The creation of parking spaces and buildings go together during construction projects because many people drive private automotive vehicles to get from one place to another. Unfortunately, the more land that people devote to parking spots, the less potential exists for the actual structures people enter. This is leading to problems in the US because a substantial amount of property sits mostly unused in the form of excess parking spots. We’ll address the question of “how much land do cities waste on parking?” to show how serious this issue is and offer a potential solution in the form of semi-automatic parking systems.
Parking To Household Ratios
The Research Institute of Housing America released a study in late 2018 that brought light to the parking problem, entitled “Quantified Parking: Comprehensive Parking Inventories for Five US Cities.” This report looked at satellite images, city records, and other data to determine just how much land was devoted to parking. The cities included New York, Seattle, Philadelphia, Des Moines, and Jackson, Wyoming to give perspective on areas with different population sizes.
The researchers discovered that out of these five cities, only the largest one—New York—had more households than parking spots. Philadelphia had 3.7 parking spaces per household, Seattle had about five, Des Moines had 19.4, and Jackson had 27.1. Simply put, the idea of insufficient parking is untrue. In fact, it may be better to reduce the amount of land that parking eats up to make more room for businesses, homes, and other practical structures.
The Severity of Land Waste
Several reasons contribute to this huge problem. One reason is many city governments pass laws requiring developers to create a certain number of parking spaces based on the square footage of the buildings they’re constructing. These regulations ignore the fact that not all buildings necessarily need a lot of parking spots. Some buildings would even benefit from having more land to expand their interiors. In addition to this, city drivers often compete for free or low-cost parking spaces. This leaves some lots and garages empty much of the time. For example, that same study found that one parking garage in Des Moines remained 92 percent empty during the day.
A Solution
It’s easy to see how much land cities generally waste on parking. In doing so, they also increase property prices and make living harder for many individuals. Some might still argue that reducing the number of parking spots can cause greater inconvenience for drivers, though. Luckily, there’s a solution that can satisfy both ends of the argument: semi-automatic parking systems. These systems consist of multiple moving platforms that can hold one vehicle each. They can rearrange the platforms up, down, and from side to side to double parking without requiring more lateral land. This is possible because they suspend half of their platforms above the ground. With semi-automatic parking systems such as those offered by Harding Steel, cities can maintain parking spot quantity while also reducing the land the parking covers. It’s a win-win scenario.