New Zealand Radio featured Julie Anne Genter, a transportation planner with McCormick Rankin Cagney consultants, talking about the high cost of free parking, on November 13. You may recognize some of the concepts from Shoup, but there is some interesting NZ spin.
Genter says in most towns and cities in NZ, parking is 25-35% of the land, and even on the busiest days 50% of parking is not being used. Genter explains that this is because there are as many as 4 parking spaces for every car in New Zealand, so at any given time there are 3 empty spaces for every space that is being used. Consequently, she says that the indirect cost of parking space is spread throughout New Zealand's economy in the form of higher rent, higher housing prices, and higher costs for goods and services.
The solution, says Genter, is to not require developers to include parking as a prerequisite with every development, and ultimately create an environment that allows motorists to pay directly for parking or choose alternatives - rather than building parking into the cost of everything.
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