This Friday: Convert a Car Parking Space Into a Mini-Park With Me in Downtown Sacramento

Eric Fredericks • Monday September 17, 2007

Yes, that’s right. A group of us are going to be converting a car parking space into a mini-park, complete with sod and a parking bench. Local eco-urban developer LJ Urban beautifully described the event on their blog:

Ever wish for a world with more parks and fewer parking lots?

This Friday, September 21st, on J Street between 13th and 14th in one small 22 × 7 foot metered parking spot, you’ll find just that.

Imagine it. Car. Car. Car. Park. Car. Car. Car. This is just way too much fun.

Better yet. Come out and see for yourself. We’ll be there (most of the time). You’ll find us sitting on a large boulder dreaming big. Maybe you can sit a spell yourself. Play some chess. Listen to a live musician. And think about what its going to take to make this city better.

Its National Park(ing) Day 2007. Sacramento-style.

Brought to you by a dedicated group of eco-urbanists: artists, planners, bicyclists, landscape designers, photographers, bloggers…and a developer.

We still need volunteers to help us set up, tear down, and man the park in brief shifts during the day. We would also like talented musicians and artists to stop by the park and show off their skills. We could use your help spreading the word as well. We want as many people as possible to experience or hear about the event. So please, blog, e-mail, sing about the event—whatever it takes to get the word out. Most importantly: stop by and say hello!

If you’re interested in participating, please join our Google Group or contact me.

Also, there are many Park(ing) Day events happening in dozens of other cities this Friday, so stop by the TPL website to see if there’s an event happening in your community.

 

Category: Parking •• Region: Sacramento •• comments

The High Cost of Free Parking

Eric Fredericks • Friday April 6, 2007

Donald Shoup, a professor of Urban Planning at UCLA, is known as a parking guru. He argues that parking is never really “free” and it has hidden societal and real costs that everyone ends up paying for in the long run. He has been everywhere lately and I wanted to highlight some fantastic resources where you can get more information. While parking sounds like a completely boring topic, his arguments are quite compelling and perhaps eye-opening for first time viewers.

The first place you should start is his book – The High Cost of Free Parking. I have not read it myself, but have heard that it’s a very good book.

I had the opportunity to see Mr. Shoup speak at the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference in Los Angeles in February. His presentation was outstanding, and he made it quite funny as well. Recently, the conference organizers placed all of the presentations online. I highly recommend taking a look at the presentation (Look under the title “Getting the Parking Right” – it’s an 8mb file).

Mr. Shoup also wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times a few days ago. The article had some interesting points, including this point that really stood out for me:

When my students and I studied cruising for parking in a 15-block business district in Los Angeles, we found the average cruising time was 3.3 minutes, and the average cruising distance half a mile (about 2.5 times around the block). This may not sound like much, but with 470 parking meters in the district, and a turnover rate for curb parking of 17 cars per space per day, 8,000 cars park at the curb each weekday. Even a small amount of cruising time for each car adds up to a lot of traffic.

Over the course of a year, the search for curb parking in this 15-block district created about 950,000 excess vehicle miles of travel — equivalent to 38 trips around the earth, or four trips to the moon. And here’s another inconvenient truth about underpriced curb parking: cruising those 950,000 miles wastes 47,000 gallons of gas and produces 730 tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. If all this happens in one small business district, imagine the cumulative effect of all cruising in the United States.

While this article is no longer available for free viewing on the New York Times website, you can view the article on the CNU website.

Finally, Streetsfilms recently conducted an interview with Donald Shoup. You can watch that video below.

 

Category: Parking •• Region: General •• comments

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