The High Cost of Free ParkingThe High Cost of Free Parking

In this landmark treatise, Donald Shoup argues that free parking contributes to automobile dependence, urban sprawl, extravagant energy use, and a host of other problems. Off-street parking requirements intended to alleviate congestion end up distorting transportation choices, debasing urban design, damaging the economy, and degrading the environment. Ubiquitous free parking helps to explain why American motor vehicles now consume an eighth of the world's oil production. But it doesn't have to be this way. Shoup proposes new avenues to manage parking -- namely, charge fair market prices for curb parking, use the revenue to fund enhanced public services in the metered neighborhoods, and remove zoning requirements for off-street parking. Such measures, according to the UCLA planning professor with a PhD in economics from Yale, will make parking easier and driving less necessary. You'll never look at a parking spot the same way again. -- From publisher's description.