Skip to Content
Streetsblog Los Angeles home
Streetsblog Los Angeles home
Log In
Streetsblog.net

Killing a Transit Project Isn’t Going to Fix Your City’s Parking Crunch

Broad Street in Richmond. Photo: Jeff Auth/Wikimedia Commons via GGW

Yesterday we ran a post from Michael Andersen about how Newark fixed the glut of parked cars on Mount Prospect Avenue, the first street in New Jersey to get a protected bike lane: Instead of letting people park in the bikeway, the city started charging for parking. With a price on parking, people stopped storing their cars on the street all day long, and there was finally some turnover. Problem solved.

The same approach makes sense any time free or cheap on-street parking gets stuffed with cars, but street redesigns often intensify the need to get parking prices right. Canaan Merchant at Greater Greater Washington reports on another case in point -- a Bus Rapid Transit project called The Pulse in Richmond, Virginia.

On some sections, The Pulse will run on dedicated bus lanes along the median of Broad Street, and the city will remove some parking spaces to make room. That has a neighborhood association in the nearby Fan District riled up, but as Merchant points out, parking dysfunction can't be pinned on the transit project:

It may be harder to park in the Fan in the future, but the Pulse won't be to blame if that happens. Lots of people park on the street because parking there is usually convenient and cheap, or even free. In most cities, parking is drastically underpriced given how valuable the space spots take up is.

This is especially true for Fan District residents since the city introduced a permit parking program (which is similar to DC's) where residents can park wherever they want for twenty five dollars per year, per car. That's an incredibly low price for parking in an otherwise high-demand area, which incentivizes people to park there rather than somewhere else.

For those concerned about the availability of street parking in the Fan, stopping the Pulse would actually be counterproductive because the service will give people an alternative to driving. It'd be smarter to focus efforts on finding ways manage street parking in a way that matches the demand for it.

Elsewhere on the Network today: Transportation for America has an update on three amendments that would make the Senate transportation bill better. Streets.mn notes that gender parity holds steady among Dutch cyclists regardless of age. And Cyclelicious shares the first-person account of a cyclist run off the road by a driver who ended up getting charged for attempted murder.

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog Los Angeles

Metro 2026 World Cup Transit Plans Emerging

From June 13 to July 7, 2026, Los Angeles will host eight World Cup soccer matches, all at the SoFi Stadium in the city of Inglewood

May 9, 2025

Metro Names Bill Scott as Chief of Police

Chief Scott and Metro leadership emphasized that keeping Metro transit safe would require a multi-faceted approach that included the deployment of officers as well as collaboration with the community, ambassadors, and service providers. "Sometimes enforcement is the answer," Scott said. "Sometimes it's not."

May 7, 2025

Lyft’s Anti-Worker Anti-Transit Record Raises Red Flags For Metro Bike Share

Edwin Aviles and Kalayaan Mendoza urge Metro not to reward bad actors working to undermine workers’ rights and mass transit

See all posts