Minimums to maximums: lessons from the UK

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The United Kingdom has been both a bold parking reformer and a parking reform disappointment.

But which is the more important story? That's the focus of this month's episode of Reinventing Parking episode. 

The nationwide abolition of parking mandates in 2001 and the shift to parking maximums was amazing and of great interest to parking reformers elsewhere.

Yet, parking management has often failed to rise to the challenge, leading to problems and then to some backsliding on parking standards.

For more insight and lessons from UK parking, I turned to Andrew Potter, who is Director of Parking Perspectives, a parking focused consulting firm based in Chelmsford in the southeast of England.

Here is an outline of our discussion: 

• About my guest: Andrew Potter
• Basics about on-street parking management - where it is strong [2:20]
• Where is parking enforcement weak and parking behaviour worst? [3:59]
• Pavement parking is not even an offence in England (but is in London and Scotland
• Parking standards and the history of reforms [6:10]
• Maximums dealt with a parking arms race [7:23]
• Problems emerged in new residential developments with limited parking under maximums [8:39]
• Why wasn't strict parking management expanded to such areas? [10:01]
• Fundamental problem with the approach to on-street parking management outside city cores [11:31]
• These problems led to pressure on government to change the approach to parking for residential developments [12:21]
• Is London a counterfactual to refute the idea that these problems mean abolishing minimums and imposing maximums was foolish? [13:34]
• What has been happening recently with parking standards, minimums and maximums? [16:40]
• Trend for car free developments in city centre areas and this is generally successful since the streets are well controlled [19:50]
• Residents of inner city car free developments are usually not eligible for parking permits in the local CPZ [20:21]
• Are maximums still popular, despite the problems mentioned earlier? [20:54]
• Suggestion: maximums at levels to make urban supermarkets viable, but not out-of-town ones [22:05]
• Advice for other places thinking of abolishing parking mandates and or imposing parking maximums? [24:32]
• Wrapping up [25:31]

You can read a lightly edited transcript here.