A Framework for Suburban Parking Analysis

The provision and pricing of parking are recognized as important tools for achieving transportation demand management (TDM) objectives. The literature on the topic is concentrated on parking in central business districts. This paper presents an analysis of suburban parking supply. We quantify the total number of spaces provided, the footprint required to accommodate the spaces and the employment to which the parking is providing access. We separate the totals by different land use categories and normalize the quantity of parking supplied by total employment to facilitate a comparison across different categories. We also normalize the supply of parking to control for the influence of retail employment on parking needs. We determine that employment is a somewhat weak indicator of parking supply, while weighted employment (considering retail effects) is a much stronger indicator. On average, very high and very low land use densities have the lowest parking requirements per employee while moderate land use densities have the least diversity of land use, yet the highest supply of employee parking. We use our results to provide quantitative targets for policy makers in managing the supply of suburban parking.