Parking by the Bay: The Supply and Implications of Parking Infrastructure in the San Francisco Bay Area

Journal of Transportation and Land Use, 2022, 15(1), pp. 527-545, doi: 10.5198/jtlu.2022.2123

The San Francisco Bay Area is one of the most progressive transportation regions in the deployment of high-capacity transit and the use of policies to encourage active transportation. Yet, there remains a dearth of knowledge on the abundance and location of parking infrastructure. The extent and location of parking supply, including on-street and off-street spaces, are estimated for the nine-county Bay Area by creating a federated database that joins land use, transportation, parcel, building, and parking code layers to estimate the number and characteristics of parking spaces at the census block scale. This bottom-up parking space inventory results in an estimated 15 million parking spaces in the region: 8.6 million on-street, and 6.4 million off-street. Residential parking dominates the share of supply at 70%, followed by commercial at 9.4%. Space density is greatest in downtown San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose—largely attributed to high-rise structures. On-street parking is dominant in the North Bay, commanding 78% of total parking in Napa, 75% in Solano, 68% in Sonoma, and 67% in Marin County. Parking area constitutes 7.9% of the total incorporated area. Notably, when compared to other southwest cities (Phoenix Metropolitan Area and Los Angeles County), the Bay Area parking supply appears better utilized considering spaces per person, per car, and per job. The density and quantity of parking spaces in the Bay Area are critical insights towards developing targeted policies that encourage active mobility and support affordable housing.

2022 Rui Li, Alysha Helmrich, Mikhail Chester Infrastructure, Parking

Urban Heat Implications from Parking, Roads, and Cars: A Case Study of Metro Phoenix

Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure, 2022, 7(4), pp. 272-290, doi: 10.1080/23789689.2020.1773013

Urban heat is a growing concern in cities as a consequence of persisting urbanization exacerbated by climate change. To help understand how city planning and the transportation sector can influence and mitigate heat in cities, this research quantifies contributions to urban heat from pavement infrastructure and vehicle travel. A case study of metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona is chosen for its rapid growth, hot climate, and high automobile dependence. A one-dimensional model based on fundamental heat transfer is developed and validated using remotely sensed land surface temperatures for scenarios of local weather and pavement design. Simulated sensible heat emissions from pavements are applied to a regional roadway and parking pavement inventory and combined with road-level vehicle travel densities to quantify spatiotemporal sensible heat flux magnitudes. In metro Phoenix, total sensible heat from pavements and vehicles is comprised of 67% from roadway pavements, 29% from parking pavements, and 3.9% vehicles. Under typical Phoenix conditions, concrete and asphalt pavements emit an average of 15% and 37% more sensible heat compared to the bare ground, respectively. This added sensible heat from pavement infrastructure peaks during summer afternoons when heat emissions relative to the ground can increase to 26% for concrete and 46% for asphalt. These results indicate pavement infrastructure contributes significantly to Phoenix’s urban heat balance, and areas surrounding high capacity vehicle corridors may be undesirable for outdoor travel or activities during summer rush hours. Future research quantifying urban heat fluxes should consider quantifying added heat from pavement infrastructure in addition to traditional anthropogenic sources.

2022 Christopher Hoehne, Mikhail Chester, David Sailor, David King Infrastructure, Parking

Valley of the Sun-Drenched Parking Space

Transfers Magazine, 2020

Most cities have little to no idea how many parking spaces they have. Nevertheless, we know that most cities have a lot of parking, and that most of it is free. This free parking comes with significant economic, environmental, and social costs. A city full of parking is a city designed for cars. When cities are designed for cars, car use becomes necessary, which makes drivers call for more car-oriented design, even though such design leads to more driving and pollution, and creates landscapes that hinder walking, biking and transit use.

2020 Christopher Hoehne, Mikhail Chester, David King Infrastructure, Parking

Using Social Media to Evaluate Associations Between Parking Supply and Parking Sentiment

Transportation Research Interdiscplinary Perspectives, 2020, 4(100085), doi: 10.1016/j.trip.2019.100085

A common complaint against changing parking requirements is that parking is critical for businesses to survive. Such statements are generally taken as a statement of fact by planners and local officials, yet there is little empirical work in support of this claim. This research examines how online business reviews reflect customer sentiment toward parking, and how this sentiment is associated with the supply of parking. The Phoenix, Arizona region is used for this analysis. The parking supply at the parcel level is combined with data from user-generated Yelp business reviews to assess satisfaction or frustration with parking at different types of businesses in commercial districts across the region. Results suggest that parking is mentioned in about 5% of overall reviews, and when mentioned in reviews it is most often as a negative characteristic of the establishment. Reviews that mention parking also give significantly lower ratings to businesses. The analysis shows that parking sentiment may be associated in some cases with parking supply, e.g. districts with more parking spaces per business tend to have more positive parking sentiment. Additionally, in areas with shared parking facilities, parking was generally viewed more positively or mentioned less frequently. These findings suggest that parking supply is part of a customer's overall perception of a business, though not a major component, and that shared parking facilities are not associated with negative reviews. Implications for policy are that shared parking can be part of an overall package of parking reforms that satisfy businesses and customers alike.

2020 Andrew Mondschein, David King, Christopher Hoehne, Zhiqiu Jiang, Mikhail Chester Infrastructure, Parking

Valley of the Sun-drenched Parking Space: The Growth, Extent, and Implications of Parking Infrastructure in Phoenix

Cities, 2019, 89, pp. 186-198, doi: 10.1016/j.cities.2019.02.007

There is little knowledge of how much parking infrastructure exists in cities despite mounting evidence that abundant and underpriced parking creates economic, environmental, and social problems. Urban parking requirements are very precise and routinely enforced despite the fact that most cities have little to no knowledge about their own parking supply. To further explore these issues, a parking inventory for metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona, USA is developed by cross-referencing geospatial cadastral and roadway data with minimum parking requirements. Metropolitan Phoenix is chosen because it is relatively young, rapidly growing, highly sprawled, and car dependent. Historical growth of parking is also estimated by linking year of property development to required off-street and nearby on-street parking spaces. As of 2017, we estimate that there are 12.2 million parking spaces in the metropolitan region with 4.04 million inhabitants, 2.81 million registered personal vehicles, and 1.84 million jobs. Growth of parking in metro Phoenix has also been significant; since 1960, 10.9 million spaces have been added to the region compared to a population growth of 3.41 million, vehicle fleet growth of 2.63 million, and employment growth of 1.56 million. Since the 2008 recession, parking growth in metro Phoenix has significantly slowed, but continued urban growth combined with substantial minimum parking requirements may promote more parking infrastructure than is needed. Planners and policy makers should value quantifying the growth and supply of parking in urban areas and consider reforming parking standards to promote consistent and unambiguous pathways to sustainable urban growth.

2019 Christopher Hoehne, Mikhail Chester, David King, Andrew Fraser Infrastructure, Parking

Parking Infrastructure: A Constraint on or Opportunity for Urban Redevelopment? A Study of Los Angeles County Parking Supply and Growth

Journal of the American Planning Association, 2015, 81(4), pp. 268-286 doi: 10.1080/01944363.2015.1092879

Many cities have adopted minimum parking requirements but we have relatively poor information about how parking infrastructure has grown. We estimate how parking has grown in Los Angeles County from 1900 to 2010 and how parking infrastructure evolves, affects urban form, and relates to changes in automobile travel, using building and roadway growth models. We find that since 1975 the ratio of residential offstreet parking spaces to automobiles in Los Angeles County is close to 1.0 and the greatest density of parking spaces is in the urban core while most new growth in parking occurs outside of the core. 14% of incorporated land in Los Angeles County is committed to parking. Uncertainty in our space inventory is attributed to our building growth model, onstreet space length, and the assumption that parking spaces were created as per the requirements. The continued use of minimum parking requirements is likely to encourage automobile use at a time when metropolitan areas are actively seeking to manage congestion and increase transit use, biking, and walking. Widely discussed ways to reform parking policies may be less than effective if planners do not consider the remaining incentives to auto use created by the existing parking infrastructure. Planners should encourage the conversion of existing parking facilities to alternative uses.

November 2015 Mikhail Chester, Andrew Fraser, Juan Matute, Carolyn Flower, Ram Pendyala Infrastructure, Parking, Los Angeles

Parking Infrastructure and the Environment

Access Magazine 39, Fall 2011

California is planning to spend $40 billion to build a high speed rail system from San Diego to Sacramento. Advocates argue that high speed rail will save money and improve the environment, while critics claim it will waste money and harm the environment. What accounts for these diametrically opposed views about a technology that has been operating in other countries for decades? And what can transportation analysts offer to inform the debate? Disagreements about the cost and environmental impacts of high speed rail can arise when analysts examine only the most direct effects of the rail system, and compare those to only the direct effects of road and air travel—-the two transportation modes from which high speed rail will likely draw passengers. But transportation energy use and emissions result not only from the direct effects of operating the vehicles but also from indirect effects, such as building the infrastructure, producing the fuels, manufacturing the vehicles, maintaining the system, and disposing of materials at the end of their lives. The full range of emissions from automobile travel, for example, includes not only tailpipe emissions but also the emissions created by building roads and parking garages, manufacturing cars, extracting and refining petroleum, and, finally, wrecking yards and tire dumps. One approach to environmental and cost-benefit analysis that takes both these direct and indirect effects into account is life-cycle assessment. In this article we use life-cycle assessment to compare the energy use and pollution emissions of high speed rail and its competing modes.

December 2011 Mikhail Chester, Arpad Horvath, Samer Madanat Parking, Infrastructure

Parking Infrastructure: Energy, Emissions, and Automobile Life-cycle Environmental Accounting

Environmental Research Letters, 2010, 5(3), doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/5/3/034001

The US parking infrastructure is vast and little is known about its scale and environmental impacts. The few parking space inventories that exist are typically regionalized and no known environmental assessment has been performed to determine the energy and emissions from providing this infrastructure. A better understanding of the scale of US parking is necessary to properly value the total costs of automobile travel. Energy and emissions from constructing and maintaining the parking infrastructure should be considered when assessing the total human health and environmental impacts of vehicle travel. We develop five parking space inventory scenarios and from these estimate the range of infrastructure provided in the US to be between 105 million and 2 billion spaces. Using these estimates, a life-cycle environmental inventory is performed to capture the energy consumption and emissions of greenhouse gases, CO, SO2, NOX, VOC (volatile organic compounds), and PM10 (PM: particulate matter) from raw material extraction, transport, asphalt and concrete production, and placement (including direct, indirect, and supply chain processes) of space construction and maintenance. The environmental assessment is then evaluated within the life-cycle performance of sedans, SUVs (sports utility vehicles), and pickups. Depending on the scenario and vehicle type, the inclusion of parking within the overall life-cycle inventory increases energy consumption from 3.1 to 4.8 MJ by 0.1–0.3 MJ and greenhouse gas emissions from 230 to 380 g CO2e by 6–23 g CO2e per passenger kilometer traveled. Life-cycle automobile SO2 and PM10 emissions show some of the largest increases, by as much as 24% and 89% from the baseline inventory. The environmental consequences of providing the parking spaces are discussed as well as the uncertainty in allocating paved area between parking and roadways.

July 2010 Mikhail Chester, Arpad Horvath Parking, Infrastructure