Donald C. Shoup

The High Cost of Free Parking

Off-street parking requirements are devastating American cities. So says the author in this no-holds-barred treatise on the way parking should be. Free parking, the author argues, has contributed to auto dependence, rapid urban sprawl, extravagant energy use, and a host of other problems. Planners mandate free parking to alleviate congestion, but end up distorting transportation choices, debasing urban design, damaging the economy, and degrading the environment. Ubiquitous free parking helps explain why our cities sprawl on a scale fit more for cars than for people, and why American motor vehicles now consume one-eighth of the world's total oil production. But it doesn't have to be this way. The author proposes new ways for cities to regulate parking, namely, charge fair market prices for curb parking, use the resulting revenue to pay for services in the neighborhoods that generate it, and remove zoning requirements for off-street parking.

Final Report

Cashing Out Employer-paid Parking

Free parking is the most common fringe benefit offered to workers in the U.S. Is it any wonder, then, that 91 percent of them drive to work--or that most of them drive solo? The cost of this parking subsidy is about 1 percent of the gross national product and four times the amount of funding for public transit. This report, a complement to Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking, shows how employers who offer their employees the option to cash out their parking subsidies can discourage solo driving and its attendant social, environmental, and infrastructure costs. It also suggests ways planners can bring this option to their communities.

Donald C. Shoup

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