Parking Reform Network

[Chicken In The Rough]

This is a great mapping site for parking uses in urbanized areas. I've been looking for something like this for years. It's a great way to see how much wasted land exists in our most valuable areas.

OKC urban core, excluding Bricktown, devotes ≈ 25% of land to parking. I expect this is worse than average, but by no means is it as bad as I expected.

https://parkingreform.org/resources/parking-lot-map/

[Jake]

Tulsa having 31% of its central core dedicated to parking is brutal.

[Plutonic Panda]

lol @ “wasted land.” Give me a f@cking break. Go to Europe and have fun. I am very happy with the abundance of parking.

[BoulderSooner]

very strange that this includes Midtown as urban core but excludes all of bricktown ??

[Tyson]

I'll show this to everyone who complains that we don't have enough parking.

[burksooner]

lol @ “wasted land.” Give me a f@cking break. Go to Europe and have fun. I am very happy with the abundance of parking.

Take a chill pill and realize you are 100% the problem.

Also, make up your mind, if you LOVE parking, why did you say this: "I really want to visit Europe and I’m debating about doing it later in 2024. France or UK was my first thought."

[Mississippi Blues]

lol @ “wasted land.” Give me a f@cking break. Go to Europe and have fun. I am very happy with the abundance of parking.

It always cracks me up when you make vapid remarks like this. It’s unserious enough to get a hearty chuckle but serious enough to keep us on our toes.

[Plutonic Panda]

Take a chill pill and realize you are 100% the problem.

Also, make up your mind, if you LOVE parking, why did you say this: "I really want to visit Europe and I’m debating about doing it later in 2024. France or UK was my first thought."

Europe looks amazing but I don’t want to live there and I’m not going to go and have a meltdown over lack of transportation(yes I will drive as well as check out their mass transit network).

My problem with the post is “wasted space.” This is absolutely not wasted.

[Plutonic Panda]

It always cracks me up when you make vapid remarks like this. It’s unserious enough to get a hearty chuckle but serious enough to keep us on our toes.

At least I can do something right.

[Chicken In The Rough]

lol @ “wasted land.” Give me a f@cking break. Go to Europe and have fun. I am very happy with the abundance of parking.

That was an intelligent discussion builder! Try to follow along. Surface parking, and largely, structured parking are not the highest/best use of downtown land. This does not mean there should be no parking. Parking and development are not mutually exclusive. But parking done in the manner we see today creates dead zones and discourages economic development. Perhaps you're comfortable with suburban strip centers, but I'd like to see something better, especially downtown.

[Plutonic Panda]

That was an intelligent discussion builder! Try to follow along. Surface parking, and largely, structured parking are not the highest/best use of downtown land. This does not mean there should be no parking. Parking and development are not mutually exclusive. But parking done in the manner we see today creates dead zones and discourages economic development. Perhaps you're comfortable with suburban strip centers, but I'd like to see something better, especially downtown.

I agree in theory but calling parking a waste of space is ridiculous.

[bombermwc]

First....wow.

Plutonic, the waste comes from it being so heavily surface lots. If there were more structures that went vertical, the % of land-use would go down, and we would have more space for structures.

Now, if someone thought it was a good business to do make what swap, well they would have already done it. So I'm not sure what the goal of the commentary is. Is someone saying your core sucks unless you have less than X % surface lots? Because that's just a made up number that doesn't adjust according to the different markets. For OKC, we're not really struggling for parking options and we're definitely NOT struggling for office space. So i'm not sure what the big complaint is.

[citywokchinesefood]

Am I the only person that was hoping this was a group that was going to campaign against illegal paid parking lots being operated downtown on land that should be developed by the owners?

[fortpatches]

lol @ “wasted land.” Give me a f@cking break. Go to Europe and have fun. I am very happy with the abundance of parking.

Not to be too pedantic, but that site does not really reflect on an "abundance of parking". It is only looking at the amount of land dedicated to parking, not at an amount of parking.
For example, A parking lot and a parking garage take up the same amount of land but would have a substantially different number of parking spaces. From what I read on their definitions, they do not consider abundance of parking as a metric.

[Plutonic Panda]

Not to be too pedantic, but that site does not really reflect on an "abundance of parking". It is only looking at the amount of land dedicated to parking, not at an amount of parking.
For example, A parking lot and a parking garage take up the same amount of land but would have a substantially different number of parking spaces. From what I read on their definitions, they do not consider abundance of parking as a metric.

I see that makes more sense.

[mugofbeer]

Unless you are in a city like Austin where downtown land is extremely highly in demand, "highest and best use" of all parcels is a rarity. At some point, OKC will start attracting actual businesses and urban higher rise housing becomes more popular, OKCs underused downtown land will fill.

15 years ago, downtown land in Denver was abundant. Now there is virtually no availablecraw land partially due to employer buildings but mostly duecto urban housing.

[Tyson]

Unless you are in a city like Austin where downtown land is extremely highly in demand, "highest and best use" of all parcels is a rarity. At some point, OKC will start attracting actual businesses and urban higher rise housing becomes more popular, OKCs underused downtown land will fill.

15 years ago, downtown land in Denver was abundant. Now there is virtually no availablecraw land partially due to employer buildings but mostly duecto urban housing.

Right, I think that’s exactly where we’re heading.

[Snowman]

very strange that this includes Midtown as urban core but excludes all of bricktown ??

Yeah, this seems a pretty arbitrary boundary on other sides too. On the west side it meanders around where the next blocks are of similar density, on the south it was decided to include a former car dealership then stop.

I am curious if they make the boundaries themselves or pick them up from cities, since given what they cut off it would not be hard to shift the southern boundary to Sheridan, which would boost how they evaluate a bit. Alternatively expanding to Classen and including Bricktown also could make sense, probably making our rating worse.

[BG918]

Tulsa having 31% of its central core dedicated to parking is brutal.

And yet people still complain “there is nowhere to park downtown”

[bombermwc]

And yet people still complain “there is nowhere to park downtown”

The issue is mostly that people don't know where to go. If you dont have to go often, then it's not well advertised on where you should park. Job interviewees are told for larger companies, but often it's "fend for yourself". If you are a regular, you already have a regular place you go, so that's not really the issue. You go to the garage or lot that your office has an agreement with or that they mostly all park at, you may your monthly or daily fee, and you move on.

But those less frequent folks, well they drive around because they aren't familiar with the area. They see surface lots that are all full. They see garages with signs about who can park there, and the further away they get from their destination (and i'd say more than a few blocks), the more nervous (and angry) they get. The lots all use different apps, have wildly different rates, and some frankly look very sketchy. So I get it. If you don't go there regularly, the whole thing can definitely look like there aren't many options.

[dhpersonal]

And yet people still complain “there is nowhere to park downtown”

Most suburbs have free parking directly outside a building. If a suburbanite drives 20 minutes to a new area and can't find parking adjacent to and referenced by the building which they intend to visit, then that person might begin to worry that there isn't parking available at all. If there's no lot nearby, then perhaps the next thought is to find street parking; if that's all taken or has a time limit that is too short, then it's off to find a free parking lot perhaps a block or two away and hopefully not marked as private. If no free parking lot is available, then it's time to start maybe looking for a free parking garage. If a nearby parking garage is not available, then it's time to start looking at paid options, which begins the pricing war or concerns about the legitimacy of the lot owners. By this time potentially 10 minutes of driving has occurred and it's a huge frustration for the driver who is used to the suburb-style gigantic lot out front. It's like having to learn a different dialect of a language in order to interact with the locals.

Less parking and better transit certainly helps in this situation. For Tulsa and Oklahoma City, which doesn't have the transit available to cover all the needs of the city, the parking lot coverage downtown is both a balm and an acid on the wound of improper city planning.

[Zorba]

very strange that this includes Midtown as urban core but excludes all of bricktown ??

This video explains the methodology a little bit at the beginning. Basically has to do with zoning, which would exclude Bricktown.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmJRzYn99rg

[Zorba]

Europe looks amazing but I don’t want to live there and I’m not going to go and have a meltdown over lack of transportation(yes I will drive as well as check out their mass transit network).

My problem with the post is “wasted space.” This is absolutely not wasted.

It's taking what should be the most valuable land in the city and turning it into private property storage for people that don't live in those areas. Also this is only area that is parking only, it doesn't include any parking that has a useful building/space on top of it.

[Mississippi Blues]

Most suburbs have free parking directly outside a building. If a suburbanite drives 20 minutes to a new area and can't find parking adjacent to and referenced by the building which they intend to visit, then that person might begin to worry that there isn't parking available at all. If there's no lot nearby, then perhaps the next thought is to find street parking; if that's all taken or has a time limit that is too short, then it's off to find a free parking lot perhaps a block or two away and hopefully not marked as private. If no free parking lot is available, then it's time to start maybe looking for a free parking garage. If a nearby parking garage is not available, then it's time to start looking at paid options, which begins the pricing war or concerns about the legitimacy of the lot owners. By this time potentially 10 minutes of driving has occurred and it's a huge frustration for the driver who is used to the suburb-style gigantic lot out front. It's like having to learn a different dialect of a language in order to interact with the locals.

Less parking and better transit certainly helps in this situation. For Tulsa and Oklahoma City, which doesn't have the transit available to cover all the needs of the city, the parking lot coverage downtown is both a balm and an acid on the wound of improper city planning.

[bombermwc]

Most suburbs have free parking directly outside a building. If a suburbanite drives 20 minutes to a new area and can't find parking adjacent to and referenced by the building which they intend to visit, then that person might begin to worry that there isn't parking available at all. If there's no lot nearby, then perhaps the next thought is to find street parking; if that's all taken or has a time limit that is too short, then it's off to find a free parking lot perhaps a block or two away and hopefully not marked as private. If no free parking lot is available, then it's time to start maybe looking for a free parking garage. If a nearby parking garage is not available, then it's time to start looking at paid options, which begins the pricing war or concerns about the legitimacy of the lot owners. By this time potentially 10 minutes of driving has occurred and it's a huge frustration for the driver who is used to the suburb-style gigantic lot out front. It's like having to learn a different dialect of a language in order to interact with the locals.

Less parking and better transit certainly helps in this situation. For Tulsa and Oklahoma City, which doesn't have the transit available to cover all the needs of the city, the parking lot coverage downtown is both a balm and an acid on the wound of improper city planning.

Isn't that entire paragraph basically what I just said?