Employer-paid parking is a form of matching grant whereby an employer offers to pay the cost of parking if employees are wiling to pay all the other costs of driving to work. In this paper we estimate how employer-paid parking increases the number of vehicle miles travelled to work, the energy...

This article reviews empirical studies of how employer-paid parking affects employees' travel choices. A strong effect is found: parking subsidies greatly increase solo driving.When employers reduce or remove parking subsidies, a significant number of solo drivers shift to carpools and/or...

A multinomial logit model of downtown Los Angeles commuters is used to assess the effect of employer-paid parking on mode choice and parking demand. Employer-paid parking significantly increases the probability that an employee will drive to work alone. The best performing models predict that...

Big universities are like small cities. They contain athletic facilities, concert halls, housing, hospitals, libraries, museums, offices, parking, restaurants, stores, theaters, and, of course, classrooms. Big universities also face urban transportation problems, and a few of them have pioneered...

Employer-paid parking is an invitation to drive to work alone. Thus, it increases traffic congestion, air pollution, and energy consumption. To deal with problems created by employer-paid parking, I propose a minor technical change in the Internal Revenue Code. The proposal is that employers who...

Here are reader questions answered by Donald Shoup, FAICP, author of the January 2006 Zoning Practice article "The Practice of Parking Requirements."

Employer-paid parking subsidizes about a third of all automobile travel in the United States, and about two-thirds of all automobile travel during the morning peak hours. To reduce traffic congestion and air pollution, California has recently enacted legislation requiring employers who subsidize...

The logic behind off-street parking requirements is simple: development increases the demand for parking, so cities require enough off-street spaces to satisfy this new demand. Off-street parking requirements thus ensure that cars will not spill over onto the neighborhood streets. This logic...