A report into inner city parking reforms has found that European cities are leading the way in the battle to coax people into using public transport instead of clogging up city streets with cars. The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) has revealed that cities which have implemented a host of innovative parking policies in recent years are now benefiting from improved air quality and better standards of urban life, all thanks to significant reductions in car use.
The new report is the second in a series of policy papers from ITDP on the subject of parking. While the first looked at successful parking practices in U.S. cities, the latest paper has turned the spotlight on Europe. It examines recent revisions in parking policies in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Barcelona, Copenhagen, London, Munich, Paris, Stockholm, Strasbourg and Zurich and has found that attempts to rid inner city public spaces and footpaths of vehicles have led to noticeable benefits for citizens.
The report states that: "the impacts of these new parking policies have been impressive: revitalized and thriving town centers; significant reductions in private car trips; reductions in air pollution; and generally improved quality of life."
Regulating car use
I remember that one of the most frequent topics discussed in an office with limited onsite parking was the lack of available spaces nearby. For many, even the thought of giving up the convenience of stepping out of the front door into a single occupancy vehicle and then being able to get out at the other end just outside of the office door left them with chills.
They would rather drive around for hours trying to find a space – and risk being late for work – than get on a bus, train or tram. In fact, the report states that such behavior is a major cause of traffic flow problems in the city.
It has been found that previous policies that offered more and more free parking for city visitors has led to the car being seen as the most convenient and affordable option available but in fact, such policies have only served to add to traffic woes. The implementation of practices like strictly limiting the number of available spaces for parking in a city or increasing the charges have been successful in driving people towards other means of getting from A to B.
Paris, for instance, has seen a 13 percent decrease in the number of people driving in the city thanks to a reduction in the number of spaces available and the imposition of rational on-street parking charging. At the same time, the city – like Amsterdam, Zurich and Strasbourg – has witnessed a significant rise in the use of public transport thanks to measures like setting limits on how much parking is made available in new developments, based on the surrounding public transport availability.
Greening the city
In addition to helping to revitalize inner city environments, the parking innovations also help to fund cleaner and greener transport infrastructures. Copenhagen has spent the last few decades removing numerous parking zones to pedestrianize large parts of the city. Some municipalities have started to vary parking charges based on the CO2 emission levels at the time a vehicle is parked, with cleaner vehicles paying less. All of the money generated from parking charges in Barcelona is invested in the city's public bike system.
Improved air quality hasn't been the only benefit of such regimes. Boroughs in London use funds generated from parking charges to allow senior citizens and the disabled to use public transport free of charge.
Future initiatives currently being tested include the use of GPS technology to optimize parking systems and vary charges according to specific location, time of day, day of the week and so on.
The authors hope that the report will serve to "inspire cities in other regions to try even bolder efforts to harness parking policy – an often overlooked and undervalued municipal policy lever – to achieve broader social goals."
The full report entitled Europe's Parking U-Turn: From Accommodation to Regulation can be read at the ITDP's website.
Also by using my own car, I decide when I go. apart from some major routes with very short times in between trains and bussses you can only every 15, 20 or even 30 minutes, which leads to wasted time. When using my own ccar I can often get leave one place at exactly the right time to get to the next place.
1. Just because you can\'t afford a car, don\'t punish us all by depriving us of the use of ours. Clean autos are not included in this particular master HSE plan. So even an electric car is not PC, apparently.
2. Offer a more attractive alternative to cars and the market will embrace it.
3. If you can\'t solve problem #2, why are you in charge of how we use ours?
4. We are forced to ride your filthy busses and wait half an hour next to a drunk getting rained on while waiting for the next one to come. Around your schedule, not ours. By what logic did you come to decide that this is better for us?
5. Removing parking spaces from downtown areas indeed reduces cars. Because people prefer to go elsewhere where they have personal freedom.
It is SIGNIFICANTLY healthier if you MOVE around and not SIT on your bum and stress out behind your wheel in high traffic. Siting on your behind cuts your life expectancy; moving around extends it. The sad fact though is that in America you will die twenty times more often in an accident as a cyclist because a car driver will kill you. It is only healthy to have cars removed from the cities for general public benefit. Notwithstanding foul-mouthing of \"hippies social engineering\". Cars are huge source of waste and degradation of quality of life and of limiting life choices for everybody, starting with fouling air and producing the bulk of CO2, noise pollution, crowding of public spaces, immediate physical danger to anybody, in particular to vulnerable groups like children, disabled and seniors, ...and just simply by urban sprawl and eating away from public greens and private gardens for another asphalt development area/huge parking lots. Public transportation does not work in America outside limited high density metropolitan areas to a considerable extend because of vested interests of the car industry. Keeping the individual transportation going is incredibly wasteful on resources and drains your personal income significantly while lowering your general quality of life by car dependency. There is no alternative. It was simply impossible to use public transportation from one small town south of Boston to another small town there down the same highway unless driving on commuter rail to Boston and taking Peter Pan long distance bus back. Having to travel three times the distance. The public transportation in America is broken and just plain bad because of consistently bad choices taken by politicians/fat car driving hamburger munching drive-through public (I cannot help this jab.) (the rail will not come back because of \"private property rights\" defended fiercely in courts and incited by car lobby; the same lobby in the past DESTROYED light rail option in every American city in systematic takeover by buying it out from the municipal government and then scrapping it - \"trashing\" competition. There goes your \"freedom of motion\". You have no other choice but run a car or become a part of a depraved system-exploited minority of car deniers.
As for the alternatives...well there exist bold proposals. Copy into google the following search term: TRANS transportation mb-soft and tell me what you think about that system. (If it is real as far as the underlying engineering....It is NOT real EXACTLY because of the \"social engineering\" problems associated with it you are complaining about that would need to be solved first. Imagine a high speed highly efficient transportation system ALL over the country, on demand and on your schedule, everywhere, for a fraction of current public transportation costs (let alone your car budget). This simply cannot happen. There are powerful interests to block it and smother it right at the start. Not lastly you would fight the same powerful lobby mentioned above. Or property owners whose real estates would decline in value due to universal cheap accessibility of alternative spaces. You would RADICALLY intrude/change the lifestyles of everybody in America. America with TRANS is a radically different America. Much more efficient, less vasteful and with MORE choices. Something like google in Egypt....but it is not going to happen. I wonder how technically well grounded the TRANS alternative is and invite knowledgeable people to fill me in on their opinions.
In Perth, Australia, the public transport is quite good. There are major train lines in and out in all directions. The trains are no greater than 20 mintues apart during the day and run 24 hours, going to hourly after 9pm. Guards travel on the trains after 7pm and they are not just ineffectual train staff in uniform, they have powers of arrest and assaulting a guard comes with prison time. There are three bus loops in the city that are free and the buses travel 5 minutes apart, all other buses within the \"free travel zone\" which covers the entire CBD, are free. To access all public transport you use a smart card that you can auto fill from your credit card and it automatically calculates the cheapest fare to pay. It is really good. By public transport it takes me 1hour 10 minutes to get to work from 80km (50miles) away and $12 return. By car it takes 1hour 30 minutes and costs $10 fuel at least $10 parking wear and tear on my vehicle. The trains and buses are clean and I feel perfectly secure. It does help that in Australia we don\'t go about the place stabbing and shooting each other for fun, we don\'t teach our kids to hate everyone who isn\'t identical to ourselves and we don\'t believe that sharing a vehicle is somehow an attack on our personal freedoms (after all, we can just pay more money and have a worse commute if we want). Many European cities are the same. And this Hippie Social Engineering works. That\'s what this article is about.
If you\'re hopeful that \"through manipulation of public spaces it it possible to alter and engineer cultural change\", it sounds like good Aussies wait for orders from their superiors before they can make a move.
But fortunately, those views are only held by a few spoiled youth of a great country built by very different individuals who took charge of their own lives. It\'s easy to be sanctimonius about a public transport system paid for by others, but it\'s a darn sight harder to ranch with your family in the outback and build a great country with your own two hands. Where the busses weren\'t running, but private vehicles were.
Before you arbitrarily decide to make us \"accept public transport and ... view cars and travel differently\" you might tell your subjects:
1. How you plan to get them to their homes or businesses
2. How much pedaling to get to Ayer\'s Rock
3. How much their travel times will increase and their productivity slow
4. Why cars and travel can\'t continue to improve as they have for a century
5. How much extra tax money your plan will cost them
6. Why you can\'t put a stop in front of their house, or the market