The Importance of Public Attitudes on Developing Parking Policy

For transport planners and researchers interested in managing the demand for motorized transport, using parking pricing and/or rationing as a form of traffic restraint has its attractions. Several authors have demonstrated the link between parking availability, price and mode choice. However, from the point of view of the practical implementation of parking policy in an urban setting, there are major conflicts in parking policy: using it to manage demand for traffic may reduce revenue generation, or (be perceived to) damage the local economy. The premise of this paper is that the range of users parking in a major urban setting places a wide range of demand on a limited supply of (especially) curbside parking, and has an equally wide range of opinions as to how it should be managed. Recent EU research on parking (COST 342) confirms that in all European Union countries, curbside parking is a public good whose management (although not necessarily enforcement) is the responsibility of the local authority (municipality). Users’ opinions must therefore be taken into account when developing parking policy, and this can mean that “optimal” parking demand management strategies cannot always be adopted. In order to support the premise of this paper, considerable public and business opinion data are presented from the case study city of Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom. The data that will be presented were collected in 2005 and 2006 and include: (1) telephone interviews with a random sample of residents across the city-region; (2) telephone interviews with car-owning residents of the city’s CPZ (permit-holders and non-permit holders); (3) postcard and interview surveys with people parking in the city center; (4) survey of trades and other small businesses; (5) survey of retailers; and (6) a questionnaire of people who were sent/requested a draft parking strategy. The paper concludes with a discussion of the way in which municipalities can reach compromise in their parking policy in the face of wide ranging public opinion such as that presented from Edinburgh.