01154866

Component

New York City policymakers are planning for a city of over 9 million residents by 2030, a large increase from today. A central goal of City officials is to accommodate this increase while simultaneously improving the City’s overall environmental performance, addressing externalities arising from traffic congestion and providing increased access to affordable housing. The requirement in the City’s zoning code that new residential construction be accompanied by a minimum number of off-street parking spaces, however, may conflict with this goal. Critics argue that parking requirements bundle the cost of unnecessary new parking with new housing, not only increasing the cost of housing, but also reducing the density at which it can be built. Facilitating car ownership by requiring parking may also lead to increases in auto-related externalities. In this research, we combine a theoretical discussion of parking requirements in New York City with a quantitative analysis of how they relate to transit and development opportunity. Using lot-level data and geographic information systems (GIS) the authors estimate two measures of the parking requirement for each lot and at a City, borough and neighborhood level. The results indicate that the per unit parking requirement is, on average, lower in areas near rail transit stations, consistent with the City’s development goals. However, the authors also find that the required number of spaces per square foot of land area is higher, on average, in these areas. This raises interesting questions about the role of parking requirements in determining the use of scarce land resources in transit-rich neighborhoods.

01147878

10-1644

English

2010

Transportation Research Board 89th Annual Meeting

DVD

Maps (2) ; References (31) ; Tables (3)

Geographic information systems; Off street parking; Parking; Rail transit stations; Residential location; Traffic congestion; Transit oriented development; Transportation policy

New York (New York)

Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Policy; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2010 Paper #10-1644

TRIS, TRB

Jan 25 2010 10:44AM