Off‐Street Parking Policy without Parking Requirements: A Need for Market Fostering and Regulation

Abstract

This paper addresses and extends upon the recent upsurge of interest in market‐oriented reform of parking policy, which has been reinvigorated by the work of Donald Shoup. His market‐oriented approach to parking policy is shown to be the more ambitious of two distinct challenges to the conventional supply‐focused approach. The other is ‘parking management’. However, off‐street parking markets and their post‐reform dynamics have been neglected so far in proposals to deregulate the quantity of off‐street parking. The paper highlights additional barriers to the emergence of off‐street parking markets and several likely problems within them. Rather than suggesting the rejection of market‐oriented parking policy, these findings are taken to imply a need for a more vigorous policy effort than has so far been called for. Achieving well‐functioning off‐street parking markets would require efforts both to actively foster such markets and to regulate to ensure their health. Deregulation would not be enough.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to three anonymous referees for their insights and constructive suggestions. I would also like to thank Alan Altschuler, Eduardo Araral, Shreekanth Gupta, Benjamin Sovacool, Craig Townsend, Seetharam Kallidaikurichi and Sheila Koh for their helpful comments and suggestions. Thanks also to Rakhi Shankar, Anuwan Vongpichet, Jelita Md. Ariffin and Ngiam Shin Shin for research assistance. This research was supported by a Staff Research Support Scheme (SRSS) grant from the LKY School of Public Policy.