Repurposing the paving: The case of surplus residential parking in Davis, CA

Highlights

• We count cars parked on residential streets at peak hours of demand in Davis, CA.

• We estimate the streets' rates of parking occupation on weekdays.

• On average, only two of seven on-street parking spots are used during peak hours.

• Given pavement maintenance funding shortfalls, we discuss design solutions.

• Possible street redesign solutions include ADUs, bioswales, and traffic calming.

Abstract

The city of Davis, CA, has a rich history of high bicycling levels, and the city has ambitious transportation policies and goals. However, both the city of Davis and transportation scholars have overlooked the potential opportunities a surplus of on-street residential parking provides to cities. The existing literature on the influence of parking policy and provision has focused primarily on commercial districts and on large metropolises, neglecting parking in more purely residential areas. In this descriptive case study, we systematically observed the number of cars on a transect of residential streets in the early morning and late evening on weekdays to conservatively estimate the average peak parking demand by residents as a percentage of available parking spaces. On average, only 2 in 7 available parking spaces were occupied during peak hours. We note that the over-provision of on-street parking in residential neighborhoods could be a nexus for the city to achieve its sustainable transportation policy goals while addressing its fiscal and housing supply challenges. We discuss possible design solutions, including providing ecosystem services, implementing traffic calming measures, and creating accessory dwelling units.

Introduction

The small city of Davis, California (pop. 66,000) has a well-earned reputation as the bicycle capital of the United States (Buehler & Handy, 2008). Part of its success stems from extensive implementation of bicycle infrastructure: the city has over 50 miles of bicycle lanes and 50 miles of bicycle paths in its 10 mile². But the city sees room for further improvement, with expansive policy goals and plans to further promote sustainable transportation, including the state-mandated Complete Streets element of its General Plan transportation element (City of Davis, 2010, Cox, 2010). We find in this paper that Davis' residential parking situation is particularly ripe for reform.

Despite its important influences on land use patterns and mode use, parking has flown under the radar in Davis and other cities throughout the US. Residential parking in small towns in particular has been overlooked by both local planners and parking scholars (Guo & Schloeter, 2013), who have traditionally focused on residential and commercial parking in higher-density urban areas (Cervero, Adkins, & Sullivan, 2010; D. C. Shoup, 2016). The parking requirements that engender the oversupply of residential parking are notoriously based on thin to non-existent evidence (Shoup, 1997, Shoup, 1999), suggesting that evidence-based analysis could encourage a hard reset of municipal parking policies.

In this descriptive case study, we systematically count the number of cars parked on residential streets in Davis at peak parking hours, offering refinements to existing methodologies as well as contributing to the underdeveloped literature on residential on-street parking utilization. After reviewing the parking literature, we provide background on the city, its policies and the state policies for complete streets. We then present the results of our on-street parking survey, demonstrating substantial underutilization of this resource even at peak parking demand by residents. We conclude with a discussion of how underutilized residential streets could be repurposed to simultaneously achieve transportation policy goals and address several related urban challenges that Davis and other cities in California and the US are currently facing.