Out of all the stupid regulations floating around the world, minimum parking requirements shit me the most. The basic idea is that new developments should include an adequate amount of parking, which seems simple enough. Unsurprisingly, the reality is somewhat more complex. Parking minimums are decided based on precise but wildly inaccurate methodology, with plenty of built in assumptions about what transport should look like. The result is sprawl and insidious feedback loops.
Progress on eliminating parking minimums has been slow, so it’s always heartening to see news stories like this:
The legal number of spaces per dwelling could be cut from two to zero in dozens of activity zones to accommodate Melbourne’s booming population.
And the carpark requirement is set to be halved in many residential, entertainment and business centres outside those zones.
Fingers crossed. Further down the article is a tidbit that adds more weight (as if it were needed) to the all-politicians-are-full-of-shit thesis. The proposal was finalised by the previous Labor government, but now that they are opposition it seems that their own (great) idea would now lead to “parking chaos”. The horror.
For the single best overview of the effects of bad parking regulations get amongst Donald Shoup’s The High Cost of Free Parking.
UPDATE: I totally forgot about the Exo building in The Docklands, a 12 story building that has 8(!) stories of parking. If anyone knows anything about why this building has such an absurd amount of parking please leave a note in the comments.
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