Paying for your parking via an app promises ease and efficiency. But we are entering a bargain with unclear terms around data privacy and public revenue.
US cities are starting to reform laws that required developers to provide minimum amounts of parking. But there’s more they can do to loosen the auto’s grip on downtowns.
A driver charges his electric car at a Tesla Supercharger station in Miami, Fla. In areas where multi-unit residential buildings cannot adopt EV charging infrastructure, public vehicle charging stations are crucial.
(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Canada’s zero-emissions vehicle sales target will need hundreds of thousands of EV charging points to be installed in homes, workplaces, retail spaces and along highway corridors in the coming years.
The typical car is parked 95% of the time.
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As many cities grapple with the housing crisis, some places are rewriting regulations and finding creative ways to repurpose these hulking masses of concrete that suck up valuable real estate.
Surface parking in downtown San Jose, California.
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When Buffalo, New York, changed its zoning code so that developers no longer had to provide specified amounts of parking, space was freed up for public transit and people.
Roadsides have long been reserved for parking cars, but the pandemic led to many experiments with other ways of using scarce and valuable public space. We can put it to better and more flexible uses.
What does a future full of AVs mean for all the spaces reserved for downtown parking?
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The global trend is to free up valuable city space by reducing parking and promoting other forms of transport that don’t clog roads and pollute the air. Australian cities are still putting cars first.
Taxis have traditionally competed for kerbside space in our cities, but they now have many new competitors.
Neil Sipe
Australian cities have a glut of parking, even as politicians move to protect parking spaces or promise even more. There are better ways to keep congestion manageable and our cities liveable.
With more than a million Australians using public transport to get to work each day, demand for car parking at the station is virtually insatiable.
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The Commuter Car Park Fund announced in the budget sounds big, but is likely to create only around 30,000 extra spaces – a marginal benefit for Australia’s 1.2 million daily public transport users.
An increase in the use of self-driving cars will change parking requirements in the city.
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An increase in the use of self-driving cars will change parking infrastructure in cities, and hopefully result in more colourful character neighbourhoods.
Nottingham sees the benefits.
Peter James Sampson/Shutterstock.
The workplace parking levy is a simple idea, but tricky to implement.
If cyclist-friendly cities like Copenhagen can offer abundant and conveniently sited parking space for bikes, why not Australian cities?
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If cities had backed their active transport goals with investment in adequate cycling infrastructure we might not be having the arguments about dockless bikes ‘littering’ public space.
A parking attendant strolls through a rooftop car park in Melbourne.
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Looking back through all Melbourne’s strategic plans from 1929 onwards, it becomes clear that the 20th-century legacy of car-centric planning and its focus on parking is still deeply entrenched.
We are told driverless cars will be much safer, because human error causes more than 90% of crashes.
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Human-operated cars affect health in three main ways, all negatively. How might driverless cars be healthier?
Lots of parking: the extraordinary amount of valuable land used to park cars in most cities could soon be freed up for other uses.
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Cities around the world are starting to rethink the vast areas of land set aside for parking. The convergence of several trends likely will mean this space becomes available for other uses.