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Rethinking Parking by David Mepham

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Posted 2024-04-29

People PlacesBook Notes by John December

David Mepham delivers on his title's promise and then some: he helps the reader rethink parking with a toolbox of perspectives (his 5 P's of Parking), ten case studies, and an overview of parking as a topic of discussion. Mepham explains in his introduction that he intends his book to raise questions and spur thinking (p. 16), and so this book could serve as a textbook for a parking course, with its structure providing a framework for learning about parking concepts and applying them.

A parking textbook is significant, as parking before 2005 was an unspoken, arcane subject ruled by spurious reasoning, as Donald Shoup unraveled in his classic work, The High Cost of Free Parking (2005, 2011). Mepham's book comes at a time of rethinking the assumptions underlying transportation issues, as Susan Handy outlines in Shifting Gears (2023), and in rethinking the engineering profession in the book, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer (2021) by Charles Marohn. Along with Shoup's works, The High Cost of Free Parking (2005, 2011) and Parking and the City (2018), as well as the work of Richard W. Willson in Parking Reform Made Easy (2013), the Parking Reform Network, and recent books, Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It (2023) by Daniel Knowles and Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World (2023) by Henry Grabar, parking is finally a topic open to widespread discussion.

Mepham's central thesis is stated right on page 1, paragraph 1, sentences 1 and 2:

"Parking is one of the most significant and disruptive land uses in urban areas. However, we have tended to ignore parking as a planning and urban design issue, and as a consequence, we have typically degraded the places that provide it."

The chart on the bottom of page 2 shows the organization of the book's toolbox:


Source: Rethinking Parking (2024) by David Mepham. Routledge., page 2.

The chart summarizes parking by two ends of a spectrum shown at the top and bottom. A city or town can ask itself which option is best for its development:

The Perspectives

Then, we can examine our choice for either the A or B options in terms of the five perspectives:

  1. Place and parking.
    For millennia, cities have offered people access to places rich in resources, but over the past century, cities have been transformed to emphasize streets primarily for the movement and storage of automobiles.

  2. Parking is political.
    Discussions about parking need to examine the strong emotions and long-held assumptions about the car's large land use role in cities, including considering Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) and lo car/no car areas.

  3. Parking policy.
    Policy objectives could strengthen cities as equitable places for people to access life-supporting activities and resources if transportation and urban planning could rethink policies that privilege the ease of parking for drivers.

  4. The price of parking.
    When not set with transparency and thought, parking prices can hide hidden costs that non-drivers and the general public bear, devalue the quality of destinations, drive down the productivity of urban land, warp the transportation choices people make, and create zones where free, underpriced, or tolerated illegal parking introduces environmental, health, and economic risks to the community.

  5. Professional practice.
    Parking involves transportation and land use planning concepts that balance goals for access to quality places with the need for mobility and paths that get people to--but do not degrade the experience of--place. Mepham advises: "Parking on tap, not on top."
Each perspective chapter ends with a list of discussion topics and points. The chapters delve deep into the details of these perspectives, and an overview chart summarizes them:


Source: Rethinking Parking (2024) by David Mepham. Routledge., page 11.

The Case Studies

The author provides challenging case studies that illustrate cities' often complex and contentious struggle to cope with transportation and land use planning. A common thread among these case studies is how some cities seem to misuse or disrupt urban land use by ignoring parking and then make the same mistake over and over for decades.

  1. Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
    In the 1960s, Brisbane embarked on a transportation plan involving highway construction and expanding automobile access that removed human-scaled central business district streets and trams (streetcars) in favor of wider streets favoring automobile circulation. Predictably, more capacity for automobile travel brought more automobiles, putting a strain on congestion and increasing parking demand. Then, proposals for light rail were rejected, "not about the light rail as much as the concern about the impact on parking" (p. 214). The solution that they came up with was to spend $10 billion on the TransApex tunnel, bridge, and roads (that Mepham describes as a "nostalgic 'Futurama' vision" (p. 221)) to move automobiles more quickly and easily through the metropolitan area. There will be an opportunity to spend more on accommodating automobiles, as the Brisbane Times reported in 2022, 'Significant pressures': Report warns Brisbane traffic will get worse."

  2. Chicago, Illinois, USA.
    Chicago's terrible parking deal in 2008--when it undersold its street space by about $5 billion, serves as a lesson for other cities as well as a drag on its urbanism that will last most of the remainder of the 21st century, until 2083 (pp. 223-225). Chicago's faulty reasoning continues with lost opportunities by using transit-proximate land for parking (p. 224) and resisting the construction of housing at transit sites because the discourse enters an argument about "gentrification" using the logic that by not building housing, the city will keep gentrification away.

    Efforts for Complete Streets run up against resistance to the loss of curb parking (p. 228), and the "layer of complexity" (p. 229) of the bad parking deal, and thus, the efforts at Complete Streets keep bicyclists and pedestrians in danger and thus fall short of completion.

    A case study of North Halstead raises a term I have not seen before, Parking-Oriented Development (POD) (p. 229), and notes the consistent mismatch between parking demand and price. Mepaham concludes by observing that the "serious setback" of its poorly-made parking deal of 2008 continues to be a drag on the city (p. 231). Of course, cities all over the United States make the same mistake by providing free, underpriced, or tolerated illegal parking, which deprives the city of revenue its officials often claim to need.

  3. Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.
    The Gold Coast in Australia takes its name from a 70 km stretch of beach and consists of a string of seaside towns. David Mepham wrote his dissertation on Transitioning from Transit Oriented Development to Development Oriented Transit: a Case Study of the Gold Coast Light Rail Project. He observes that the overarching consideration for the Gold Coast is that it "has been influenced by mid-twentieth century North American beach and car culture" (p. 233). This deep cultural affinity permeates the landscape by shifting the best access points for the light rail, housing, and other features away from the best locations. Problems persist because of the "dedication of many hectares of priceless beachfront parkland to parking" (p. 235) and "a city that continues to prioritize waterfront land for low to no-cost parking" (p. 242). The historic CBD of Southport, caps off the author's coverage on a more hopeful note: Southport has seen more walkability and "a return to planning and urban design with people and place at its core" (p. 241).

  4. Los Angeles, California, USA.
    Los Angeles suffers from its characterization as having a "love/hate relationship with the car." (p. 244). This oversimplification hides something more complex: the profound realization that the region cannot continue to increase and induce more automobile traffic, not out of future fears, but knowledge of the present-day environmental damage and congestion costs. In contrast, Mepham highlights impressive results of reform (p. 244):
    1. The California State Legislature's 2022 reform eliminated mandated minimum parking requirements near transit.
    2. LA Express, the city's parking agency, works to use technology and Demand Responsive Pricing (DRP).
    3. Old Pasadena (discussed here and in Shoup (2005, 2011)) demonstrates a positive experience with Parking Benefits Districts (PBDs).
    4. The proposed North Hollywood TOD (NoHo TOD) slated for the North Hollywood station seeks to add housing and mixed-use proximate to transit.
    These accomplishments push back against the car's dominance. In the end, Mepham acknowledges these advances in LA but reserves his particular ire for "park and ride" programs that waste the value of transit-proximate land (p. 255).

  5. Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
    Melbourne, founded in 1851, months before the discovery of gold, gave the city time and money to develop an extensive rail and tram system. Melbourne's tram system is the largest globally and has been running continuously since 1885 (with new technology updates and new vehicles) (p. 257). This urban rail network set up Melbourne for the good bones of transit before automobile-dominated destruction, which started, as Mepham points out, with the auto clubs. A notable 1937 article (p. 258), titled "Kerb Parking Ban Opposed- Would drive away trade, says Royal Automobile Club of Victoria (R. A. C. V.)." (See also: Fighting Traffic (2008) by Peter Norton.)

    Mepham notes that this fixation against losing parking takes a modern form in the Plan Melbourne 2017-2050, which includes everything from 20-minute neighborhoods and advanced strategies for jobs, housing, and transport. What is missing from its 164 pages is only "the most significant land uses in the city. Parking sits at the juncture of transport and urban planning, but instead of two owners it has none, and is barely acknowledge in the plan." (p. 259). This latter statement exemplifies Mepham's observations in this book very well. In the end, he notes that Melbourne's efforts and complicated parking "solutions... come with great costs and risks to the community, with negligible benefits. Why?" (p. 270).

  6. Portland, Oregon, USA.
    Portland is a case study of the "freeway revolt" of the 1970's, where a local group formed Sensible Transportation Options for People (STOP) to end the car-centric post WWII destruction of its downtown and put more freeways on the horizon (p. 272). A 1972 City of Portland Downtown Plan made the case for an "urban transit system" (p. 272), and Portland did not look back but proceeded with MAX Light rail, metered parking, a streetcar system, the rollback of parking mandates, the Vision Zero Plan, Climate Action Plan, recognition of the Curb Zone as valuable space, a 2035 Comprehensive Plan, the Parking Management Plan, and Transportation Wallets for discounted transit for low-income households, Pricing Options for Equitable Mobility (POEM), and affordable housing plans (pp. 273--278). The sticking points have been "media-led controversy" over parking for affordable housing (p. 279) as well as "pushback from reactionary media and self-interest groups."

  7. San Francisco, California, USA.
    San Francisco, more compact and transit-oriented because of its density and setting on a peninsula, has been recognized for its parking reform and the lowest level of central city parking (4%) in the USA (p. 282). Famous for SFPark utilizing Demand-Responsive Pricing (DRP), San Francisco is also the originator of "Park(ing) Day" and Rebar (p. 282-283). Unbundled parking (p. 287) is a key component of efforts for affordable housing. Although Mepham does not cover it, San Francisco, like Portland, is the subject of considerable pushback, including the notorious "Urban Doom Loop" meme.

  8. Seattle, Washington, USA.
    Mepham's case study of Seattle focuses on its Capitol Hill neighborhood. Seattle Regional Transit serves the Pacific Northwestern city with many choices. The Alaskan Viaduct was removed (p. 294), and despite predictions of "Carmageddon" happening from removing the hulking elevated highway section, thriving land opened along the Seattle waterfront. On Capitol Hill, the Broadway and E John station anchors a Transit-Oriented Development (p. 300). The area is so desirable that people who can afford it bid up the rents of existing housing. Seattle has responded by increasing the housing supply with a second TOD at the Broadway-John station and a "Superblock" idea. The former is a concept to restrict automobile traffic within a grid of smaller streets (the superblock).

  9. Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
    Toronto, Canada's most populous city, also had a freeway revolt in its history--opposition to the Spadina Expressway in 1971 (p. 304) that touched off a refocusing of the region's transit options. Mepham praises Toronto for its "integrated transit/land-use solutions" (p. 304). Its transit attracts people "across the income spectrum" (p. 305). CreateTO (p. 307) specifically seeks to unlock about $2.5 billion of value from transit proximate properties (p. 307). Toronto suffered the crack-smoking mayor Rob Ford, who famously used the phrase "war on cars" as pushback for Toronto's policies.

  10. Vancouver, BC, Canada.
    Vancouver's situation in The Inside Passage showcases its exceptional setting and environmental policies (p. 314). Mepham highlights the planning culture "that extends to parking reform" (p. 322). In particular, he praises Vancouver's Transportation 2040 plan, which "locates parking reform as a pivotal urban planning issue." (p. 316). His conclusion ends the book with a beautiful final sentence: "Parking is emotional; people can be defensive and distrustful, and change is difficult--good consultation and building trust are critical to achieving meaningful change." (p. 322).

"Parking Matters," as Donald Shoup's hat says, and the case studies and perspectives in Rethinking Parking show precisely that. Mepham's book serves as a discussion map of the topics a new generation can use to tackle even more challenges of rethinking parking.

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2024-08-03 · John December · Terms © johndecember.com