The Parking Minute

A minute of parking news and commentary

Autonomous Vehicles

We’ve got too much parking now and it’s about to get worse

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Many new luxury cars can already parallel park and car companies are working on more advanced parking assist technology. Tesla commercials portray a near future where drivers exit at the entrance to a parking facility and the car does the rest. 

Photo by Pathum Danthanarayana on Unsplash

Soon, some parking garages will be adapted with sensors or special paint to assist vehicles, using currently available technology, to stack up in garages, millimeters away from one another. As cars become more networked with one another, it’s easy to imagine 150 cars parking in a space that currently holds 50, with the cars shuffling out of one another’s way to allow one of their own to return to its owner.

At the same time, companies like Citifyd in Portland are developing systems that allow for under-ulitilized private parking to be more-easily made available to the public. City centers might see a rapid inflation in the effective supply of parking, undercutting efforts to reduce car trips to downtowns and business districts. 

Parking demand at airports, hotels, and entertainment destinations is already being reduced because of new ride share, ride hailing, and car share services. We could see a rapid shift in the economics of downtown parking with demand dropping as supply is increasing. Some lots and garages would be redeveloped, but much parking in city centers is under productive buildings, it’s here to stay for a long time.

This narrative should make any developer or development agency think twice about investing in new long-term parking assets. Operators of newer structures will be at a major disadvantage, due to debt service, when competing with older facilities. 

Transportation officials should consider the impact such a shift would have, parking prices at private garages could drop rapidly, including more driving in the short run. Entry-exit parking surcharges could discourage driving, particularly during peak hours.

Parking reformers should seize on this narrative when working to oppose new publicly funded parking structures and when arguing against existing parking requirements. Every new stall built is a bet against both these emerging technologies and against our efforts to combat climate change and congestion. We’ve probably already built more parking then we’ll actually need, and we definitely built more than we should have. 

Micrologistics: Please, take my stuff

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When you’re carrying your panniers after riding in the rain.

I read a post, What Autonomy Delivers, by Jonah Houston, and it lays out some scenarios for how autonomous technology could be applied to what I’m going to call micrologistics. 

Micrologistics is the activity of moving someone’s personal items around a city so they’re there when you need them and they’re safely stored when you don’t. Most people use their car for micrologistics. They can throw their stuff in the back seat or trunk and, usually, retrieve or swap items as needed.

Having a trunk is a luxury of driving that is difficult to replace. For those without a car, you gotta carry the stuff you need for your trip with you most or all of the time. 

If we expect people to stop driving so much, we need to provide micrologistical solutions. Cities might be able to help by facilitating staffed “bag checks” in commercial centers.  Portland has piloted this service for houseless people, why not provide it to everyone and let those with means pay for it?  And while we wait for the little robots that Jonah describes to move our stuff back home, some entrepreneurs might use lightweight freight (like electric cargo trikes) to let you send your bag to a storage unit closer to home where you can pick it up later.

Such services could support local businesses facing steep competition from Amazon and other logistics companies. Retailers demand ample parking because their customers need to haul things back home. Shopping in person and getting the goods delivered sometime later in the day is a model I don’t see much, but really appeals to me. Micrologistics can smooth the way for removal of street parking for transit priority lanes and scooter racks.

And maybe once people get used to not carrying all their stuff, they’ll become more comfortable with owning less stuff, too. Rental and sharing services can utilize the micrologistics networks to put lawn chairs under the butts of festival goers and camping gear into the trunks of intrepid families’ peer-to-peer car rentals.