In Perth, the Motorcycle Riders Association is calling on the government to allow motorcycles and scooters to be able to park on public walkways in Perth city.

According to ABC online, they are calling for a trial policy similar to Melbourne, allowing motorcycles to park on footpaths and concrete public spaces, providing the vehicle is walked there, the vehicle is parked at least a motorcycle length away from buildings and the vehicle doesn't inhibit pedestrian access.

The MRAWA claims that the system would encourage motorcyclists to commute, which will ease traffic congestion especially at peak hour. In addition to this, they want extra free, all day parking locations to be scattered throughout the city.

Proposals are also under development for motorcycles and scooters to be permitted to use the emergency and bus lanes on Perth’s roads during peak periods.

The City of Perth, meanwhile, has ruled out any plans for footpath parking in the CBD, citing that 75,000 people walk into and around Perth’s CBD everyday; and that motorcycles parked in public spaces would cause obstruction to this free movement. Currently there is a report recommending an expansion and an additional 30 bays at the Mounts Bay Road parking lot due to go to council. If the report is approved, the Mounts Bay Road park will accommodate 102 motorcycles. 

Thanks to Paul Barter’s Reinventing Parking blog, we came across an article this week that explored how the minimum parking requirements in Los Angeles have had a negative impact on street life and force property owners to use their blocks of land highly inefficiently.

For us the clearest representation of how the minimum parking requirements affect the businesses property were a number of diagrams to designed illustrate this. From Mott Smith’s original article: 

A typical parcel of commercial land will be around 50 feet wide (15.24m) by 150 long (45.72m), or 7,500 square feet (just under 700m2) and is traditionally the perfect size for a small businessperson to build a shop and maybe even housing or office space above. Building right up to the front and side property lines would maximise land-use efficiency and pedestrian-friendliness is encouraged.

But onsite parking rules have made this sort of development nearly impossible. In Los Angeles, minimum parking requirements mandate four parking spaces for every 1,000 square feet of retail space. Using our example above, the largest store you could build on a typical property would be 3,000 square feet - less than half of what was possible before the parking requirements came into play.

For restaurants, the requirements are often even more stringent. In a city that requires 10 spaces per 1,000 square feet of restaurant, the largest building you could construct on a typical property would be 1,600 square feet - less than 25 percent of the potential build-out area before parking-requirements.

It’s a simple and easy to understand demonstration of why the minimum parking requirements in this instance are highly ineffective in stimulating demand. Paul Barter concludes his summation by answering his own question:

Is this relevant to your country? Yes! Don't let foolish parking policies destroy your older commercial districts like the United States did!

A council committee in Washington DC has approved a plan to allow city officials to manage the demand for parking spaces by adjusting parking prices, taking inspiration from San Francisco’s SFpark program.

Under the plan, city officials would be able to adjust parking meter rates, length and times of operations, parking fines and residential parking regulations. Called ‘performance parking,’ the program has been tested throughout the city in recent years. The Washington Post reports that the parking plan also directs that money raised by the program be used locally to improve bus services and to foster the use of alternative transportation.

According to the DCdot site, performance-based parking manages the demand for parking to achieve three key elements:

1. Protect resident parking: Higher kerbside parking meter rates combined with more stringent parking restrictions in residential neighbourhoods in the pilot areas help preserve kerbside parking for residents in areas where business or entertainment uses draw lots of visitors.

2. Protect businesses: Performance based meter rates and time limits are designed to encourage brief kerbside parking with high turnover while discouraging long-term parking that would deprive businesses of customers. Visitors with long-term parking requirements are encouraged by the higher meter rates to utilize off-street parking facilities.

3. Promote non-automotive transportation and reduce congestion: Higher kerbside meter rates encourage walking, biking and transit use in lieu of auto travel in congested places.

An online Russian newspaper ‘The Village’ has launched an app and a media campaign designed to try and stop illegal and inconsiderate parking.

Using the app on a mobile phone, the public take photos of the parking offenders, capturing photos of the car and the number plates. Image recognition technology then reads the number plates to identify the driver of the vehicle.

Then, the name of the driver, along with photos of their car, are published to the newspaper’s website, on banners and media placements; as well as allowing people to post the details to their own facbeook pages as well; naming and shaming the drivers; with a message ‘Share to remove’ (the poor parking).

It’s an interesting way of crowd-sourcing and social shaming for poor parking, and will be very interesting to see if it has any effect. We’re not too sure about the name for the application, however – the Parking Douche App. Find out more in the video below. 

Following our recent post on Eran Ben-Joseph’s book, ‘Rethinking a Lot’, The Guardian have also picked up on the story. They summarise some of Ben-Joseph’s key recommendations for improving parking lots to make them more ‘environmentally responsible’ and ‘aesthetically pleasing’ as follows:

Better design. Citing Miami’s car park as a prime example, drawing on great design principles would be able to restore cities and spaces to be proud of, and should add joy to the routine of driving, working and shopping.

Using new technology. A wide range of technological developments are constantly improving parking lots; from robotic car parks to parking guidance systems; pay and display to pay by mobile phone.

Reducing environmental impact. One of the key impacts of the parking lot is the heat generated by the asphalt surface of the lots, contributing to the "urban heat island" phenomenon which makes cities warmer than surrounding rural areas. A range of solutions are underway to harness this energy, from covering lots with solar panels, to developing reflective asphalt, to creating energy by heating water running in pipes beneath the lots.

Using the space above. Either through car parks built underneath existing buildings and developments; or the construction of multi-level car parks; the smaller land usage reduces their impact significantly.

Digging up car parks. Some activists are even determined to go one step further, digging up car parks and celebrating the ‘rebirth of a new greenspace’, creating permeable space instead of paved lots.

Putting some numbers around his research, Ben-Joseph claims that there are an estimated 800 million car parking spaces in the US - one for every car – and amounting to around 9,104 sq km of land space. Covering this whole area with solar panels could generate enough electricity to power 11 million households for a month. Alternatively, he claims that covering 50% of this area with trees could remove 1,260,805 tons of carbon dioxide per year. We are not sure where the cars would go instead!

Read more on The Guardian’s site here.

In New York, Citibank have announced that they are sponsoring and commercialising the bike share system. To be renamed Citi Bike, the system will be 100% privately funded with 600 stations and 10,000 bikes in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

According to TreeHugger, Citi Bike's pricing is listed as $95 for an annual pass, $25 for a 7-day pass, and $9.95 for 24-hour access. But the city of New York has plans to make sure the Citi Bikes are accessible to New Yorkers "of all income levels". A program is being developed, according to the web site, so that qualifying New Yorkers will be able to purchase a reduced annual membership for $60, payable in quarterly instalments.

It’s very interesting to see a commercial entity come on board to run the bike sharing scheme, as inherently they will be running it to set out to make a profit. However the scale of the investment and reach of the infrastructure is more likely to change behaviours than a small investment. Watch this space to see how it performs!

Sustainability and ‘green’ parking solutions have received a lot of attention in the media of late, with this blog in particular giving the cause solid support. And whilst sustainability has predominantly focused on the environmental aspects of maintenance and responsibility, it’s important to remember that long-term sustainability also encompasses other aspects: economic and social dimensions.

From an economic perspective, sustainability is about much more than green stamp on marketing materials; green investment decisions should have positive and lasting environmental effects without negatively impacting the bottom line.

A post we came across on the ‘Passport Parking’ blog this week talks about how much of the movement in the parking industry towards sustainability has focused on the ‘green’ aspect of the cause, whilst being financially and fiscally unsustainable. Passport Parking claim that the only way to continue to advance sustainability in the Parking industry is a grassroots movement toward sensible innovation that makes “going green” an easy decision for the Provider, through innovation that has long-term responsible environmental impacts while proving to be an easy implementation decision. Solutions that should be cash flow positive from the start.

Introducing Park4U: an iOS / Android app that delivers ‘assisted parking’ by remotely parking your car.

According to Engadget, the system is currently available on a limited number of Volkswagen-group models including the Touran, Sharan, Audi A6, Audi A7 and the Seat Alhambra. The company is planning to have 38 models equipped with the tech by year's end. See it in action below.

Colliers International, in conjunction with Parking & Traffic Consultants, have released a white paper into CBD car parks in Australia.

The paper, entitled Australian CBD Car Parking – The Next Decade, examines the current trends and the expected future of car parks in Australia. With the number of car spaces in Australian CBDs increasing only marginally from 141,690 in 2006 to 153,400 in 2011, car parking is a finite product, with the supply of car parking expected to moderate over the next decade.

A key finding of the report was that the ratio of car parking to CBD workers is declining, along with the importance of parking relative to other forms of transport. Since 2005, proximity to public transport has remained the most important driver in attracting and retaining staff by tenants when choosing an office location and has steadily increased in importance over time.

Real estate and property yields for well-established commercial car parks are generally slightly above commercial buildings in the same price range in comparable locations, with a slight risk premium factored in to allow for increased uncertainty surrounding changes to Government legislation, casual parking as a discretionary spend which generally diminished in times of economic uncertainty, and a smaller market for car parking assets.

Parking & Traffic Consultants' own Managing Partner, Cristina Lynn, was a co-author to the report. Cristina said that with changes to technology and the cost of car parking on the rise, owners had to become more innovative in the services they provide. The benefits of new technology coupled with greater awareness of customer’s needs should ensure on going profitability and value maximisation for car park owners.

Click here to view the full white paper.

A recent paper published by the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics has quantified an ongoing trend in Sydney – that drivers are driving less every year than the year before.

Since 2005, the average number of kilometres driver per year has been on the decline. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, in 1965, the average Sydney resident drove about 4000 kilometres a year. The figure advanced steadily past 6000 kilometres a year, by the late 1970s. By the mid-1990s, the average Sydney resident was driving 8000 kilometres a year. And by 2005, driving kilometres had crept up to about 8400 a quarter.

Since peaking in 2005, they have since slipped back to 1995 levels and are likely to stay for the next decade or so. The report shows that Sydney residents drive less than those in other capital cities. Residents in Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth drive closer to 10,000 kilometres a year.