Utilizing Shared Parking to Mitigate Imbalanced Supply in a Dense Urban Neighborhood: Case Study in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Abstract

Excess off-street parking can have a range of impacts, including undesirable effects on housing costs, urban form, mode choice, and overall density. In urban residential areas, excess off-street parking can coexist with on-street parking congestion because of restrictions in parking access, nonmarket pricing, and other factors. This paper examines the potential for shared parking to address such an imbalance in parking supply by using a case study of the West End, a high-density residential neighborhood in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The West End’s residential parking permit (RPP) program has faced parking shortages and congestion, with on-street parking consistently reaching 90% occupancy. At the same time, off-street residential parking facilities in the neighborhood have occupancy rates consistently less than 50%. This analysis uses the inventory and occupancy data for off- and on-street parking stalls to investigate the impacts of making off-street stalls available to RPP users in a shared-parking program. Results showed that on-street parking congestion could be greatly reduced by introducing a relatively small number of off-street stalls from select residential buildings to the RPP program. Methods to unlock currently underutilized off-street parking supply are also discussed.