How to Evaluate Your Parking Policies

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

• How to establish achievable parking standards that support desired transportation and land-use objectives .
• Flexible approaches to encourage appropriate parking standards and multimodal development for commercial and institutional/campus land uses
• Data-driven modeling methods to evaluate parking policies against current and future on-the-ground conditions

MORE SESSION DETAILS

Examine federal and local agencies’ approaches to parking supply and demand and explore the need to develop quantifiable — but flexible and adjustable — systems to manage parking and influence mode choice. Two agencies in the National Capital Region evaluated their parking standards with a goal of providing flexible guidance that promotes multimodal options and better manages parking supply. The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC)establishes parking policies for federal installations and campuses to encourage sustainable, efficient development. Arlington County is a leader in transportation planning and demand-management programs. The Volpe National Transportation Systems Center conducted a study to evaluate NCPC’s longstanding parking policies that set geographically based maximums. The study reviewed U.S. parking policies, surveyed local parking policies, and explored diverse parking-management case studies. It also developed a robust and flexible transportation-system model to determine appropriate levels of parking and specific adjustment factors. Arlington County, Virginia, recently completed a commercial parking study that examined the consequences of reduced parking for office buildings and proposed methodologies for mitigating possible impacts. One outcome was adoption of a policy that outlines a flexible and consistent approach for developers proposing to build less parking than required by the zoning code. Bring lessons learned from these efforts to your community.