In Lieu of Required Parking

Abstract

Some cities allow developers to pay a fee in lieu of providing the parking spaces required by zoning ordinances, and use this revenue to finance public parking spaces to replace the private parking spaces the developers would have provided. This paper presents a survey of in-lieu programs in 46 cities in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Germany, and Iceland. These in-lieu programs reduce the cost of development, encourage shared parking, improve urban design, and support historic preservation. The in-lieu fees also reveal that the cost of complying with minimum parking requirements is more than four times the cost of the impact fees that cities levy for all other public purposes combined. The high cost of required parking suggests another promising in-lieu policy: allow developers to reduce parking demand rather than increase the parking supply. Examination of an Eco Pass program in California shows that reducing parking demand can cost far less than increasing the parking supply.