The Prophet of Parking: A eulogy for the great Donald Shoup

The solution, as Donald Shoup advocated, is to raise (or in some cases, lower, and in general, have it be dynamic) parking rates to market-clearing prices for parking spots such that there are is always one (but not too much more) free spot available on the block.

Shoup wrote a LOT about how charging too little for parking leads to everyone using it, which makes parking worse for everyone involved. San Francisco charges about $50c a day for residential street parking in areas that have a parking permit zone - which is decided on a block by block basis. Most street parking in SF is completely free.

Raise prices even slightly, and people's behaviors will adjust accordingly. I have a friend who street parked two cars until he moved to a different neighborhood and had to start paying for permits. Now he just keeps his commuter and leaves his overlander in the suburbs.

I wonder if Waymo will get big enough in San Francisco to affect this.

The only solution to traffic is viable alternatives to driving. Not more parking, not more lanes, not more parking lots, nor more highways, not wider roads. It's viable alternatives to driving.

Donald’s book The High Cost of Free Parking is about this! Really great read, highly recommended.

Rest in peace.

People are the "big rocks" in cities. Housing and businesses for people is more important than storing automobiles.

If there's not enough free street parking, charge more. That's part of what Shoup talked about.

So you make the street parking paid.

It’s insane that so much land is dedicated to giving people free space to store their personal vehicles.

“But that’s unfair!” People can take the bus.

“But the bus service isn’t good!” That’s because no one uses the bus, if there’s demand, supply will be added. The biggest determinant of transit use is the availability of parking.

Malls usually have huge, empty parking lots, so it sounds like it's a win:

More people got a home to live in that costs less, and some formerly squandered land was better utilized.

And if you start doing other things like legalizing corner stores and neighborhood businesses, rather than designing everything for the automobile Uber alles, maybe some of those people will find they don't need a car.

Also, policy changes almost never happen in one nice tidy package where you do all the things at once, like eliminating expensive and arbitrary parking rules, adding a bunch of transit, re-legalizing neighborhood commercial, right-sizing roads, etc... so there are going to be fits and starts and bumps along the way. Still worth doing though.

Oregon has a severe housing shortage:

https://www.opb.org/article/2025/01/28/oregon-needs-to-build...

That is the root cause of homelessness:

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-...

This video also does a good job of explaining it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQW4W1_SJmc

Eliminating costly parking regulations are quite helpful for building the kinds of housing that will help people get out of homelessness.

> Homelessness is through the roof

Allocating space for car parking does not help address homelessness. In fact, it hurts it a lot.

Prices going up is a clear market signal of desirability.

I think there's some kind of filter bubble effect going on. And a little classism. People who use public transit like it and think everyone likes it, and people who never use it hate it and think everyone hates it. My ex-boss never used public transit despite living right next to a train stop, because he was rich and trains are for poor people. He probably didn't know that's how I got to the office Christmas party (in that area).

I don't disagree with much in the article, but I disagree with the implication that parking requirements are, or ever were, designed to meet the needs of businesses and business owners. They aren't. They're driven by voters who want businesses to have more parking than business owners would pay for, given the choice.

It's an important distinction because of the way arguments over parking play out. If parking requirements are engineered to match the needs of businesses and business owners, then as the article states, they aren't "needed," but also it can be argued that there's little harm in mandating what conscientious business owners do anyway, and preventing outliers from causing problems.

The article does that in its own way by attacking the research behind parking requirements, but it fails to take the next step and point out the obvious: the research would be a lot more solid if anyone believed that it mattered. Even if it started out weak by necessity, it would have been improved and updated over the decades if anybody cared. But there's literally no connection and nobody who cares about a connection.

To a cheesy jingle tune: public services paid by taxes aren't handouts.

I don't know why this has caught on so strongly online that like water and gas hookups, electric, roads, and trash/yard waste pickups to single-family homes aren't supporting a specific lifestyle but public parking? Those evil suburbanites ruining everything. My hometown Columbus and the policy of mandatory parking is still working out great. New developments are building more parking than required of them and they're the hip trendy areas. The only places in the city where it's an issue is in and around "The Short North" where you can't fit any more parking and they moved to an app based pay system everyone hates. Whenever I'm home and want to go out with friends it's much easier to hit up Bridge Park or Franklinton because they have massive garages.

I agree with you, but just to play devils advocate: use the property you are permitted to use and build parking on your own property. If you can't fit a garage or parking space on your land, you didn't think through the purchase for your needs.

Correct you only own your house, not the street. If you want to own the street too, a gated community is where you want to live.

People parking on the public street in front of your house has nothing to do with the enjoyment of it. If you personally find it abhorrent, move outside the city to somewhere with fewer people.

Exactly, we paid for our house, the sidewalk in front of it, and the street beyond that sidewalk! And our enjoyment will be ruined by... seeing people on our street who don't live here!

That's the part I don't understand at all, and I've had people try to explain it to me in person. The anger, anxiety, and affrontedness of seeing somebody parked at the curb in front of one's house... the neighborhood ruined... I can see it in their eyes and hear it in their voice, but can you explain it? For context, people frequently park on our street because of the proximity of a couple of commercial streets a few minutes' walk away, and we get completely parked up for events at a church down the block. The worst thing that has ever happened as a result is that our dogs have woken us up barking at someone retrieving their car. I blame that on our dogs, but I guess I could blame the people instead?

Do you own the street outside your house and the street outside your neighbor's houses?

If I go into a city I try not to drive/use Uber.

On the other side of that doing driving gigs (delivery) I avoid driving in a city because can't find a place to park/don't want to get towed.

I've lived in places where I wouldn't be able to park if I drove home late at night. In that case, I wouldn't drive to events where I would arrive home late at night. And since public transportation tends to be poor late at night, that would mean either I'd carpool or not go.

I don’t agree with your edit.

In my area it’s freezing cold most of the year. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to wait a minute or two for a spot instead of literally walking an extra two football fields in harsh weather. Increased fall risk, etc.

If you parked 15 minutes away, and they circled for 15 minutes, they came out ahead - because they would have a short walk back to their car, you'd have a 15 minute one.

People like convenience, they don't like being reminded they often have to pay for it.

For example, people are willing to pay more for a dedicated parking space than they are to pay per use - even if they're basically the same.

If you spend any time driving in a vacation to Spain, something went wrong.

I spend 6 weeks there last summer. I never drove, and our only cab was to the airport