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Parking is not a key urban function, like housing, employment, education, shopping, culture, or recreation, but rather an expensive appendage to these functions. The cost of supplying the required parking capacities has a significant impact on the costs of these functions. As parking absorbs an inordinate amount of our land and building resources, we have to adopt strategies to maximize the efficiency of parking facilities and prevent them from blighting our urban or suburban environments and impeding pedestrian-friendliness and land-use efficiency.
Why Shared Parking?
Shared parking is a strategy that allows us to optimize the use of our parking resources and reduce the overall supply of parking needed. This strategy has become more common as we see more mixed-use projects coming on line. Shared parking takes advantage of the fact that the parking demands of our various urban uses do not always overlap or peak at the same time. However, shared parking is not well understood, and many municipal officials are unsure on how to deal with it. Since the savings in decreasing the required parking supply can be substantial, it is important to develop a methodology that quantifies the benefits in a reasonably accurate manner.
In the presence of parking garages, the benefits of shared parking translate rapidly into very substantial financial savings. A 15-20 percent reduction in garage spaces that cost in the order of $30,000 per space can save enough money to significantly affect the rental or leasing prices. Shared parking can therefore become a tool to mitigate the ever-increasing cost of real estate. Part of the financial savings gained from shared parking can be used to enhance the appearance, comfort, and security of the garage.
The aerial photo in Figure 1 shows a commercial center with a mix of offices, medical offices, restaurants, retail stores, day-care center, fitness center, and hotel, built in the 1980s. Even at full occupancy, the center has about 40 percent of its parking spaces vacant during the peak activity period. This substantial excess of parking supply is largely due to the fact that when it was originally approved, and also in subsequent use changes, the parking requirements were cumulated as per traditional zoning, without any credit for shared parking.
Simple Way of Calculating Shared Parking Benefits