What are minimum parking requirements?

The problem with minimum
parking requirements
One
of the biggest concerns with MPR is that they waste a great deal of space by
applying a "one size fits all" solution to a complex and evolving
situation.
In
one European country, for example, theatres and cinemas were required to
provide one parking space for every three seats. This is a waste of valuable
land, as these venues are rarely fully occupied, plus a lot of visitors will
walk, cycle or take public transport instead, meaning at least half of the
parking spaces go constantly unused. City planners and developers can often
identify countless examples of wasted urban land due to MPR.
Alternatives to minimum parking
requirements
Increasing
urban populations are demanding more living space and MPR has led to the
creation of excess, poorly-distributed and under-utilized parking facilities in
many European cities. Some of these have taken steps to repurpose this valuable
land, e.g. Zurich and Hamburg were leaders in the revolution against minimum
parking requirements. Both have frozen the number of parking spaces in their
city centers, eliminating one on-street parking space for each new off-street
parking space.
The
Netherlands started addressing MPR in 1989 by classifying cities according to
the following three criteria:
- Excellent transit access and poor car access.
- Good transit access and good car access.
- Good car access and poor transit access.
Other
parking initiatives in European cities include:
- Government schemes for utilizing private parking areas for public use.
- Adjusting parking prices to manage or redistribute parking.
- Mandatory bicycle lanes and parking spaces.
- Avoiding large, centralized parking structures in favor of smaller, more space-efficient parking facilities.
The
demand for driving and parking will continue to be a challenge for decades to
come and the focus of all MPR alternatives is the more efficient use of land.
An example of this is by integrating parking solutions into less valuable or
otherwise unusable areas. Automated parking systems like those from Skyline
Parking are the key to space-efficient parking and an ideal way to solve the
issue of minimum parking requirements in Europe.
Contact us for more
information.
Reference: http://www.itdp.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Europes_Parking_U-Turn_ITDP.pdf
Deutsch / Espanol / Francais
Reference: http://www.itdp.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Europes_Parking_U-Turn_ITDP.pdf
Deutsch / Espanol / Francais