Parking, free or otherwise

posted Sep 21, 2017

Some of the discussion this week around the gondola and projects before the Albany planning board have ended up touching on parking. Because it always come back to parking.

So we thought you might find this Vox video interesting. It's basically a quick overview of the thoughts of Donald Shoup -- UCLA urban planning professor, author of The High Cost of Free Parking, and the patron saint of parking skeptics. It touches on the history of parking, pricing of street parking, and the requirements for off-street parking that municipalities fold into their zoning.

If you're curious, the parking requirements under Albany's new zoning code are in this pdf on p. 170. It's important to note that developers can get the requirements relaxed by doing things like siting a project near transit or including affordable housing.

Buffalo got some national attention recently because it got rid of parking minimums when it overhauled its zoning.

tags: parking, transportation, urban planning

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For a decade All Over Albany was a place for interested and interesting people in New York's Capital Region. It was kind of like having a smart, savvy friend who could help you find out what's up. AOA stopped publishing at the end of 2018.

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