The high cost of free parking
The announcement of the Commercial Bay development last week got me thinking about minimum parking requirements.
MPRs were removed from the city centre back in the late 1990s. Prior to that point,all new developments were required to provide parking at roughly the same rate as suburban developments.…
54 Comments Get out the Yellow Paint
I’ve been getting thoroughly fed up of inconsiderate drivers parking cars on footpaths and readers may remember a post I wrote about this less than a month ago. In the last few days the issue has become front page news at the herald who are encouraging outrage that some people were ticketed for the practice.…
Time to cut the kerb parking
A trend I and others have been noticing lately is an ever increasing number of vehicles parking on the kerb or footpath – and it’s really starting to annoy me. It ranges from a couple of tires up on the edge of the kerb to full blown parking over footpaths and blocking pedestrians.…
The equity implications of minimum parking requirements
Transportblog’s written at length about the economic harm caused by minimum parking requirements (MPRs). By requiring every new development to adopt a “one size fits all” to parking provision, MPRs consume expensive land, drive up costs for businesses and households, and encouraging more congestion and less use of public transport, walking, and cycling.…
Changes to CBD Parking costs
Auckland Transport have announced that the price of parking in their city centre carparks will be changing. Currently their Downtown, Civic and Victoria Street car parking buildings have an hourly cost of $3 which is capped at $17 for the day.…
More on AT’s Light Rail Proposal
We have been sent more LRT details from AT. Light Rail is undergoing investigation at this point, but slowly more of their thinking is emerging: Clearly access to Wynyard is the most difficult part of this route. Queen St is so LRT ready and at last a use for that hitherto hopeless little bypass: Ian Mackinnion Drive.…
Auckland’s new Parking Stategy
Last week Auckland Transport finalised their region wide parking strategy which they first consulted on a year ago. All up AT received more than 5,500 submissions.
The strategy is potentially one of the most important that AT have as parking has huge impacts across a wide range of areas so managing it right is critically important.…
“Ravenously space-hungry monsters”
Stu’s talk at an IPENZ forum the other week put forth a lot of smart critiques of and recommendations for the transport profession. I was particularly taken by this slide: Stu argues that failing to account for the “opportunity cost” associated with using valuable land for moving cars can lead us to misallocate resources.…
Working paper: Trade-offs in urban planning
Back in April, I had the opportunity to present a paper on the economics of urban planning at the New Zealand Planning Institute’s annual conference. The paper, which benefited from the support of my employer, MRCagney, and discussions with a menagerie of planners and other economists, is now available online for anyone who’s interested.…
Do parking minimums restrict competition?
During the Unitary Plan submissions process, a number of retailers and shopping centre owners took a pretty conservative stance on transport. They argued for maintaining parking minimums, replacing maximums with minimums in some areas, and so on. Some argued that cars would always be the main way of getting to shops, and this should be written into the Unitary Plan.…
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