(Disclosure: Summit Land Management is a Rose Law Group-related company, and contracted with the firm.)
By Paul Basha, Summit Land Management
Parking is an interesting topic, kind of like green lights. Seems that everyone else has a parking space, except us. (Seems like everyone else gets long green lights, except us.)
There are an estimated 300 million vehicles in the United States, plus another 8 million motorcycles. Not bad for a 2024 population of 400 million people, and 240 million licensed drivers. Though that means we have 68 million vehicles or motorcycles without people to drive them.
The number of vehicles in the United States has increased every year since 2013, though the percent increase year-to-year has varied widely. Yep, few car purchases during covid, with not much recovery yet. (2025 is estimated.)
Good news though, nationwide, we have 2 billion parking spaces, or 6 to 7 parking spaces for every vehicle. Phoenix has 4 parking spaces for every vehicle. Seems like enough, maybe much more than enough.
Though, apparently it is not. The average driver in the United States devotes 17 hours per year seeking a parking space, costing them $345 in loss time, fuel, and vehicle wear. Please do not try that in New York City – the average annual parking-space-seeking time there is 107 hours costing $2,243. Total national annual cost of parking-space-search is 73 billion dollars. Though evidently, people find parking spaces, as 95% of a vehicle’s time is spent parked.
Really? We buy cars so we can park them? For 159 hours and 36 minutes each week? The average price of a personal vehicle in 2025 is $50,080. We spend that much money on something we use only 8.4 hours weekly? Our priorities seem awry.
Speaking of costs, a typical ground-level parking space in the United States is $1,500 to $10,000. Above ground is $25,000 to $35,000 per space; and below ground is $35,000 to $50,000 per space. Metropolitan Phoenix is near the low end of those ranges.
Spending that much, we’d best know the correct number of parking spaces we need before we build them.
Less than 1% of New York City central city surface area is parking (excludes below ground and above ground parking area). Washington DC at 3%, San Francisco and Chicago each at 4%, Boston at 6%. At the other end of the scale is San Bernadino with 49%, Arlington at 42%, Lexington at 38%, and Wichita at 34%. Phoenix is at the low end at 10% of the surface area.
Pardon my judgment, people want to visit places where there’s not much parking. There’s more to see and do there. What would otherwise be used for parking, instead is used for exciting and beautiful buildings, events, and activities. People want parking spaces, though generally they are not the most fun places to be.
Sure, some people really like San Bernadino, nestled at the base of mountains and 60 miles from the ocean. I liked visiting Lexington last year. However, New York City, and the other four major cities with limited parking surface area, are very high on must-visit-lists for most of us in the US and the world.
There seems to be something contradictory and inherent with parking. People want to be in areas where there is inadequate parking, and people do not want to be in areas where there is a parking excess. Nobody dreams wistfully of walking through a sea of parking spaces – though we do so for sporting events and concerts. We desire walking in interesting retail and curio areas. Most visitors to Europe delight in walking around Paris, Florence, Venice, Rome, Edinburgh, Madrid, Lisbon, Athens, Hamburg, Stockholm, and such; and wish we had similar destinations here (quite difficult to find in Arizona). Parking and walkability are inconsistent.
Some experts believe that part of the reason for the housing shortage in metropolitan areas in the United States is that zoning ordinances require excessive parking, particularly for single-family and multi-family developments. Many zoning ordinances require parking spaces based upon bedroom number. Often that is necessary: two worker households, houses with driving-age children, or houses distant from jobs. Often parking-spaces-per-bedroom is excessive: houses where extra bedrooms are offices or entertainment rooms, houses with young children or only non-working adults, houses with excellent transit service, or houses where all businesses are within easy walking distance.
My daughter and son-in-law have 5 parking spaces at their single-family house, they only have 3 vehicles. Their 7, 4, and 1 year old sons hardly ever drive.
I personally have 2 parking spaces, one each at home and work, both of which, only I am legally allowed to use. (Except that during weekday evenings and weekends, other people can park in my work parking space. Generous guy that I am. Though it is almost always unused when I visit my office on weekday evenings or weekends.) So, my personal parking space occupancy is never above 50%. Not the best use of Earth’s precious resources.
Further, I can easily walk from my home to my office, and to three grocery stores, with slightly longer very pleasant walks to two additional grocery stores. Numerous excellent restaurants are within easy walking distance, plus cinemas, a large mall, even a hospital and several of my doctor offices, and for icing, a spring training baseball stadium. I really do not need the government to tell private developers to build extra parking spaces for me.
Land that could be used for more homes is government-required to have more parking area than the developers and the residents need. Different housing situations require different numbers of parking spaces. No perfect ratio of parking-spaces-per-bedroom or per-home exists.
Many experts suggest that the marketplace should decide the number of required parking spaces. Especially for rentals. If the properties do not have sufficient parking for the intended tenants, then people will not rent there. If the property has the correct parking space needs for the residents, then the rent fee will be appropriate. Same with for-sale products. If insufficient parking is provided, the houses will not sell, at least not with as much profit. If the home purchasers do not need excess parking area, and that area is otherwise available for landscaping, croquet or bocce courts, tennis or pickleball courts, pools, additional floor space or whatever, then the higher purchase price will more likely be acceptable. One of the many beauties of our system of government is that we are a very beneficial blend of pure capitalism and government regulation. We are at our worst when one extreme or the other controls.
Many cities in our country have reduced parking requirements, including Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Santa Monica, Austin, Minneapolis, Nashville, Alexandria, Buffalo, and New York City. Some even have parking maximum ordinances.
Most urbanized areas, certainly in metropolitan Phoenix, have more than sufficient parking when counted on an areawide basis, though inadequate parking on a highly localized basis. Mill Avenue in Tempe and Old Town in Scottsdale are historically very desirable. The downtown areas of Gilbert and Chandler are increasingly popular. Difficult to find parking in these four areas, though a few blocks away in each, there is plenty of parking. I’ve been told that you can always find a parking space in Gila Bend, Page, Seligman, or Kingman. Personally, I’ve never tried.
Hotels are typically in urbanized areas, where there are many choices for travel. In recent years, ride-sharing is a very realistic option.
Horse-and-carriage taxis began in 1605, rides-for-hire began in the early 1900’s, and the first ride-share patent was received in 2002. Uber was conceived in Paris in 2008, began in San Francisco in 2010, and operated in 6 US cities in 2011. Zimride, the predecessor of Lyft, (remember the mustache?) began in 2012.
In 2012, 2013, and 2014; there were not many ride-share rides, less than one-per-person-per-year in the United States. In 2015, in the US, there were slightly more than one-per-person-per-year.
In 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019; there were approximately 3, 4, 5, and 6 rides-per-person-per-year respectively. The COVID year of 2020 saw a decline to fewer than 5 rides-per-person-per-year. Though, recovered quickly to 6, 7, 8, and 10 rides-per-person-per-year; for years 2021 through 2024 respectively.
Frankly, these rides-per-person-per-year seem rather low. This appears to be one of those statistics where some people use the service extensively each year and most people never use the service. The value of the statistic is the proliferation of ride-share rides, from very few in 2012 to very many in 2024, with 2019 being the first year when ride-share became commonplace, followed by the two COVID disruption years.
Traffic engineers use the Parking Generation Manual, 6th Edition, to estimate parking demand. This manual provides previously obtained data of the number of parked vehicles by land use, from 1990 to 2023, excluding the covid years of 2020 and 2021. However, of the 25 hotels with parking data in the manual, only 2 were in the ride-share era. The other 23 data locations were before 2019. Therefore, the very high majority of the data that traffic engineers use to determine parking demand are from the years before ride-share became popular. Not good. Worse than not good: invalid.
Examining the pre and post ride-share data in the Parking Generation Manual, 6th Edition, there is a difference in parking demand with the presence of ride-share, even with only two data points.
Our office has counted occupied parking spaces in the past three years at hotels in metropolitan Phoenix. The maximum parking occupancy varied from 33% to 60% of the total available parking spaces. The location with the lowest maximum parking demand was in a highly urbanized area, with most places of interest a quick pleasant walk or a very short ride-share ride. The location with the highest maximum parking demand was in a very suburban, almost rural area, where the ride-share between airport and hotel was expensive, and all off-site guest trips were by their car. Similar results have been discovered by other traffic engineering consultants throughout the Valley and Country.
Of the existing hotels that we examined, 40% to 67% of the property is needlessly forced by the government to be parking spaces: asphalt that lays there, unnecessary and unusable. Again, poor use of our Earth’s precious resources. In all cases, this vast non-use of parking areas was confirmed by historic aerial photographs. (For one of these projects, after the proposed renovations were approved and I mentioned the project to a friend, she asked if that hotel was even open, because the parking area was always empty.)
As with residences, there is no one perfect ratio of parking-spaces-per-hotel-room. The parking need is determined by the type of hotel. Is it a vacation-dominant hotel with all services on-property? Is it a business-conference hotel where most guests stay on-property for all purposes? Is it a business luncheon hotel for locals? Is the hotel surrounded by adjacent activities such as restaurants, shops, museums, and such? Is the hotel a long distance from an airport? Do most guests drive to the hotel from their faraway homes? Does the hotel cater to destination weddings, destination birthday parties, bachelorette or bachelor parties, or similar celebrations? The hotel operator would know their required parking better than the government.
The required number of parking spaces for hotels in all our Valley of the Sun jurisdictions has always been substantially greater than necessary. And with high ride-share availability, for hotels in particular, the governmental requirements should be reduced.
So, your observation is correct. Far more parking spaces are provided for typical hotels than are needed. We should do better.
Curious about something traffic? Call or e-mail Paul at (480) 505-3931 and pbasha@summitlandmgmt.com.
