Let's end sidewalk parking

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Reinventing Parking this time tackles sidewalk parking (or pavement parking or footpath parking). It draws on insights from people around the world.

One lesson is to act quickly if this problem emerges. Don't let it become serious in the first place! 

If sidewalk parking does become rampant, there are no easy answers. But there is hope. Many places HAVE successfully tackled this menace.

Scroll down to read MUCH more detail.  Or listen with the player below.


Here are the key points, lessons and conclusions from this episode

  • Sidewalk parking is serious.
     
  • It is widespread in cities of all income levels and in most regions of the world.
     
  • But many cities have little or no sidewalk car parking! These include cities in the Netherlands, the USA, Japan, and France among others.
     
  • Solutions emerge from looking at these.
     
  • Abundant parking might ease sidewalk parking but it also causes other problems. This is not our recommended solution.
     
  • Many cities tolerate motor vehicles on sidewalks if a certain width is kept open for people to pass. This does not work well.
     
  • Parking management involving on-street parking fees and enforcement greatly reduces or eliminates sidewalk parking.
     
  • Even enforcement alone can make a huge difference, if the enforcement is sustained. Enforcement works best if it prevents sidewalk parking becoming a serious problem in the first place.
     
  • Good street design can prevent most sidewalk parking if it makes the desired parking locations and orientations extremely clear and if it makes it difficult to park in any other way.
     
  • Self-enforcing street design, often including bollards, can also effectively prevent sidewalk parking by cars and other large motor vehicles. Motorcycles are more difficult. High curbs to prevent sidewalk parking is NOT a good approach.
     
  • Residential on-street parking demand is not immutable. Reducing demand can ease sidewalk parking. Japan and its Proof-of-Parking Law and Stockholm’s pricey residential on-street parking offer inspiration. Maintaining good-enough enforcement against sidewalk parking before it becomes rampant can also contain demand.
     
  • Cities and other authorities often need pressure before taking this seriously. Get organized!

In Hong Kong. Image by James Ockenden @TransitJam

 
The end of the episode also features a short roundup of news from the Parking Reform Network and the wider parking reform world 

Reinventing Parking is the official podcast of the Parking Reform Network.

Thanks to many people who contributed to this episode/article

Besides mine, several voices can be heard in the episode:
  • Tomasz Zwoliński, Department of Municipal Services and Climate, City of Kraków.
  • Sonal Shah, urban planner and Director of both Urban Catalysts and the Centre for Sustainable and Equitable Cities in Delhi, India.
  • Andreas from Dortmund, Germany on Twitter as @NoParkDO
  • Carlton Reid, veteran transport journalist in the UK.
  • George Weeks, chartered town planner and urban designer based in Auckland, New Zealand.
  • Stephen Smith of New York City who posts on Twitter as @MarketUrbanism
  • Nikola Medimorec, based in Korea, Director of Data Analysis and Research with the SLOCAT Partnership.

I also quote a number of other people, some of whom helped by replying to questions via message or social media. Thanks to everyone, even those who didn't get quoted or mentioned explicitly in the episode.

Now let's dive into the details

And if you want even more detail, listen to the audio version. 

Sidewalk parking and the problems it causes

Sidewalks are also known as pavements or footpaths or walkways. All too often motorists park their vehicles on these facilities intended for walking. 

Another form of the problem is cars parked on driveways in ways that obstruct pedestrians.


Sidewalk parking can be a very serious problem, especially for people with mobility or visual impairments and for people with small children, for whom being forced to step into the road is often extremely dangerous. 

Of course, parking on sidewalks inevitably involves some DRIVING on sidewalks which entails additional dangers for people on foot. 

In many countries, the problem seems to be mainly in dense residential areas. 

On commercial sections of street, sidewalk parking is likely to be relatively brief and intermittent but may impact more people and cause more danger and stress, since these are usually busier roadways.
 
Beijing 2014

According to Sonal Shah in Delhi in India, sidewalk parking on main roads often forces people on foot to walk in the roadway.
 
Parking can also obstruct walking on minor streets that don't actually have a clearly defined sidewalk or footpath. In Japan, this is not usually a problem since such streets tend to be very quiet with light and low-speed traffic.
 
However, in India some streets that are quite busy also lack a clear sidewalk and pedestrians often end up walking between parked vehicles and moving traffic. 


Is this a widespread problem around the world?  

You won't be surprised to hear that sidewalk parking is widespread across many parts of Asia, Africa, Central and South America and eastern Europe. 

We heard from Tomasz Zwoliński in Krakow, Poland that sidewalk parking used to be very serious there (and is still a problem in parts of the city). 

“There were streets or areas where you really struggled to walk, especially if you used to walk with a little kid in a pram or with your luggage. Our law says that 2.0 metres should be left for pedestrians. But [before 2015] that was 70% not the case. You had to really struggle between the cars.”
But parking on sidewalks is a surprisingly big problem in many rich countries too!
 
George Weeks in Auckland, New Zealand, lamented that 
“It's a universal truth, the driver will try and park their car in any public space that is car sized. If there's no enforcement, our public space quickly becomes just another car park. This is a problem in central Auckland.”

My Twitter feed is an imperfect guide, of course, but it suggests that there are especially serious sidewalk parking problems in the UK, Ireland, Germany, New York City, and Taiwan.
 
Even in Singapore, I often come across cars parked in driveways but obstructing the walkway.
 
 
Carlton Reid, a veteran transport journalist, provided several insights into the UK’s serious sidewalk parking problems. Despite being illegal in theory, sidewalk parking is rarely enforced against. In fact, motorists are outraged if they are penalized for this anywhere except within priced parking zones in city centers.
 
Numerous online social media accounts across the UK and Ireland are dedicated to shaming bad parking, including sidewalk parking (or pavement parking as it is known there).
 
Many German cities also have serious sidewalk parking problems, especially in dense residential areas. 
 
We heard from Andreas in Dortmund (@NoParkDO on Twitter) who posts photos of parking violators. Sidewalk parking is illegal but complaints from motorists about enforcement often prompt local governments to institutionalize the practice of sidewalk parking by marking out spaces that are half on and half off the sidewalk.
Similarly, the owner of the twitter handle @pedestrianTW https://twitter.com/PedestrianTW  often posts images of sidewalk parking both by cars and motorcycles. Some of this sidewalk parking by motorcycles is legal and marked out, in the hope of keeping a path for pedestrians clear.

Nikola Medimorec informed us that cars on pedestrian space is also a big issue in Korean cities.
 
 
I'm from Australia and some of the inner areas in Melbourne and Sydney have serious problems with sidewalk parking.
 
Another hotspot for sidewalk parking seems to be New York City where most of the problem seems to be the abuse of placards by police and fire station employees. In other words, the main culprits seem to be city employees, themselves, including the very people who are supposed to be enforcing against the problem. Yikes.
 
 
So, you get the picture. Motor vehicles parked on sidewalks is a problem in many places.
 
But not everywhere!
 

Where is it not much of a problem? Are there places that have solved this problem? And how did they do it?

I asked on social media for tips on places where sidewalk parking is not much of a problem or places that have solved the problem.
 
Several people mentioned that cities in the Netherlands have almost no sidewalk parking problems. So has sidewalk parking ever been a problem in the Netherlands? Yes! A quick image search quickly revealed that sidewalk parking WAS a serious issue in the past. 
Later we will see some of what the Netherlands has done to address the problem.
 
Several people also mentioned French cities, including contributor George Weeks.
 
 
Anders Hartmann in Norway shared via Twitter, that bike lane parking is rampant. But sidewalk parking is relatively rare in Norway . It is almost only done for loading and unloading or while waiting. And rarely ever forces pedestrians onto the roadway. The fine is about 90 euros.
 
Jose Ibarra in Lausanne. Switzerland (tells me that sidewalk parking is under control in Switzerland too.
 
Perhaps surprisingly, some Southern European countries seem to be doing well on this issue. I tried to find sidewalk parking in Madrid, Barcelona and Naples and failed.
 
Naples did have plenty of chaotic parking. Sidewalks were mostly clear, although they were rather narrow, which suggests another variation on this problem: pedestrian space that has been cut back and given to parking and traffic space.
 
Rebecca Clements, a previous guest on the Reinventing Parking podcast, reminded me that sidewalk parking by cars or delivery vehicles is rarely ever an issue in Japan.
 
I was a little surprised that several people told me sidewalk parking is NOT widespread across most of the United States and Canada. One of them was Stephen Smith in New York city who writes on Twitter as @MarketUrbanism.
“You rarely see them. A lot of urbanists, in like New York city or other dense areas will complain about it. But, you know, compared to, Europe or other, other places in the world, it's actually relatively rare.”
 

What can be done? How can this problem be solved?

We have a few examples of places where sidewalk parking is NOT a problem. What's their secret? Or secrets?
 
What can we learn from them about how to end sidewalk parking everywhere?
 

Possible solution: abundant parking?

Let's talk about the United States and Canada. Stephen Smith had some thoughts on why sidewalk parking is uncommon there:
  • Not because of great parking management
  • In America, most streets are flanked by two rows of solidly parked cars. There's often no easy way to get a car onto the sidewalk.
  • The country is just so car oriented and has so much parking (both off street and on-street parking) that it's not common for it to be useful to park on the sidewalk.
Abundant parking, whether on-street or off-street or both, may possibly ease sidewalk parking. But it causes numerous other problems and is certainly not the Reinventing Parking or Parking Reform Network preferred solution.
 
And abundant parking is not a feasible solution for many of the dense, space-constrained places where sidewalk parking is a serious problem.  
 

Possible solution: require two metres of clearance for pedestrians to pass?

How about a pragmatic solution of simply enforcing that there should be enough walking space for pedestrians to make their way along the sidewalk? This approach tolerates motor vehicles on sidewalks so long as they don’t block them completely.
 
This is actually a common approach. It was mentioned by Andreas in Dortmund for example. It is also common in Poland too apparently.
 
However, Tomasz Zwoliński in Krakow mentioned in the episode that this does not work well. Motorists very often fail to leave enough space. Awareness is low and enforcement is difficult and patchy. 
 

Possible solution: more intensive parking management?

Another way to reduce sidewalk parking problems seems to be more intensive parking management.
 
When the on-street parking is priced, enforcement generally follows. As Carlton Reid says, “In city centers, you tend not to get away with parking where you like. And that's because they're generally charged. And wherever somebody can make money from this, they'll enforce it.”
 
This is a promising solution that is especially suited to commercial areas or  mixed-use streets. On-street parking management is also a well-tested set of practices.
 
Such parking management is not appropriate for all of the locations that suffer from sidewalk parking but probably should be applied much more widely.
 
When improved parking management can be applied, the results in terms of reduced sidewalk parking can be dramatic. I witnessed this in Shenzhen in 2014.  

 

Possible solution: what about just enforcement alone? 

Even just extending and improving enforcement without pricing could greatly reduce parking on sidewalks. 
 
Nikola in Korea mentioned that the problem there is much worse in the evenings, when parking enforcement ceases, than it is between 9am and 6pm.
 
The difficulty, as with several other promising solutions below, is not in how to do it but in getting the necessary community support to do so.
 

Good enough enforcement BEFORE sidewalk parking becomes rampant

As we saw earlier, miraculously there are many dense, inner city areas around the world that seem to have never had sidewalk parking problems. And some of these have not resorted to any of the policies mentioned above.
 
Consider the high-density areas of New York City. Aside from placard abuse problems, these have a surprising lack of sidewalk parking. How can this be?
 
My guess is that this is simply a case of establishing good-enough enforcement over many decades so that the problem never got out of control. Enforcement against sidewalk parking (and other illegal parking) has been at least good enough to deter anyone from regularly parking their car on the sidewalks overnight. So residents see their choices as: find housing that has off-street parking (which is uncommon in these places that we built up before the car era); park legally in the street even if it is often difficult to find a space; lease parking in a garage; or go without owning a car.
 
So good-enough residential on-street parking enforcement prevents sidewalk parking becoming a problem in part by keeping a lid on car ownership.

An example of letting consistent enforcement lapse

Here is a quote from a 2019 article on the Greater Auckland site (and which was republished last week): 

"Ten years ago, Aucklanders understood the law. You could not park a car on a verge or footpath, and vehicle crossings were for crossing the footpath, not places to park. If you parked there for more than a minute or three, you’d be ready with an apology.

Now cars are littering the public realm. Pedestrian malls, public plazas, footpaths, verges, driveways, edges of parks, bollarded-off service driveways… you name it, if drivers can physically manoeuvre a car into position, they will."

It seems that consistent enforcement CAN keep sidewalk parking under control even outside the areas with priced parking. But if the enforcement lapses, bad parking can easily become a new norm. 

Possible solution: good street design to make it crystal clear where to park and where not to?

Good street design seems to be central to the Netherlands’ approach and increasingly in other countries in Europe as well, such as France and Spain among others.
 
Dutch street designs aim to make the desired parking locations and orientations extremely clear to all and to make it difficult to park in any other way.
 
Carlton Reid explained, “The UK went down, this route of double yellow lines to demarcate where you weren't allowed to park, whereas in many other European countries and, the Netherlands is a good example, it's the opposite. You've basically got markings to say where you can park.”
 
In the Netherlands and increasingly in France and Spain too, it seems, on-street parking is generally marked between curb extensions, trees and street furniture. In most streets, there is a clear distinction between parking space, the carriage way for vehicle movement, bicycle lanes or tracks, and the sidewalk. Besides proper parking spaces, no other spaces in the street are at all inviting to park on, and certainly not the sidewalk.   

Possible solution: self-enforcing street design, often including bollards?

George Weeks in Auckland is a great fan of the way French cities use bollards so that streets become self-enforcing against sidewalk parking. 
“Relying on driver's good will doesn't work ... If you want to have footways and shared spaces that are free from parked cars, you need to exclude the cars systematically and meticulously. The only way to do this is to use physical measures. And nothing beats a bollard.
 
Go to any French city and you will see that they use bollards relentlessly. French bollards are slim, elegant, and very strong. Drive a car into a bollard and the car will bend.
 
French drivers are no better behaved than elsewhere. Bollards help to encourage good driver behavior in French streets. …
 
Bollards make sure that drivers only go where they're meant to go. And this makes for a much calmer, quieter, and more livable city.”
 

Tomasz Zwoliński also likes self-enforcing street design but is not so keen on bollards. 
“I would say, unfortunately we still have to use in many, many cases, like you said, bollards, physical barriers, we try to replace them with the bicycle racks, which at least looks a little bit nicer and , we gain some extra parking space for bicycles.”
Unfortunately, it is not so easy to prevent motorcycles parking where they shouldn't.
 
In India, an older approach was to have very high curbs, as mentioned by Sonal Shah in Delhi, “High curbs are certainly not recommended. You see that a lot in Delhi. The footpaths tend to be about one foot or 30cm high. 
 

Possible solution: remove parking and/or traffic from certain streets?

This one is a reminder that solving sidewalk parking need not be about better parking. It can (and maybe should) be about making a much better environment for people on foot, in wheelchairs, with luggage, with children. 
 
In city centers especially, an alternative is to remove parking altogether from many streets and to reclaim that space for other purposes. Some remove both parking and traffic to create pedestrian zones.
 
Oslo Amsterdam and Paris come to mind with both of those strategies. And Krakow in Poland has been doing some of this too, as Tomasz mentions in the episode. 
Often, some of the parking that is removed gets replaced off street or in underground parking nearby or on the edge of the city center. But these are still generally parking-scarce areas and it is still clear that reducing sidewalk parking does not necessarily require plentiful parking. 

Possible solution: reduce residential parking demand (in problem areas at least)?

Managing parking by nudging demand with prices and enforcement is commonplace in busy commercial areas.
 
But in residential areas, many cities are much more timid about seeking to influence demand. 
 
Residential on-street parking demand tends to be off the agenda. It is taken as somehow immutable.
 
Residential on-street parking demand is not immutable. There are usually at least some off-street options. And these are often underutilized.
 
And, although it is taboo to mention it in many cities, expensive or inconvenient parking can and does have an influence on local car ownership levels, albeit slowly. This mostly works by nudging car-loving households to shift to places that have easier parking, and being replaced by households who own fewer cars.
 
In fact, influencing residential on-street parking demand is central to a number of sidewalk parking success stories. Several of these were mentioned in the episode, including the example above of good-enough long-term enforcement such as in New York City.

Japan's proof of parking law
 
This requires residents to prove that they have access to a parking place, either on their own property or nearby in leased parking, in order to register a car. It works in combination with a ban on on-street parking overnight. Together these two policies make sure that there's almost zero nuisance parking by residents in Japanese cities.
 
This option is difficult to replicate but it does prove that it is possible to keep on-street residential parking demand very low. 


High-priced residential on-street parking, like in Stockholm or Vilnius

Residential on-street parking demand can be kept in check with high prices, of course.
In a recent episode of Reinventing Parking we heard how Stockholm has made residential on street parking is very expensive.Vilnius in Lithuania also has very high prices for residential parking permits. 

This might seem impossible to apply if illegal sidewalk parking is rampant in an area. But what if we did this in increments? Start by pragmatically but temporarily tolerating most of the sidewalk parking (but only allow parking that does not actually endanger people). Then set up a parking permit system. Then gradually remove problematic parking spaces and increase the permit prices as necessary. Make sure these changes and the revenue from the permits drastically improve the area. 

Possible solution: get organized?

This is not a specific solution of course but a way to get promising solutions onto the agenda in your city!
 
For example, there is a concerted campaign in the UK by the charity for everyday walking, Living Streets along with several partners (including Guide Dogs, Sustrans, and the Royal National Institute of Blind People).
 
Getting organized was also an important part of Krakow's successes against sidewalk, as Tomasz Zwoliński explained, 
“The process of really removing the pavement parking in many places in our city started in 2015 more or less. So it's quite a new story. It started with some really bottom up pressure from users, from the pedestrian and cycling organizations.”
 

Some Parking Reform News

The Parking Reform Network has been holding regular organizing round tables where network members can meet others who are working on parking policy reform and get inspiration and advice. If you're interested, please join PRN and get involved.
 
In early July, India's Urban Works, held a successful Park It Right parking reform workshop in Surat in Gujarat. It featured a new version of my parking management game, which lets participants gain a strong appreciation of the power of parking management, especially parking fees. That was great to see.
 
Oslo Norway seems set to abolish all of its remaining parking mandates soon. There will be no more minimum parking requirements for new residential. Commercial developments already had no parking minimums.
 
On 11th of July Carlton Reid, who featured in this episode, had an article on the Forbes website about Milan's astonishing program of expanding and reclaiming public space. Much of it by putting former car parking space to better uses.
 
On 20th of July Chicago city council approved a landmark transit oriented development ordinance expansion that enables exemptions from parking mandates and imposes parking maximums in a majority of the city.
 
Major parking reform in Oregon. On the 21st July Oregon's land conservation and development commission adopted permanent rules, which will require 81 cities in the state's, metropolitan areas to eliminate parking mandates within three quarters of a mile of rail or half a mile of transit or for supportive and infill housing, all of this by the end of 2022.
 
Parking Reform Network's, parking mandates abolition map has been improved with the help of intern, Aiden Simpson. They have also been numerous updates in the last two months as the movement to abolish or reduce parking minimums. Seems to be gathering momentum.
 
 
You can also listen to the audio episode here: 



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