01477949

Component

East River Plaza is a recently constructed mall in the East Harlem section of Manhattan. The development contains big box stores including Target, Costco, and Best Buy along with a 1,248 space parking garage. This paper evaluates the assumptions and methodology of the analysis determining the large parking supply, measures current parking usage, and determines modal splits through an intercept survey. The project’s Environmental Impact Statement assumed 67% to 68% of all trips arriving to East River Plaza would be by automobile. Parking accumulation was calculated using parking studies conducted at Home Depots in the Bronx, Queens, and Port Chester, NY and a Costco in Staten Island, all of which are less dense and have higher vehicle trip rates and vehicle ownership rates. These calculations resulted in a peak parking accumulation of 1,190 vehicles for a Saturday afternoon. Actual parking occupancy observations revealed only 371 vehicles (34% occupancy) on a Tuesday afternoon in late November, and 426 vehicles (39% occupancy) on a Saturday afternoon in December. The intercept survey revealed 48% and 37% of respondents arrived by foot and 27% and 33% drove on Tuesday and Saturday, respectively. Thus, the parking supplied has resulted in an underutilized land use and lost opportunity for additional development. Future big box developments in dense urban areas should not use suburban models for auto trip generation and parking accumulation and instead consider the provision of trips being made by walking and public transportation, reducing the need for unnecessary parking.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABE50 Transportation Demand Management.

01470560

13-5303

English

15p

2013

Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Automobile ownership; Parking demand; Parking facilities; Pedestrian areas; Population density; Suburbs; Trip generation

Manhattan (New York, New York)

Highways; Planning and Forecasting; I21: Planning of Transport Infrastructure

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2013 Paper #13-5303

PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Feb 5 2013 1:00PM