Minimum Parking Requirements and Porirua City

‘How to ruin social conversations, sprawl cities and induce driving’.

Porirua City: ‘Before’

Porirua City: ‘After’

General usage of the parking resource Parking type% of total stockMean usage midweek Mean usage weekend Publically owned35%~ 72%~35% Onsite business parking 65%~ 45%~35% 1.The resource has shifted from public to dispersed private ownership, reducing ability to manage and creating potential conflicts. 2.The resource is under utilised across time and therefore inefficiently allocated.

Weekly peak usage of the resource Parking typeNumber of lots that were ‘technically full’ at peak Average occupancy at peak Average ‘long stay’ occupancy of sites Onsite business parking 3 out of 22~ 60%~ 12% 1.Even at peak the resource (on the whole) is inefficiently allocated 2.Long stay users can ‘hide’ on sites and use up a large amount of capacity

Some reasons that minimums are not helpful in city centres

1. GFA and parking demand are not good bedfellows

Discourages walking Development type Peak occupancy at development Available parking within 200m (during peak) as percentage of total development supply Available ‘public parking’ within 200m as percentage of total development supply Bulk retail68%50%11% Recreation centre 71%100%27% Small retail81%100%33% Covered mall79%50%25%

Why walk/bike/PT when it is so cheap Trip type Mean distance round trip (Wellington region) Average variable cost of trip ($0.221/km) Length of parking stay Cost recovery price of parking for parking duration (range) Cost recovery parking price as a percentage of trip cost (range) Shopping trip13 km$2.902 hrs$ $2.6034% –90% Commute trip25 km$5.507 hrs$3.50 – $9.1064% - 165%

If long stay parking was priced how would this influence travel behaviour PARKING PRICE $3$6 WALK TIME (minutes) Park in the CBD and pay parking price 23%47%57%6%13%17% Park outside the CBD and walk 71%34%16%86%51%27% Change Mode 6%20%27%8%35%56%

The distance people are willing to walk for a free park

demand elasticity for parking price and walking distance Direct elasticity effectMeanStandard deviation Price Walk time People are more sensitive to walking than to price 2.If parking was charged at cost recovery a portion of the resource would be freed up for other uses. International literature suggests figures from -0.1 to -0.9 Booz and Hamilton suggest sliding scale relative to hours parked with 7+ hours up to -0.9

The trade offs of free and convenient parking Opportunity cost to development. 90% supplied under standard – Little empirical evidence that ample free parking is correlated with business vitality – Land is now scare Incompatible with multi-modalism and compact development Visual impact “ The more parking the less place the less parking the more place” Jane Holtz Kay