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Donald Shoup
Donald Shoup is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and has served as the Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning during his tenure there [1]. Shoup’s specific areas of study are the connection between transportation and land use and how this intersection particularly impacts cities, the economy, and the environment. He’s also known to use his academic research to support transportation reforms and so has been able to influence California state law and the federal tax code with regard to employer-provided transportation benefits.
Early Emphasis
Dr. Shoup earned a PhD. in Economics from Yale University in 1968. For the next ten years, his research interests included the dynamics of urban land markets, land taxation policies, and transportation funding issues. By 1979, he had discovered the issue of parking policy, and grew to regard it as a fundamental regulatory, planning, and economic issue that had profound effects on the way urban areas develop, and the way people make transportation choices. Parking requirements, he determined, were effectively requiring buildings to be spaced further apart than necessary, making transit, walking, and bicycling impractical, and encouraging driving. By making the parking appear to be free -- by bundling it with the cost of goods and services -- its price was hidden from consumers, and naturally tended to result in overuse.Champion of New Approaches to Parking
During the 1980's and 1990's, Shoup published or co-authored dozens of studies on the harmful impacts of parking subsidies and parking requirements in land development codes, and began advocating, via editorials [2] and presentations, for reconsideration of minimum parking requirements and "free" parking. Several of his UCLA graduate students, most notably Don Pickrell and Richard Willson, picked up the issue as well, and have made important contributions to the topic.[3] In 1990, Shoup organized the first-ever conference dedicated solely to the issue of parking policy. Thereafter, planners began taking note of the issue, and began questioning the wisdom of minimum parking requirements and parking subsidies. As the demand for new approaches to supplying parking grew, Shoup obliged by experimenting with new regulatory schemes and publishing the results.
Prof. Shoup helped draft California's "Parking Cash Out" Law, requiring employers of 50+ employees who provide free parking to their employees to offer comparable transportation subsidies to employees who do not drive. Shoup's subsequent study of eight firms who implemented parking cash-out found that employers who offered employees cash payments in lieu of a parking space experienced an average 17% decrease in drive-alone commuting [4].
Shoup also worked with the City of Pasadena, California to develop the dynamic market based parking pricing scheme used in Old Pasadena and other business districts. These parking meter districts dedicate a portion of parking meter revenues to pay for infrastructure improvements and beautification, and help maintain a predictable supply of open on-street parking spaces by encouraging turn-over of spaces (see Curbside Vacancy Rates ). He also showed that a comparable retail district nearby was far less successful, in part because employees tended to occupy (for the entire day) most of the free on-street spaces in front of shops.
In 2005, Shoup pulled together all of his and others' wealth of data, policy work, and economic, social, transportation planning, and equity arguments into a large volume, The High Cost of Free Parking. The book became an instant classic and caught the attention of the mainstream media, gaining wide attention outside the usual confines of academia and municipal planning departments.
ALSO ON THE LIVABLE STREETS NETWORK
REFERENCES
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[1] Faculty Profile, Donald Shoup. UCLA.
[2] E.g., Donald Shoup and Don Pickrell, "End Free Parking -- It Isn't Harmless," Op-ed page of the New York Times, June 17, 1980.
[3] E.g., Willson, Richard W. 1991. "Estimating the Travel and Parking Demand Effects of Employer-Paid Parking," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Vol. 22 (1992), 133-145.
[4]California Air Resources Board, Research Note #98-3: Parking Cash-Out Law:
PICTURE REFERENCES
Pictures are cited in the order they appear above. Please keep citation style consistent.
[1] Courtesy of UCLA.
[2]
