Parking Archives - Transform

San Jose Activates Street Space and Brings Out the Crowds

June 22, 2026/in Blog, Parking, SPOT SJ/by Laura McCamy

Nate LeBlanc, Economic Development Director for the San Jose Downtown Association, has worked in downtown San Jose long enough to see many changes. Some of the biggest changes are pedestrianized blocks of commercial streets. San Pedro Street, next to San Pedro Square, is downtown’s restaurant row. And the activated street, decorated with a colorful mural, makes it easy to host events like viewing parties for the Super Bowl and March Madness. Transform has been providing support for reenvisioning public spaces like San Pedro Square in downtown San Jose through our SPOT SJ initiative.

Now, with World Cup fever hitting North America, San Jose is leveraging the opened block of San Pedro Square to bring out the crowds. “San Jose is incredibly diverse, and our diversity is our strength,” Nate told us during a recent interview. “We’d love people to come and experience the new San Jose.”

“Gooooal” for San Pedro Square

No one was sure how much interest there would be in watching World Cup games on one of two giant screens at either end of San Pedro Square. LeBlanc recalls holding his breath before the first game.

“All of that evaporated on Thursday at noon when we had people coming and sitting in front of the screen from 9 a.m. forward,” he said. Even with temperatures in the 90s, people came out to cheer for Mexico. He could hear them in his office, two blocks away, even with the windows closed. “The building felt like it was rocking every time Mexico scored,” he said.

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Many of the other games have drawn similar crowds. The San Jose Earthquakes soccer team, Bay Area Host Committee, and San Jose Sports Authority have all pitched in to make the experience fun, providing activities for kids around the viewing area. San Pedro Square provides lots of places to pick up a meal or a snack while people are there for the games.

A “windfall” for local businesses

When San Jose pedestrianized the block of San Pedro near San Pedro Square in 2022, it created a draw for foot traffic — and that’s been great for local businesses.

“Regarding the activation of San Pedro Street and the Entertainment Zone for major sporting events, it has been a tremendous financial windfall for our businesses,” said Randi Musterer, the founder and CEO of Sushi Confidential, in an email. “In fact, our busiest days in the past 10 years have been during the weekend of Super Bowl LX and now the opening weekend of FIFA World Cup 2026.”

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He added, “A big part of that success has been the City’s support in creating complementary events around these major sporting moments, including concerts during Super Bowl festivities and the San Jose Earthquakes partnering on the World Cup watch parties in San Pedro Square.”

LeBlanc wants big events like the World Cup to bring visibility to all the fun things to do in downtown San Jose. “We hope they come back to San Jose when we’re not having an event,” he said.

MOMENT shops provide an entrepreneurial proving ground

The crowds on hand for the World Cup are an opportunity to show off another recent development on San Pedro Street. Across from the row of eateries, the ground floor of the recently renovated parking garage now contains a row of microretail shops. The project is managed by MOMENT San Pedro Square and is a collaboration between SJ DOT, the Office of Economic Development, and the San Jose Downtown Association.

The MOMENT shops had their grand opening as the games kicked off. In addition to great places to eat and drink, San Pedro now hosts an array of shops you won’t find anywhere else, all on an activated street where visitors can stroll freely, away from car traffic.

San Pedro Street is a shining example of what can happen when cities reclaim parking spaces for civic uses. “The efforts of the San Jose City Council, the Mayor, City staff, and the broader business community have certainly not gone unnoticed,” Musterer said. “Ultimately, the biggest beneficiaries are our residents and visitors, as these events bring people together in a safe, vibrant environment to celebrate, connect, and experience the best of downtown San Jose.”

Digitizing the Curb

June 2, 2026/in Blog, Parking, SPOT SJ/by Zack Deutsch-Gross

How San Jose Is Using Data to Rethink Parking and Street Space

This post was co-written by Julia Gerasimenko.

Through a USDOT SMART Grant, the San José Department of Transportation (SJDOT) and technology partner Umojo have been piloting innovative tools to better understand how curb space is used downtown. By combining cameras, digital mapping, and integrations across parking systems, the city is beginning to “digitize the curb” and make parking data measurable, flexible, and easier to leverage for future urban planning decisions.

Building a digital map of the curb

At the core of SJDOT’s pilot program is a San Jose-specific platform that brings together multiple layers of information about how people use curb space.

This includes:

Parking meter locations and rules
Parking time limits and regulations
Pay-by-phone and meter system integrations
Off-street garage occupancy data
Real-time and observed curb activity from cameras and sensors

Instead of scattered systems and manual records, this creates a centralized view of how curb space functions block by block. As SJDOT staff shared with Transform, having a digitized inventory of meters, regulations, and street conditions has already made the department’s everyday work more efficient. Tasks that once required time-consuming field checks can now be done quickly with accurate, up-to-date data. Testing multiple tools in concert helps corroborate results and turn pilots into action.

Supporting safer streets with better data

One immediate application of this work has been the implementation of California’s daylighting requirements.

The state’s daylighting law requires 20 feet of clear space near most crosswalks to improve visibility and reduce conflicts between drivers and people walking. With a digitized curb inventory, SJDOT has been able to:

Identify which meters are too close to crosswalks
Measure and apply appropriate buffers, often extending to 30–40 feet in practice
Prioritize updates and ensure compliance more efficiently

Without this data, the process would have required on-the-ground surveys of every crosswalk downtown, taking significantly more time and manual effort. With it, the city can act faster and more consistently to improve safety.

Understanding how the curb is actually used

The pilot is also helping the city respond more effectively to issues on the street.

In areas where cameras are deployed, staff can review activity to understand patterns like double parking or loading behavior. This has been especially useful when responding to public complaints or questions.

At the same time, SJDOT is clear about the limitations of curbside data. Because the current system relies heavily on transactional data and cameras in a limited area, it does not yet capture the full picture across the city. Expanding coverage and improving data quality will be key next steps.

From operations to planning

Beyond day-to-day operations, this work is starting to inform bigger decisions.

With better data on curb utilization, SJDOT can begin to:

Understand where parking and loading demand is highest
Compare on-street and off-street usage
Evaluate how demand changes during events
Support more accurate revenue projections

It opens the door to more dynamic curb management, where space can be adapted based on real needs to inform future planning decisions.

For efforts like these and broader planning conversations across San Jose, this work represents an important shift.

When cities can see how the curb is actually used, they can:

Make streets safer
Support local businesses more effectively
Use limited space more efficiently
Ground decisions in real data rather than perception

A foundation for what comes next

While the pilot is still evolving, one thing is already clear: the value of having better data.

SJDOT staff noted that the system is already doing more than initially expected. At the same time, they see significant potential to go further, from expanding camera coverage to strengthening integrations and refining analysis.

Just as important has been the collaboration behind the work. SJDOT has included multiple teams of city staffers, community organizations, regional partners, and other stakeholders in the process. Incorporating the needs and ideas of diverse constituencies leads to better outcomes.

The curb may look like a simple strip of pavement, but it plays an outsized role in how our streets function. San Jose is showing what it looks like to start managing it that way.

Smart Parking, Stronger Business Districts

April 15, 2026/in Blog, Parking/by Julia Gerasimenko

How Parknav is Working for San Jose

Transform developed the SPOT SJ initiative to improve the use of existing parking and reduce the need for additional parking in San Jose. The initiative includes Parknav as a tool to better understand and use existing on-street parking. It combines real-time data, predictive modeling, and a user-friendly app to help drivers find available parking while giving cities and business districts insight into how curb space is actually used.

What is Parknav?

Parknav operates on two levels: a data dashboard for planners and a navigation app for drivers.

Parknav processes real-time and historical data from car sensors, cell phone towers, car-sharing companies, mapping providers, satellite imagery, traffic patterns, insurance companies, and other proprietary sources.

The dashboard portal provides block-by-block data on parking availability, including the probability of finding a space at different times of day and on different days of the week. This helps answer key questions:

When is parking actually full and when is it underused?
Where are the highest-demand blocks?
How does availability change over time?

This kind of data is critical for city planners. It grounds their decisions about curb management and street space allocation in real conditions instead of assumptions, helping them to avoid overbuilding parking or missing opportunities to repurpose curb space.

A tool businesses can use right now

The Parknav app guides drivers directly to blocks where parking is likely available. Instead of circling the block, customers can go straight to a spot near their destination.

For businesses, this opens up simple, low-cost ways to improve access:

Add “Find parking with Parknav” to their website or social media
Include parking guidance in event promotions
Share links or screenshots showing nearby parking availability

This shifts the narrative from “parking is impossible” to “here’s exactly where to go.”

Supporting better planning in San Jose

As San Jose plans for growth, tools like Parknav can play an important role in shaping smarter, more balanced streets.

Along corridors like Santa Clara Street and neighborhoods like Five Wounds, the question is not just how much parking to provide, but how to balance space for housing, transit, small businesses, and community life.

Parknav data has helped:

Show where parking demand is truly high versus perceived to be high
Identify opportunities to convert underused space into parklets, bike lanes, or loading zones
Support more flexible, dynamic curb management strategies

Just as importantly, the app can help shift conversations with business owners and customers. Instead of debating whether there is “enough” parking, we can look together at how existing parking is performing and where improvements can be made.

A new way to talk about parking

Parking remains a key consideration for all cities, but it does not need to constrain better outcomes made possible through accessible data and civic engagement. With more information and tools, San Jose can:

Make it easier for customers to reach local businesses
Use existing parking more efficiently
Unlock space for the things that make neighborhoods vibrant

Parknav is one piece of that shift. And through SPOT SJ, we are continuing to explore how data and real-world tools can support both businesses and community-driven planning.

Parking Wasn’t on the Radar at Housing California’s Annual Conference

April 1, 2026/in Blog, Housing, Parking/by Julia Gerasimenko

But It Should Be.

At this year’s Housing California Conference, conversations focused on displacement, housing production, and cross-sector collaboration. Parking barely came up. That absence precludes a key opportunity to build more affordable housing.

Across panels on updating regional planning standards (SB 375), fair housing, and local housing tools, speakers returned to a familiar challenge: California is still struggling to deliver enough homes in places where people can live without having to drive everywhere. We are not short on ideas. We are short on implementation.

Yet one of the most immediate, proven tools for unlocking housing was mostly missing from the conversation: parking policy. When it did come up, it was an exciting and promising story.

Less parking, more housing

Parking requirements quietly shape what gets built, where, and at what cost. When cities require a set number of parking spaces, they are also requiring more land, more construction, and higher rents. These costs can be the difference between a project moving forward or not.

In one session, staff from the City of Sacramento shared how eliminating parking minimums in 2024 has helped remove barriers to building housing. By no longer requiring a fixed number of parking spaces, the city has reduced development costs, simplified project design, and made it easier for both affordable and market-rate housing projects to move forward. They described how removing these mandates gives developers more flexibility, reduces upfront costs, and helps projects that might not have penciled out or come together budget-wise actually get built.

Sacramento’s move reflects what we are seeing across California. When you remove unnecessary parking mandates, you give housing a chance to pencil out. You also open the door to more flexible, community-serving uses of space.

This is exactly what we are working toward through SPOT SJ.

Reimagining travel in downtown San Jose

In San Jose, Transform’s SPOT SJ project is showing that parking is not just a constraint — it’s an opportunity. Better parking management can support small businesses, reduce housing costs, and make it easier to repurpose space for people. The question is not whether parking exists. It is how we use it.

What stood out at Housing California was how aligned the broader housing conversation already is with this shift. Panels emphasized transit-oriented development, climate goals, and reinvestment without displacement. All of those goals depend on using land more efficiently.

You cannot fully get there while overbuilding parking that will mostly sit empty.

Centering parking in the housing affordability conversation

If we want to move from policy goals to real outcomes, car parking and transportation need to move from the sidelines to the center of the conversation. Not as technical details, but as core housing strategies.

Because sometimes the most powerful housing solution is not building more. It is removing what gets in the way.

Parking Costs Continue to Hold Back Housing Development in San Jose

January 7, 2026/in Blog, Housing, Parking, SPOT SJ/by Julia Gerasimenko

Too many San Jose residents feel the crunch of high rents while seeing downtown sites sit empty. The City of San Jose’s Housing Department is working on a Cost of Development study (not yet released) and has begun to share some findings to shed light on why it remains so expensive to build homes in the city, especially the walkable, transit-oriented, and affordable housing our climate and communities urgently need.

Parking is a major contributor to high costs, which the draft study should give more weight to.

Parking spaces take up land, money, and construction capacity needed for living space

The study notes that podium and wrap apartment buildings (see photo above), which are the backbone of infill housing across the Bay Area, rely on structured or podium parking. Podium parking is a multilevel parking structure, usually on the lower levels of a residential building.

While these types of parking conserve space in dense urban settings, they add millions in costs before a single home becomes available. For a hypothetical podium building, parking accounts for roughly 3% to as much as 20% of hard construction costs, adding significant cost before a single home becomes available. For high-rise towers, structured and subterranean parking can represent a substantial share of total project costs, often tens of millions of dollars, making these projects especially sensitive to even small cost increases.

That cost has a ripple effect across the whole project. Developers must charge higher rents, build fewer affordable units, or not build at all.

The most climate-friendly housing types are not currently feasible to build

The study concludes that podium, wrap, and tower apartment buildings are not financially feasible in San Jose today, even before factoring in land costs. Townhomes and stacked flats pencil out, but these lower-density units cannot meet our housing or climate goals, and often create more car dependence.

SPOT SJ data shows there are already roughly two parking spaces per resident in San Jose. We are not short on space to store cars—we are short on homes.

Parking requirements increase housing costs and reduce affordability

Parking structure costs are especially harmful for affordable housing. The more funding that gets absorbed by parking, the fewer homes that can be built for people.

The cost study confirms that fees and taxes can add as much as $72,000 per unit in some parts of San Jose. Parking is a major driver of these costs because it increases the size, complexity, and footprint of a project.

When land is scarce, smarter parking means more homes

Reducing parking frees up space on the ground: more street trees, safer sidewalks, protected bike lanes, and outdoor dining instead of more asphalt. This is how SPOT SJ imagines streets that serve people first.

The study finds that modest changes in development costs or rent levels could make midrise construction feasible again. Reducing the amount of costly structured parking is one of the most effective ways to achieve that. Even a 5-15% shift could unlock thousands of units in walkable neighborhoods.

Parking reform is a powerful lever that’s within the city’s control at a time when interest rates, materials, and financing remain stubbornly expensive.

What comes next

There is no single solution to solve California’s housing crisis. But we do know one thing with certainty: we cannot afford to keep devoting so much space and money to storing cars instead of housing people.

San Jose has the chance to lead California in building for our communities and our climate. Reducing the amount of parking in new developments and modernizing our streets to prioritize equitable, accessible, active transportation choices are crucial steps toward more affordable, sustainable housing.

Transform Opposes Anti-Housing Measure in Menlo Park

December 4, 2025/in Blog, Housing, Parking, Press Releases/by Zack Deutsch-Gross

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Dec 4, 2025

Media Contact: Zack Deutsch-Gross, Executive Director, Transform, [email protected], 415.637.0101

The 2026 citizens’ ballot initiative is a nakedly NIMBY attempt to prioritize parking over people

A citizens’ initiative to block affordable housing on three city-owned parking lots in Menlo Park has now qualified for the November 2026 ballot. The City of Menlo Park had planned for at least 345 affordable homes on the site, but, if the initiative passes, it would be forced to run a citywide ballot measure before it could sell the land or “permanently diminish the availability, access, or convenience of parking”—a prerequisite to building affordable housing on the site.

“Replacing empty parking lots with affordable housing is a no-brainer, especially in Menlo Park, where there are already great Caltrain, Samtrans, and free shuttle options,” says Transform’s Executive Director Zack Deutsch-Gross. “Transform strongly opposes this retrograde measure that places more value on car storage that sits empty much of the time than badly-needed homes for families.”

The measure would prohibit Menlo Park from selling, leasing, donating, disposing of, or conveying city-owned downtown parking lots without approval by a majority of voters. This would delay and possibly derail the city’s plan to build affordable housing on the sites.

“San Mateo’s problems of displacement, homelessness, and long commutes will get worse if voters approve this measure,” said Transform’s Housing and Parking Policy Manager Julia Gerasimenko. “Not only will it take us further from our housing goals, but it will undercut transit investments and hurt local businesses in the long run.”

The measure would also require that if the city intends to make any physical alterations to the downtown parking lots that would permanently diminish the availability, access, or convenience of parking, then the city must submit to the voters a subsequent ballot measure seeking authority to make such alterations prior to implementation. The measure further disallows any actions “which would diminish the availability, access or convenience of public parking for Downtown customers, workers and visitors.”

Parking is never free. It takes up precious civic space that could be devoted to other uses, such as more affordable housing to alleviate the critical shortage of affordable units throughout California and particularly on the Peninsula. Almost one-third of downtown Menlo Park is already dedicated to off-street parking. Residents and business owners pay for this overabundance of parking spots through higher rents, higher retail prices, and missed opportunities to build affordable housing or green space.

Transform’s report, Parking Revolution/Housing Solution, showed how excess parking capacity generates higher vehicle ownership, traffic, and pollution, and reduces incentives for more affordable transportation modes. The Menlo Park initiative is a regressive and short-sighted attempt to lock the city into outmoded and disproven land use priorities, keeping the downtown core from becoming the vibrant, people-centered space it has the potential to be.

In addition to the parking and transit costs, the measure could make Menlo Park miss its housing development target, which is required by state law. If successful, it could create a new playbook for blocking affordable homes across California. Transform is committed to opposing this measure, which endangers Menlo Park and the entire Bay Area’s housing and transportation needs.

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Transform works to ensure that people of all incomes thrive in a world safe from climate chaos. We envision vibrant neighborhoods, transformed by excellent, sustainable mobility options and affordable housing, where those historically impacted by racist disinvestment now have power and voice.

Myths About Parking Are Holding San José Back: Here’s What We Can Do About It

July 29, 2025/in Blog, Parking, SPOT SJ/by Julia Gerasimenko

If you’ve ever driven in San José and thought, “There’s never any parking,” you’re not alone. But here’s the thing: it’s not true.

San José actually has an estimated 1.9 million parking spaces, which comes out to nearly two per resident. In the heart of downtown, city-owned garages typically sit just 30–50% full, even on weekdays. The issue isn’t a lack of parking. It’s how we’ve prioritized it over housing, businesses, and safer streets.

At Transform, through our SPOT SJ initiative, we’re working with community members to make more efficient use of existing spaces, create more vibrant streets, and reduce the cost of housing, starting with parking myths that undermine our city.

4 parking myths

Let’s dive deeper into four of the most common misconceptions about parking.

We don’t have enough parking.

Despite what it feels like, we have more than enough. Downtown garages like Market Street & San Pedro Square and the Convention Center sit around 40% full on average. The problem lies with our expectations and a lack of signage rather than actual capacity.

Free parking is free.

It’s not. The cost of the overabundance of parking spots is passed on through higher rents, more expensive retail prices, and missed opportunities to build affordable housing or green space at a time of co-occurring climate and affordable housing crises.

Businesses need front-door parking to survive.

We routinely walk the length of a football field in a mall or Costco lot without thinking twice. There’s a sense of relief to being able to see your destination from where you park, even if you are walking farther than when you park a block or two away from your destination in a dense downtown. The quality of the walk to your destination also impacts the parking experience. A safe, shaded, and pleasant street can turn a stroll into an enjoyable part of the trip. When cities improve sidewalks and make streets more inviting, people are more willing to walk a block or two from parking.

Curbside space must be reserved for parking.

Curbside spaces can be adjusted to serve different needs, such as outdoor dining, loading, or pickup and drop-off areas, particularly when parking demand is lower, like during certain seasons or off-peak hours. Smart curb management pilots, like the one launched by the San José Department of Transportation in 2024 with 800 monitored curbside spaces throughout downtown, are meant to provide a more accurate report of how much downtown parking is actually used, which will lead to more creative and flexible curbside uses that still allow businesses to thrive. Walkable and bikeable streets often increase foot traffic and retail sales, as we covered in our recent blog.

A new vision for land use in downtown San José

San José’s Downtown Transportation Plan gets it right. It lays out a vision to reduce car dependence and prioritize affordable, climate-friendly transportation. Rethinking how we manage parking is a key part of making that vision real.

This isn’t about blaming people who drive. It’s about making better use of the public space we all share so that everyone, regardless of how they travel, can access opportunity, breathe cleaner air, and enjoy a more connected city. Join us at SPOT SJ to be part of this important conversation and movement.

Bike Lanes are Good for Business, Actually

June 5, 2025/in Blog, Parking/by Julia Gerasimenko

Transform staff has continuously heard concerns from local businesses in San Jose about parking availability affecting their bottom lines. They worry that if patrons don’t have a space within direct eyesight of their store, they simply won’t shop there. This is a common but mistaken belief — multiple studies debunk this myth.

Space on our shared streets is finite, so space for bike lanes sometimes comes at the expense of street parking. Studies ‘ show that, after adding bike lanes, even at the expense of parking, shopping and economic activity in a neighborhood is more likely to increase than decrease. A 2023 study, Protected Lanes Mean Business, from PeopleForBikes and the Alliance for Biking and Walking, is worth delving into, especially in the context of downtown San Jose, where Transform is working on the SPOT SJ initiative with local merchants and building managers to reclaim public space for people — and shoppers.

Bike riders are shoppers

To understand the impact of improved bike access on people’s shopping habits, we have to expand our perspective beyond the capacity of the shopper’s vehicle to carry away merchandise. A study in Portland, OR, found that shoppers who arrived by car spent around one-third more than those who arrived by bike, with an average of $13.70 versus $10.66 per individual visit. However, bike riders shopped more frequently and spent 24% more per month than people who shopped by car: $75.66 on average for bike shoppers, compared to $61.03 for car drivers.

There are many reasons for this. The ease of parking and reparking a bicycle makes it easy for people on bikes to hop in and out of stores. Fast-moving streets make it harder for potential customers to discover local stores; streets with protected bikeways and plenty of bike parking provide a more enjoyable experience for all shoppers and encourage people to linger.

In fact, according to data in the Protected Bike Lanes Mean Business study, car parking generates $0.19 in retail revenue per hour per square foot while bike parking generates $0.69 per hour. Taking away a few car spots can provide space to park two dozen bicycles. Paired with a safe, connected bikeway network, encouraging bike shoppers is a great way to generate retail sales.

Follow the data

Real-world experiences confirm the correlation between protected bike lanes and thriving retail districts. In New York City, retail sales soared by 49% after the addition of a protected bikeway on 9th Avenue, while revenue increased just 3% in other parts of Manhattan during the same period.

Many cities have created vibrant retail zones through traffic calming, pedestrianizing portions of streets, and improving bike and transit access. Urban centers flourish when we look beyond the car and design for the safety and comfort of all roadway users, not just people driving.

With SPOT SJ, we’re connecting people with apps that help them find available parking spots inside nearby garages that would otherwise sit empty. Better use of dedicated parking spaces can free up street space to build protected bikeways, parklets for outdoor dining, bus boarding islands, and other types of shared spaces. We know reclaiming and revitalizing our shared spaces is one of the best ways to attract visitors to downtown San Jose.

Old prejudices die hard

Widely accepted “truths” often linger long after they’ve been disproved. Induced demand is a good example of this: traffic engineers continue building new highway lanes to reduce congestion even though every metric and lived experience shows this is, at best, a temporary fix.

The “truth” that businesses need car parking spots in front of their doors, even in dense city centers, lingers, sometimes even despite shop owners’ experience to the contrary. For example, the 2023 study cited a survey showing that adding bike lanes on Valencia Street in San Francisco improved sales for 66% of the shops on the street and hurt sales for only 4%. Yet, a city plan to upgrade the bikeways to protected bike lanes faced numerous hurdles, including business owners’ objections.

More shop owners are coming to understand the value of customers who shop by bike. The study quotes the owners of Green Apple Books in San Francisco and Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, among others, who recognize that they can get more customers to their businesses through active transportation.

Coming out of May’s Bike Month, as we continue to celebrate the joy of going wherever by bike, we must all remember that bike lanes are good for business and street safety is a driver of prosperity, not its enemy.

Remembering Donald Shoup, A Longtime Friend to Transform

February 26, 2025/in Blog, Parking/by Julia Gerasimenko

Donald Shoup, a UCLA professor and a leader in the movement for parking reform, died earlier this month. His work, including his 2005 book, The High Cost of Free Parking, had a big influence on Transform’s efforts to create sustainable communities with abundant, affordable housing. In turn, Shoup was a friend to Transform and an early supporter of our work around parking.

When Transform launched our SPOT SJ initiative to make more efficient use of parking in San Jose, Shoup was one of the first to reach out and offer his support. He was a committed advocate who managed to stay on top of parking reform priorities nationally and was always available to lend his expertise.

Hear about Shoup’s research and vision in his own words here.

Saving the world, one parking spot at a time

Shoup’s work laid out clearly the negative effects of the abundant free parking found in many U.S. cities. Parking lots take up valuable real estate that could be used for housing, businesses, public amenities, or green space.

Easy availability of free parking spots in particular induces driving, leading to congestion and pollution. An abundance of on-street parking also makes it difficult to build out networks of protected bike lanes and bus-only lanes, suppressing the number of people willing to opt for those more sustainable modes of travel. Parking structures that are islands surrounded by parked cars make neighborhoods less walkable and encourage driving.

Shoup’s work started a revolution in how we think about and plan for parking. Since his book first came out, many California cities have reduced or done away with minimum parking requirements that made developers build excess parking capacity, making housing more expensive to build. State law has changed as well, reducing parking minimums for buildings near transit hubs.

Transform’s parking reform campaigns

Transform first connected with Donald Shoup when we released our 2002 report, Housing Shortage/Parking Surplus. He loved the cover of it and asked to use that photo of San Jose, and used it at many of his events.

2002-Housing Shortage Parking Surplus Download

In 2023, we published a report, Parking Revolution/Housing Solution, which shows how reducing parking minimums is key to solving California’s housing shortage.

Parking Revolution – Housing Solution Download

Our SPOT SJ project leverages new technologies to make better use of underutilized parking garages, freeing up street parking spots for civic space rather than car storage. A city full of parking spaces, most of which sit empty most of the time, is bad land use. Using apps to flex the use of existing parking throughout the day has the potential to revolutionize the way we build and think about public spaces.

Shoup was also a fan of Transform’s GreenTRIP tool, which shows ways that new developments can limit driving trips generated by the building.

We are grateful for Donald Shoup’s insightful writing and efforts to promote understanding of the negative effects of the parking glut on urban development. His legacy will live on in our work and the work of transportation and housing advocates around the world.

“Donald Shoup let his light shine and sparked countless thousands to his cause of transforming parking into anything else. He did this through ingenious edutainment, which is modeled by many effective disciples. He says he has to be funny before anyone will take parking seriously. Nothing could be truer. He clearly articulated how excess parking deeply exacerbates inequality and reliably gives us the asphalt-coated communities most of us actually don’t want. We will miss him deeply. He had always only the most wholehearted encouragement that you’d expect from the best professor and coach ever. We are so grateful to have his teachings recorded in many ways an

— Ann Cheng, founder of Transform’s GreenTRIP program and Parking Reform Network board member.

San Jose Parking Survey Shows Business Support for Reform

December 4, 2024/in Blog, Parking, SPOT SJ/by Julia Gerasimenko

In partnership with the San Jose Downtown Association (SJDA), Transform conducted a survey of local businesses on the topics of parking and transportation access. The results make it clear that San Jose business owners are excited about creative street uses and see the value in investing in them as a way to help support their businesses.

The survey underscores the importance of the priorities of Transform’s work in San Jose. Our SPOT SJ project uses parking tech tools to make more efficient use of existing spaces, creating more vibrant streets, and then in term reducing the cost of housing, increasing transportation options, and reducing car traffic and GHG emissions.

Transform and SJDA collected responses from 52 local businesses, including restaurants, gyms, art galleries, real estate firms, and offices. We were able to glean concerns local business owners had about parking availability and collect input and ideas from owners about the benefits of creatively repurposing street space to entice customers to their businesses.

Creative solutions to parking problems

While over half of respondents agreed that the amount of available on-street parking is an obstacle or problem to their business’s success, business owners also had many suggestions for how to tackle the issue. Over 80% of respondents were interested in more maps and data on parking availability downtown, highlighting the need for a resource like Parknav, which is an app that is intended to help guide users to available parking and show heat maps of available parking. In addition, 72% of respondents who indicated they were not aware that the city of San Jose has several managed parking garages expressed interest in promoting the ParkSJ resource.

Over half of the respondents agreed that parklets or outdoor eating areas, along with public plazas and additional plants and trees, would help their businesses succeed if they were able to use some space currently occupied by on-street parking. One business owner shared, “Our priority should be on making the walking and living experience world class. No one evangelizes the ease of parking, they evangelize the destination.”

It is clear business owners are key stakeholders in transitioning street parking to other uses that attract more people downtown. Transform and SJDA will continue to work with local business owners to help support their goals and, therefore, the vibrancy of downtown San Jose.

SJDA and Transform are collaborating on additional resources for local businesses to improve the transportation and street access experience for their customers, so stay tuned for future updates on how to implement parklets, landscaping, interactive signage, and community activation events to help San Jose and its local businesses thrive.