Like Goldilocks … parking has to be ‘Just Right’

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It is easy to accept community advocates nationwide and community voice groups, like StrongTowns, YIMBY groups, and BaltPOP locally, who favor a position on blanket citywide no-parking minimums. The challenging question of “To build parking or not to build?” may not be immediately clear to most. The parking solution requires customization based on local conditions, not blanket policies applied everywhere.

Baltimore City isn’t alone in advocating for eliminating parking minimums — this has become a nationwide movement, and for good reason. Studies show there are typically five times more parking spaces than cars across the country. Industry research estimates somewhere between 700 million and 2 billion parking spaces nationwide, compared to roughly 275–300 million registered vehicles. This implies a ratio of 2.5 to 7 or 8 spaces per vehicle, commonly averaged to 5:1 by most experts. The instinctive response has been to stop building parking anywhere and everywhere.

I believe reducing parking mandates is sound public policy. However, the real problem is the lack of adequate, balanced intermodal transit infrastructure to support this shift. The question of “necessary” parking isn’t a broad one — it’s highly specific to each submarket and its transportation-related land economics. These are my personal observations based on our company’s industry research and analysis.

Even so, the “no-parking-minimum” trend has considerable merit, supported by research from Donald Shoup, whose extensive work was published in The High Cost of Parking during the 2000s. Shoup’s work is fundamentally an argument that parking is often in the wrong places, in the wrong amounts, and at the wrong prices, creating an imbalanced, inefficient system far from equilibrium.

He demonstrates that blanket minimum parking requirements create “parking satiation” in many low-value locations, while curb space and high-demand districts experience chronic shortages and cruising, causing additional traffic. This pattern reflects systematic misallocation: oversupply off-street where it’s cheap to build, and underpriced scarcity on-street where demand is highest — a classic disequilibrium condition.

Shoup’s three reforms — remove off-street minimums, charge demand-based prices block by block, and return revenues via parking benefit districts — explicitly aim to let each location find its own custom balance of price, supply, and demand. In effect, he wants neighborhood- and corridor-level submarkets to adjust dynamically rather than be forced into one-size-fits-all ratios set in zoning tables. These reforms align closely with the principle that customized solutions for individual submarkets make the most sense. Consider these real-world examples that demonstrate the imbalances.

Case #1: Where would a resident or worker from the Sparrows Point/Tradepoint Atlantic submarket park if they wanted to take a round-trip train to Wilmington, Delaware from Baltimore Penn Station during the workweek? Penn Station’s paid off-street and unpaid on-street parking is full by 7 a.m. every morning. The patron is attempting a transit alternative to no avail finds themselves in downtown traffic and then forced to drive from there instead and at risk of getting to their destination on time.

Case #2: Neither Harbor East in Baltimore’s downtown nor National Harbor in Washington’s suburban beltway location has transit rail stations, despite each having nearly 10 million square feet of mixed-use space. While both are considered “new urbanism” locations with high density, they couldn’t survive without parking — yet they still generate considerable auto-centric traffic congestion. HarborEast’s parking ratio would be considerably less than what is needed when transit is unavailable.

For suburban and exurban commuters, Shoup’s framework implies they should pay the true marginal cost of parking — whether at edge parking facilities, park-and-rides, or downtown garages — rather than being subsidized by residents and non-drivers. He expects higher, demand-based parking prices and the removal of minimums to shift some trips to transit, carpooling, and other modes, but not to eliminate the option to drive and park altogether.

City Housing Reform Bill 25-0066: There’s a reason why legislation proposing blanket citywide increases in housing units within single-family areas hasn’t received universal citywide and neighborhood approval. The issue is imbalanced parking and inadequate public facilities, not a “no parking minimum” standard applied across the board.

Should we expect single-family and townhouse homeowners — who might be interested in the wealth and equity-building prospects of this well-intentioned policy — to solve customized parking questions about quantities and ratios when developers themselves don’t address them adequately? The Harborplace redevelopment is a case in point.

Simply put: Parking is infrastructure, just like roads and highways—it’s not real estate per se. As such, parking is a function of public growth management policy and provision, and a fundamental component of municipal planning, not merely a decision left to private market forces.

The parking challenge in an auto-centric world is complex, and taking the easy route won’t help. In such a world, traffic congestion is as problematic as pollution. Electric and autonomous vehicles may eventually address environmental concerns and keep cars on the roads for years to come, but sound intermodal design — supported by balanced parking ratios tailored to each submarket — will address traffic and accessibility.

Joseph F. Consoli is president of innovative Realty Research solutions Inc. He can be reached at [email protected] or 410-830-9110.