The Changing Dynamic of Urban Parking

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Deloitte released a report in 2018 titled "The Future of Parking" and they forecast that by 2040 more than half the miles travelled in the US could occur in shared autonomous (self-diving) vehicles, which rarely need to park (though they need designated drop-off areas). Deloitte also found that younger generations are leading the way toward a pay-per-use mobility in place of owning a car. In fact, half of all US-based ride hailing users say that ride-sharing technology has caused them to question their need to own a car in the future. Most important to this discussion about Snider Plaza, Deloitte's report concluded that developers and municipalities need to consider changing technology and the future lack of demand for traditional parking. 

Numbers don’t lie, and over the last few years statistics have shown a significant drop in young people who own cars, as well as those with driver’s licenses–and that decline continues among the youngest millennials, meaning this is not a trend that’s going away anytime soon. From 2007 to 2011, the number of cars purchased by people aged 18 to 34, fell almost 30%, and according to a study from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, only 44% of teens obtain a driver’s license within the first year of becoming eligible and just half, 54% are licensed before turning 18. Another study by researchers at the University of Michigan confired that such trend does not just apply to driver-age teens because they found that the overall number of drivers 20-24 has shrunk from 91.8% in 1983 to 76.7% in 2014.  This is a major break with even the recent past, considering how most teens of the two previous generations would race to the DMV for their license or permit on the day of their 16th birthday. 

Across the United States, households with no car have become more common than five years ago, according to data recently released by the American Census Bureau. The increase is slight: 9.1% of American households didn’t have a car in 2015, compared to 8.9% in 2010, a 0.2% change that represents about 500,000 households. But the uptick is significant because it follows decades of decline in the number of car-less homes, since the Census started recording them in 1960, as car-centric planning increasingly made owning a car a necessity. 

In a report titled "2018 Emerging Trends in Parking," the International Parking Institute concluded: "The future everyone’s been talking about is closer than ever: The way we get around has shifted with the introduction of Uber, Lyft, convenient bike networks, and effective and pleasant mass-transit systems; transportation methods are interconnected and interdependent; and mobility choice is a big priority with a growing preference against driving alone." 

The researchers also asked their members an open-ended question about the most common parking operations, design, or management problems or mistakes that could have been avoided had competent parking expertise been used. The most common responses fell into broad categories, including - 

• Not keeping up with rapidly changing advances in technology. 
• Not looking at transportation, parking, and mobility as one large connected picture. 
• Not utilizing data to make decisions.
• Not having a parking expert involved in the beginning of project.

In a 2018 article, Fortune magazine reported internal data from major parking operators that confirmed a bleak revenue forecast due to the impact of ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft, in addition to other mobility-on-demand options. Notably, the article also said: "Much more is at stake than the revenues of the parking business – cities stand to benefit immensely as demand for parking drops. Parking spaces and lots generate relatively little tax revenue or economic activity relativeto commercial operations."