Parking 2.0

In How to Handle Parking and Parking in TOD (Transit Oriented Development) the Transit-Friendly Development newsletter nicely summarizes many state-of-the-art parking management principals. Don Shoup and Todd Litman, two of the brightest minds in parking today, are featured, along with a couple of other experts. While I agree with most of the article, I noticed one significant omission in the section on parking garage design. The article states:

Residents also believe that with structured parking there will be more traffic congestion. Actually, it has been shown that there is less congestion because people immediately go to the deck to park, rather than cruise through town looking for spaces.

While this makes intuitive sense, it only works if the parking is priced correctly. There are numerous examples of nearly empty parking garages adjacent to fully occupied, and highly congested, city streets - this occurs if the garage is priced higher than the street parking. To get drivers to move promptly into garages, rather than cruising to find a street space, the garage must be less expensive than the street, potentially by a large margin.

A new report of the US Department of Transportation entitled Advanced Parking Management Systems: A Cross-Cutting Study is available online in web and PDF format. I’ve just skimmed the report so far, and while I’ve noticed a number of inaccuracies, missing vendors, and missing projects, it still seems like a useful overview.

An article entitled Sustainable Parking Structure Will Have Santa Monica Motorists Seeing Green in the LookOut News describes a new parking structure with seemingly impecable environmental credentials. I’m certainly impressed by its features including “photovoltaic roof panels, a storm drain water treatment system, recycled construction materials and energy efficient mechanical systems”. As noted, this may be the nation’s first LEED certified garage - its about time!

I don’t mean to rain on the parade, but I’m less impressed with some other aspects of this project. For starters, the garage has “sweeping city and ocean views” - why in the world was it not built with residential and/or office space around the outside of the structure?! A garage with great views is a wasted opportunity. Santa Monica residents should hold their politicians accountable for wasting these valuable views on such a low-value use as parking.

The cost of the project also seems way too high - even after subtracting the $1.5mil solar system from the $29mil project cost, you are still left with a per parking space cost of over $31,000! Some underground garages, which typically incur the highest construction costs, are built for a per-space price less than that - and they leave the valuable airspace above for higher value development. It is unfortunate that this, the first LEED certified garage, will suggest to the parking industry that environmentally-friendly garages cost much more - I’m guessing that this project will actually do more harm than good when it comes to encouraging the parking garage industry to become more sustainable.

Also noted in the article is a $180mil plan to add 1,712 parking spaces to downtown. While I’m sure this number includes a lot of parking structure rehabilitation, and probably construction of non-parking components like the ground floor retail in this garage, $105,000 each to add parking spaces seems WAY too high a price to pay. I’d imagine that money could be much more effectively spent on Transportation Demand Management efforts to reduce parking demand, rather than on increasing parking supply.

Criticisms aside, I’m excited to see sustainable practices creeping into the parking industry, and I applaud Santa Monica for gathering the political will (and budget!) to make this important project a reality.

Both Boing Boing and Engadget note a pilot project in Raleigh, North Carolina. As described on the website of the firm that made the LED lighting fixtures:

Cree, Inc. and the the City of Raleigh installed Optimized Digital Lighting® lowbay fixtures designed by Lighting Science inside the Raleigh Municipal Building parking deck in December 2006. Progress Energy, Raleigh’s primary electric utility provider, says the floor equipped with LED lights uses over 40 percent less energy than the lighting system it replaced. Plus, according to Progress Energy’s research, the quality of light in the garage is greatly improved.

I can’t find anything in the publicity materials discussing pricing or ROI, so I’m not sure if larger-scale replacement of existing HID or fluorescent lighting with LED lighting in parking garages would be cost effective. However, the product literature does mention an intriguing Energy Savings Sharing Program, described on another web page:

Energy Savings Sharing ProgramSM which allows your organization to experience immediate energy savings by installing Optimized Digital Lighting solutions at no cost. The program pays for itself by sharing the monthly savings between your organization and Lighting Science over the life of the contract.

I recently had some interesting conversations with parking garage owners, managers, and developers regarding garage lighting and energy efficiency. A number of them indicated their belief that LED lighting, while more efficient than any other form, is unsuitable for parking garages due to various intensity and light “spread” issues. The trial installation in Raleigh seems to strongly suggest otherwise, and that LED lighting can actually improve parking garage light quality. Can any of you readers comment on your experience with, or knowledge of, LED lighting in parking garages?