Parking management for promoting sustainable transport in urban neighbourhoods. A review of existing policies and challenges from a German perspective

ABSTRACT

The organisation of parking is a key challenge to more sustainable mobility in urban areas, as its pricing and availability affect the rates of private car ownership and use. However, changing parking policies is a challenging issue for local politicians and planners because residents frequently oppose changes or restrictions to conditions they have taken for granted such as on-street parking in a public space. The aim of this paper is firstly to assess how the parking policy of an urban neighbourhood can be structured to contribute to more sustainable mobility and to increase liveability in the neighbourhood. The second aim is to apply the policies reviewed to an example neighbourhood. For this purpose, we systematically reviewed academic literature and identified five types of relevant parking policies: (i) maximum parking requirements, (ii) physical detachment of residence and parking space, (iii) residential parking permits and the limitation of available parking space, (iv) performance-based pricing and (v) parking as a demand management strategy. We discovered that most research focuses on econometric models about parking and that studies rarely address the effects of parking on the quality of life in neighbourhoods. Therefore, we need further research regarding the relationship of parking and liveability. We conclude that for the implementation of such parking policies in an example neighbourhood, the municipality needs to develop a mobility vision for its city. It has to understand parking as a tool for transportation demand management to increase the acceptance of parking policy concepts and to avoid spillover problems. Finally, in the German case, as in most other countries, states and municipalities need to redesign their legal frameworks to be able to manage parking supply better and to react to changes related to digital developments and parking. The findings have implications for other European neighbourhoods regarding the transfer from research to local circumstances and applications for the whole city.

KEYWORDS:

• Parking policy
• parking management
• residential parking
• Frankfurt
• sustainable mobility

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research for the project “QuartierMobil: Persistence and dynamics within the urban neighbourhood – Strategies for the future of urban mobility” under Grant number 01UR1702A. We would like to thank Jens Wöbbeking, Thomas Klinger and Sina Selzer for their critical comments, and Alison Hindley Chatterjee for the English language check.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Franziska Kirschner http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6500-7794

Martin Lanzendorf http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3465-7695

Notes

1 We understand carsharing as “short-term auto access” (Shaheen & Cohen, 2007, p. 81).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research for the project “QuartierMobil: Persistence and dynamics within the urban neighbourhood – Strategies for the future of urban mobility” under [grant number 01UR1702A].; Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung