About me
The Future of Urban Paid Parking: Learning from Davis's Seven Year Debate - In an era of urgent climate action and housing crises across California, parking policy has emerged as a powerful lever for transforming cities. While parking pricing is widely recognized by transportation experts as an effective tool for managing urban space and reducing vehicle emissions, implementing such policies remains politically challenging.
My research investigates a revealing case study: the protracted seven-year debate over a 2013 proposal to implement paid downtown parking in Davis, California. Why did Davis’s paid parking initiative fail despite strong evidence supporting its benefits? And what policy design and political strategy lessons can we learn from this case to make paid parking policy implementation more feasible in other medium-sized cities?
The stakes of resolving parking policy deadlocks extend far beyond local politics. Unpriced on-street parking in high demand areas creates a cascade of significant negative externalities: drivers waste time circling, traffic and pollution increases, and drivers are disincentivized from shifting travel modes. Local governments often respond to perceived parking scarcity by imposing parking minimums on new developments – a policy that directly conflicts with California’s goals for increasing housing supply, reducing vehicle miles traveled, and achieving carbon neutrality by 2045.
This study yields actionable recommendations for other suburban California cities like Davis seeking to implement parking pricing programs. My research findings provide a roadmap for local governments to increase the efficiency of their transportation systems, ensure accessibility for those with mobility needs, and advance California’s broader climate/housing objectives while navigating the complex dynamics that often derail initiatives to price parking.
