observatory. 

Many residents of American cities can't escape the high cost of parking, even if they don't own cars. Thanks to policies like mandatory parking requirements and the practice of "bundling" parking with housing, carless renters pay $440 million each year for parking they don't use, according to a new study by C.J. Gabbe and Gregory Pierce in the journal Housing Policy Debate.

Another European city is setting its sights on ridding the urban core of cars.

[The Chicago Reader recently launched a new weekly transportation column written by Streetsblog Chicago editor John Greenfield. This partnership allows Streetsblog to extend the reach of our livable streets advocacy. We syndicate a portion of the column on the day it comes out online; you can read the remainder on the Reader’s website or in print. The paper hits the streets on Thursdays.]

It's encouraging to see that more and more business owners have come to understand that accommodating people, rather than automobiles, is good for the bottom line.

Two local politicians have proposed changing the streets around Wrigley Field to help defend it from terrorist attacks. Instead we should be looking at ways to protect the area from an excess of car traffic.

A federal policy that has encouraged Americans to drive to work instead of taking the bus or the train won't tilt the playing field toward car commuters so much.

"Minimum parking requirements act like a fertility drug for cars," Donald Shoup wrote in his celebrated investigation of parking economics, The High Cost of Free Parking. The above video, from the city of Ottawa, does a good job explaining exactly why that is and the problems it causes.