Skip to Content
Streetsblog USA home
Streetsblog USA home
Log In
Streetsblog

How Is a Parking Space Different From a Toilet?

10:28 AM EDT on June 10, 2010

112238400_82425abf91.jpgDon't plan for parking spaces the way you plan for these. (Photo: Admit One via Flickr)

Here's
the analogy of the day from the Streetsblog Network: Parking spaces are
like toilets -- at least for conventional planners.

That line comes from Reinventing Urban Transport, and while it's good for a laugh, it yields several important insights on closer examination.

Paul
Barter, the blog's author, has been thinking about the parallels
between parking spaces and toilets for several months now. Here are
some of the similarities that he notes:

    1. Both are treated as an essential ancillary service that every building will need.
    2. Itis usually assumed that no fee (or a token fee at most perhaps) will becharged. Remember, we are talking about the conventional approach toparking policy here. Some jurisdictions even ban fees for suchfacilities.
    3. There is thus little direct returnon the investments. So the private sector would under-provide themunless forced to. To the rescue come regulations in the form of parkingor toilet requirements in planning or building codes.

But
as Barter goes on to argue, planning for parking the way you do for
toilets is a fundamentally flawed approach. Here's how he starts
breaking it down:

    1. It is much more difficult to predict parking demand than to predicttoilet demand (which itself is not easy). The human need to expel wastechanges little (except when beer is consumed in large quantitiesperhaps). The demand for parking can change enormously over time as carownership changes and as mode choices shift.
    2. Everyone needs toilets. Only car users need parking. (But conventional parking policy assumes that 'car users' = 'everyone'.)
    3. Parkingtakes a lot more space than toilets. Forgive me for stating the obvioushere. It is common for American suburban office parks to be required tohave as much parking space as they have floor space for other uses.Buildings in Kuala Lumpur…or Bangkok often have a third or more oftheir floors devoted to parking. Parking standards often dramaticallylimit the density that is feasible on a site.

There's
a lot more to his original post, and Barter is looking for more
insights to help develop the idea -- which he finds has been quite
useful in presentations. Head on over to his site and offer your feedback.

More from around the network: The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia reports that the installation of 1,500 bike parking rings on old meter posts has begun. This is a stimulus-funded project. Bike Denton has the story on a $15 million grant for bike lanes in Austin, Texas. And The Transport Politic asks, whose turn is it to lead transport planning?

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog USA

Why We Care About Some Transportation Tragedies More Than Others

Why do we respond to major transportation disasters with so much urgency — and why don't we count our collective car crash epidemic among them?

March 28, 2024

The Toll of History: MTA Board Approves $15 Congestion Pricing Fee

New York City's first-in-the-nation congestion pricing tolls are one historic step closer to reality after Wednesday's 11-1 MTA board vote. Next step: all those pesky lawsuits.

March 28, 2024

Take Thursday’s Headlines Home, Country Roads

Heat Map reports on why rural Americans are resisting electric vehicles, and why it might not matter much for the climate.

March 28, 2024

Guest Commentary: Traffic Engineers Must Put Safety Over Driver Throughput

No other field would tolerate this level of death and destruction. The tragedy of West Portal is more evidence that the traffic engineering profession is fundamentally broken.

March 27, 2024
See all posts