Donald Shoup
ACCESS goes digital.
After publishing paper copies since its founding in 1992, and also publishing online since 1998, ACCESS will become entirely digital starting with this issue. Changes in readership have led to this change in format. During the past year, ACCESS had 191,000 page views from 122,000 readers in 70 countries, so we are eliminating the cost of paper and following our readers to where we now find them.
Donald Shoup, Quan Yuan, Xin Jiang
Many low-income neighborhoods have two serious problems: overcrowded on-street parking and undersupplied public services. One policy can address both problems: charge for on-street parking to manage demand and use the resulting revenue to finance local public services.
Donald Shoup
This issue of ACCESS considers the most controversial topic in transportation: parking. When it comes to parking, rational people quickly become emotional, and staunch conservatives turn into ardent communists. Critical and analytic faculties seem to shift to a lower level when people think about parking. Some people strongly support market prices—except for parking. Some vehemently oppose subsidies—except for parking. Some abhor planning regulations—except for parking. Some insist on rigorous data collection and statistical tests—except for parking. This parking exceptionalism has impoverished discussions about parking policies. The authors in this issue have taken a more rational and rigorous approach.
Donald Shoup
Most drivers seem to think that charging for parking on a residential street is like charging children to play in a public park. But if on-street parking is crowded, drivers will congest traffic, pollute the air, and waste energy while they hunt for free parking like hawks circling for prey.
Donald Shoup
At the dawn of the automobile age, suppose Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller had hired you to devise policies to increase the demand for cars and gasoline. What planning regulations would make a car the obvious choice for most travel? First, segregate land uses (housing here, jobs there, shopping somewhere else) to increase travel demand. Second, limit density at every site to spread the city, further increasing travel demand. Third, require ample off-street parking everywhere, making cars the default way to travel.
Donald Shoup
Dear Readers,
As many of you know, ACCESS is a grant-funded publication. One of the things our funders look for is whether ACCESS is making transportation research accessible to a wide audience. Do we reach enough people? Do we help enact policy change? Do we help people better understand the transportation issues of today?
We think the best way to know whether we are achieving our goal is to ask our readers.
Donald Shoup
Cities regulate almost every aspect of both on- and off-street parking, and they employ legions of parking enforcement officers to ensure that drivers obey these regulations. If so much parking is formal, regulated, and policed, what then is informal parking?
Michael Cassidy, Robert Cervero, and Donald Shoup
For over two decades ACCESS Magazine has published short, engaging summaries of transportation research conducted at the University of California. We ask our authors to write for lay readers rather than solely for professional peers, without overestimating the readers’ familiarity with the subject or underestimating their intelligence.
Donald Shoup
Most people view parking meters as a necessary evil, or perhaps just evil. Meters can manage curb parking efficiently and provide public revenue, but they are a tough sell to voters. To change the politics of parking, cities can give price discounts at parking meters for their own residents.
Donald Shoup
In December 2010, the City Council of Berkeley, California, voted to give what they thought was a generous Christmas gift to the city’s merchants: free parking at all parking meters in the city. “There are a couple of messages going out here,” said councilmember Laurie Capitelli. “One is that we are inviting customers to our commercial districts. Two, we’re sending a message to our small businesses, saying ‘we are hearing your concerns, and we do want to respond to them.’”
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