Chapter 3 Current Conditions of Curb Parking in Taipei
3.1 Review of Curb Parking Standards
Chapter 3 Current Conditions of Curb Parking in Taipei
When talking about parking planning, transportation concerns such as parking shortage often override the attention on land use efficiency. Though it is natural to incline to such a view as parking is an important intermediate goods for transportation activities, the fact that parking spaces take up a substantial amount of land cannot be overly emphasized.
Transportation concerns lead planners to think that parking is a problem simply when there is a lack of it. But too many empty curb spaces are also a problem — it increases vacant lands, obstructs urban development, reduces tax revenue, and degrades social welfare.
Therefore, the land perspective is equally important in the parking planning.
3.1 Review of Curb Parking Standards
3.1.1 Parking Policy in the Last Decade
In Taipei City, under the premise of returning the road to allow vehicle conveyance, on-street parking is an expedient measure to make up for the deficiency of off-on-street parking.
The Department of Transportation of Taipei City has clearly stated that curb parking planning is a product of transportation factors and public safety concerns. It includes the considerations such as road types, road widths, road service levels, local parking supply and demand, and disaster relief. Therefore, the growth rate of curb spaces has stayed moderately between 2 to 4 percent in the last decade.
Since 2009, the primary goal of parking planning has been to increase the parking turnover.
One approach proposed by the government is to expand the coverage of parking fees. The
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problems such as parking shortage and illegal parking by pricing. A parking survey in 2009 reported that 33 percent of the parking demand in six southern districts1 of Taipei is illegal parking. Meanwhile, the parking shortage is particularly severe in Wenshan district. The total quantity supplied of parking spaces served only 78 percent of the potential parking demand in this old residential district.
Over the last ten years, the severity of parking shortage has gradually been relieved. As shown in Table 3.1, the number of parking spaces (i.e., both the on-street and off-street parking) has increased by 37 percent ((749,909 − 543,794) ÷ 543,794 × 100%) while the number of licensed automobiles has risen by only 13 percent ((810,179 − 717,624) ÷ 717,624 × 100% ). Parking spaces in Taipei City were able to serve 93 percent (749,909 ÷ 810,170 × 100%) of automobiles in 2017, and 1.08 cars shared one parking space on average (see row 12). Nevertheless, since many old condos in Taipei City fall short of attached parking garages, the city still failed to eradicate the problem of holdover for curb spaces. The percentage of cars with its private parking space is meager over the last decade. Even in 2017, there was still about 31 percent (100% − 68.85%) of licensed automobiles with no private parking.
1 Six southern districts refer to Wanhua, Daan, Sinyi, Nangang, Zhongzheng, and Wenshan districts.
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Table 3.1 Parking Statistics Over the Last Decade
Year
Source: Department of Transportation, Taipei City Government.
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3.1.2 Taipei City Ten-Year Parking Plan
In July 2015, Taipei City government released Taipei City Ten-Year Parking Plan (臺北 市十年停車計畫) to tackle the phenomenon of long holdover and to return curb spaces to the public. Urban planners set out six strategies to attain this goal in 2025.
Figure 3.1 Six Strategies in Taipei City Ten-Year Parking Plan
1. Charge all curb spaces (路邊停車全面收費)
The economic rationale of user charge is not to maximize the revenue, but to promote the economic efficiency. The city government implemented a user-charge price reform (臺北 市路邊停車全面收費) on curb spaces to improve the efficiency of parking choice. In 2025, administrators will expect to increase the coverage of parking fees from 49 percent to 100 percent, charging all of the curb spaces in the city.
2. Build more attached garages (建物附設車位)
If all privately owned automobiles have their exclusive parking space (買車自備停車位), the holdover will not be as rampant as today. To reach the ideal of “One Car by One Parking Lot (一車一位),” Taipei city plans to build more attached garages in the next decade. They
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foresee that the number of parking spaces provided from the attached garage will reach at least 80 percent of licensed automobiles in 2025.
3. Meet the parking demand (滿足停車需求)
The Department of Transportation stated that an ideal parking supply should satisfy the parking demand at the just-right level. The target occupancy rate is 0.75 in 2025. Besides, based on different types of the trip, parking demand can be grouped into two sets — that is, the using-demand2 for public parking and the holding-demand3 for private parking. For using-demand, Taipei city endeavored to comply with the Improvement Strategy of Parking (改善停車問題方案) enacted by the Executive Yuan. In 2014, public parking spaces were able to meet the need of 32 percent of licensed automobiles, exceeding the requirement of 15 to 20 percent by far. As for the holding-demand, Taipei city implements the second strategy mentioned above to reach the goal of “One Car by One Parking Lot (一 車一位).”
4. Replace on-street parking by off-street parking (停車路外化)
On-street parking has the disadvantage of encroaching upon roads, slowing down traffic and endangering the public safety. Thus, Taipei city government plan to reduce the number of curb spaces and replace them with the new supply of parking garage. They plan to downsize the curb parking by 50 percent and provide about 45 thousand on-street parking spaces and 60 thousand off-street parking spaces, respectively in 2025.
2 Drivers demand public parking if neither the origination and the destination of a trip is home (i.e., non-home based trip). They have a using-demand for the public parking.
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Time wasted for cruising is one of the external cost created by curb parking. Administrators implemented several new technologies, such as the on-spot parking locating system and the online inquiry for parking availability, to reduce the time thus wasted. These technology improvements are expected to shorten the time for cruising to 8 minutes in 2025.
6. Make the full use of parking spaces (空間有效利用)
Envisaging a caring and sharing society, one target that is most relevant to land use efficiency is to make the full use of parking spaces. “Full use” is defined as a higher parking turnover to share parking spaces with the society. In 2025, parking turnover is expected to increase from 3.25 to 4.5 a day, and the function of which is defined as below.
Parking turnover = 𝑇𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑒 𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑 𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑛𝑛 𝑜𝑜𝑜𝑜 𝑐𝑐𝑑𝑑𝑛𝑛𝑐𝑐 𝑑𝑑𝑛𝑛𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑒𝑒𝑛𝑛 𝑡𝑡𝑜𝑜 𝑑𝑑 𝑛𝑛𝑜𝑜𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑 𝑐𝑐𝑒𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑛𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑛𝑛𝑡𝑡 𝑇𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑒 𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑛𝑛 𝑜𝑜𝑜𝑜 𝑝𝑝𝑑𝑑𝑛𝑛𝑝𝑝𝑑𝑑𝑛𝑛𝑠𝑠 𝑐𝑐𝑝𝑝𝑑𝑑𝑐𝑐𝑒𝑒𝑐𝑐 𝑑𝑑𝑡𝑡 𝑡𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑒 𝑛𝑛𝑜𝑜𝑑𝑑𝑑𝑑 𝑐𝑐𝑒𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑛𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑛𝑛𝑡𝑡
Above are the six strategies to increase the efficiency in parking planning. The second, third, fourth and fifth strategies all attempt to improve the efficiency by reducing external costs of on-street parking. Whereas, by contrast, the first and sixth strategies improve the efficiency by optimizing resource allocation.
In the next section, we go on looking into the land use efficiency of curb parking. We employ the concepts of the user charge price reform and the parking turnover from the first and six strategies respectively. These two strategies offer us practical insights on how to improve the efficiency by allocating land resources.