Car Parking- No longer Be-all and End all

For many decades, it has been a given that if you’re building housing, then you had better make sure that there is lots of parking, if you want it to sell. Suburban housing developments have had parking provisions imposed as a requirement to try and keep the streets free, and any new city center apartment development would have the mandatory basement parking included as a pre-requisite.

Indeed in city centers, regardless of the quality of the local public transportation system or the proximity of local amenities, residents street parking schemes were de-rigor and large swathes of the available street parking were set aside for the exclusive use of local residents, who most likely were able to access a resident’s parking permit at or below the cost of providing the facility. These schemes make no financial sense and had little to recommend them in transport policy terms but the user was also the voter and it would be a very brave, and one suspects a short-lived, politician who sought to kick them into touch.

Joining the Car Club

As we move into the second decade of the 21st century however it seems that the world is finally changing. The idea of car clubs has been around for decades. The idea is that rather than own a car individually, residents join a car share scheme which gives them access to a pool of cars to use as and when they need a car (remember that most cars are immobile 23 hours a day) paying for their use on a pay as you go basis.

Early schemes such as the WITKAR project in the Netherlands failed basically because the organizers hadn’t got the logistics sorted, meaning that the cars ended up being in the wrong place at the wrong time and subscribers couldn’t access the system when they wanted to. Now, however, the idea seems to be undergoing a renaissance. London has four car clubs and these are already merging to form two larger groups with the attendant benefits of improved accessibility for their members. The systems have spread way beyond the capital and at least 14 other UK cities now have fully functional car club schemes.

The concept makes sense in pounds and pence for the users, with estimates suggesting that the average user will save about £2,000 a year compared with owning a car privately. Councils are also doing their bit providing special “car club” only parking bays. And offering special parking deals. This makes economic and practical sense in a city center where residents’ parking is usually over-subscribed.

Recent surveys in London have showed that between 2003 and 2008 car ownership has started to fall and public transport usage has increased. It’s not that people are travelling less; they are using public transport more. There could be many complex explanations for this. The central London congestion charge has directly increased car costs there and complementary upgrades in public transport has meant that marginal car users may have been persuaded to give up their cars. But the trend seems to be more widespread with the National Travel survey showing that during this period car ownership for private dwellings fell by 7%.

Parking No Longer Be-all and End-all

Something interesting is also happening in the property market. Having a car space has a major effect on the cost of an apartment. A small two-bedroom place might have 60-70 sq m of floor space. Adding a parking slot could increase the floor space and hence the cost by a third, especially when one realizes that the parking would be relatively expensive underground space.
A decade ago when developers were being encouraged to build car free housing developments the idea was almost unsalable. City Centre boroughs wanted to promote new apartment developments without parking and where the tenants actually signed up to not owning a car. The planning arguments were clear but apart from the questionable legality of requiring people to sign away their “God-given” right to own a car there was the practical question of actually making such a scheme work when there were actually no powers to enforce the covenant.

Now, however, it seems that parking is no longer the be-all and end-all that it used to be. Increasingly, new city Centre developments are being built with limited or no parking and this isn’t just low value properties. Recently a major development in Liverpool with 360 plus apartments costing up to half a million pounds was built with a dedicated underground private parking facility. When the developer started to market the facility, they were surprised to find that although the interest in the apartments was high, there were no takers for the parking facilities and eventually they were forced to re-launch the car park as a public facility.

It’s not all one way, and in the “high rent” areas parking slots still change hands for the cost of a small house. However, it does seem that there is at least some anecdotal evidence that our long-term love affair with the car, if not over, is at least beginning to cool down.

Article Source: http://www.parkingworld.com/articledetails.php?id=101