Via the peerless City Observatory, here’s a new report that measures the relative cost of downtown parking in US metros. (Note: I’m not sure if they used Minneapolis, Saint Paul, or both for this study…) You can see the chart here, with Minneapolis-Saint Paul highlighted: The report’s authors followed up the chart with an admittedly […]
I was in Lowertown the other day minding my own business when I saw a sign of the times. A pair of men were parking their SUV in the late afternoon on a street next to the Union Depot. “75 cents? Sure beats the f**k out of $10 bucks at the old place!” he said to his […]
Here’s a chart from Donald Shoup’s The High Cost of Free Parking, showing the difference between using parking pricing to maximize revenue (i.e. setting rates higher but having fewer cars occupy spots) and setting rates at “socially optimal occupancy”, where about 80% of parking spots are occupied at any given time. Check it out; it’s […]
Every large American city has parking requirements. New York has parking minimums. Portland has parking minimums. Even Houston, which stands alone in the United States by forgoing zoning laws altogether, has parking minimums. Houstonians can build a multifamily apartment building wherever they like, but they need 1.25 spaces for every studio unit, which is higher than Minneapolis’s […]
Portland, right? Is there a better city to compare ourselves to than Portland? I haven’t been there, but they seem good at things like biking, streetcars (maybe not?), putting birds on other things, and the like. So when a 2 year old story about how Portland re-upped their parking requirements started getting re-circulated, I figured someone should dig […]