How much exactly does it cost to ride a bicycle instead of driving a car? There’s an answer for that, and it’s personalised to your own usage.

The Saving Electricity site has come up with a biking vs driving calculator, that lets people plug in their own data to calculate how much they are able to save.

According to Uncluttered White Spaces, the calculator takes into account petrol, insurance, maintenance, and depreciation. On the ‘not driving’ side, it includes the cost of a bicycle, as well as costs for buses, taxis, and car-sharing. It also allows you to change your assumptions about how much you’ll earn on the money you save by not driving.

Parking, naturally, is a key input to the car side of the equation….

An article published by social scientist Thomas Erickson compares his experience of parking in two cities. In one, overstaying the allotted time on his meter led to a ‘courtesy ticket’ with no charge as a warning. In another city, a 3 minute lapse led to a $42 ticket, with no reprieve for first offenders.

In his article on A Smarter Planet, he asks what should a smart parking meter do when time is running out? On the one hand, it could contact the enforcement authority to warn them that someone is about to overstay; on the other, it could act as a citizen advocate, warning drivers ahead of time so they have a chance to renew their parking. He also considers whether the size of the fine should be proportionate to the amount of time overstayed.

His point is that as our cities grow smarter, we have a choice about how we can apply that knowledge to how people experience their city, and the social consequences of the systems and policies they support. He concludes by saying that whilst ‘efficiency is important it’s important to think about how to use smartness to design systems that are empathetic, that recognise that we all lead busy lives, and that give people a break when they are running a bit late’.

Nice sentiments for our industry to take heed of and bear in mind. Often parking generates negative experiences and therefore ensuring new systems are designed with the customer in mind is really important in governing positive perceptions for the work that we all do.  Mr Erickson however fails to acknowledge that revenues from parking meters and infringement notices do form a significant component of local government revenue and this needs to be also taken into consideration when planning the financing for improvements to public spaces.

Following the recent publishing of the RAC report into UK parking policy and practice, the UK’s Telegraph has distilled many of the key findings of the report, including:

• The current number of cars on UK roads is 28.5 million. In 1950 there were two million cars on the roads, and the projection is to reach 32 million by 2032.
• Vehicles are increasing in width and size, leading to issues with out of date parking bays designed for thinner cars
• Seven million front gardens have been converted to driveways in the UK, meaning that these lawns are not absorbing rainwater, contributing to flooding.The report also states that one third less cars are being garaged off-street overnight, with garages being used to store everything but cars – hypothesised to be due to both better vehicle security, as well as better build quality and less concern about rusting.

View The Telegraph’s summation here, our previous blog post here, and the RAC report in full here. 

A guest post from our Senior Traffic Consultant, Andrew Morse.

Will the bicycle influence our future streetscapes? 

It's not such a strange question when considering how the car influenced not only our streets, but our architecture too.  In fact, according to Dr Steven Fleming, Professor of Architecture at the University of Newcastle, there are architectural influences from many forms of transport, from the oversized railway stations of the Victorian age of steam, to the post modernist UFO-inspired concrete structures of the 70’s.

In the context of the motor age and the development of car parking, this form of land use not only influenced the cosmetic appearance of buildings, but the physical nature of buildings, where parking was prominent and provided colour and animation to otherwise sterile concrete structures. 

The point that Dr Fleming makes is that there is no reason to believe that the bicycle can't evoke a similar response from the architectural world, which tends to represent the leading edge of the shaping of our towns and cities. Le Corbusier was well ahead of the curve with the highway inspired Villa Savoye, 2 decades before highways arrived.

There is already a movement among some architects experimenting with vertical transport through buildings using bikes, and real life examples include the Giant Headquarter Building in Taichung, Taiwan.

Back to the streetscape question, we are already seeing changes in cities all over the world, including incremental changes in Australia's major cities, through the introduction of dedicated cycle lanes.  However, these are token gestures when we consider the funding, landspace and town planning revolution that catered for the car. In some ways we are trying to wind back to the days when the lowly bike was the dominant form of transport for commuters, and cars were the minority hitting the headlines (in a bad way), much as cycle stories do today. 

This?

or This?

Whilst on the subject of bikes, according to a number of expert reports obtained by the Sydney Morning Herald, the controversial bicycle lanes in Sydney’s CBD have made little to no impact on the city’s general traffic congestion.

The consensus amongst traffic experts is that congestion continues as no car traffic lanes have been removed for the cycleways, only on-street parking.

The reports also contradict claims by the state government that the cycleways are in the wrong places, saying that the lanes are on the most appropriate routes, with the RMS (ex RTA) advising against other routes because they would have had a greater negative impact on bus traffic.

The RMS also reported that counts commissioned by the City of Sydney showed the majority of cyclists on College Street used the cycleway, and not the road, contrary to claims that more cyclists use the road than the cycleway.

The Herald's freedom of information request sought all reports prepared since January 1, 2010, into the location of CBD cycleways. Out of the 467 pages reviewed, there is only a one-page, undated document that cites traffic problems in the afternoon peak hour caused by the bike path on Kent Street. But the vast majority of reports support the paths.

A new central Sydney traffic and transport committee, to be chaired by the director-general of Transport for NSW, Les Wielinga, would assess the location of cycleways. But that committee, announced in March, has not yet met. And apart from Mr Wielinga the government has not decided on its members.

The debate continues!

Los Angeles councillors have backed an ordinance that would allow real estate developers, landlords and business owners to reduce the number of parking spaces to be supplied their buildings and projects.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the action represents an effort to breathe new life into tanking business districts and drive new housing construction while getting more people out of their cars. Two weeks ago, officials in West Hollywood began allowing smaller businesses on the city's western edge to pay the city money in lieu of providing a space. The credit for one parking space is just $375 per year.

The current minimum requirement for a commercial business is two parking spaces for every 1,000 square feet of office. A retail store needs to provide four spaces for that amount of floor space and a restaurant must come up with 10. View our previous blog post, ‘Minimum parking to blame for LA’s commercial inefficiency’, which looks at the effect of minimum parking requirements on businesses here.

A range of changes are being implemented and considered throughout the city from converting older empty office buildings into residential units, reducing parking around key subway stations, removing the requirement for developers to provide parking on the same site as the development, and even the possibility of introducing permits to reduce parking without a lengthy review process.

Flexible parking rules should be ‘the norm’ in Los Angeles, recognising (perhaps for the first time) that the city’s residents can actually walk a block or two to a restaurant, a movie theatre, or a wine bar.

A study published by Monash University has found that the congestion charge on city car parks in Melbourne has not eased congestion.

The levy, introduced in 2006, applies to 50,000 car spaces in Melbourne and was designed to stop people driving into the city. According to Yahoo, The Victorian Treasurer Kim Wells claims that the levy has already been factored into the state budget and is unlikely to be scrapped in the immediate future.

The treasurer has indicated that whilst the congestion levy will remain in place, the government will focus on how the levy operates.

Our analysis of the way levies work in NSW, WA and VIC indicates that the latter is the only state where revenues are not required to be expended for any specific purpose or to be paid into a specific fund.

A report released in July by the UK’s Royal Automobile Club (RAC) has detailed British parking policy and practice. Called ‘Spaced Out: Perspectives on parking policy’, the 113 page report offers a huge depth of data on the industry.

The report focuses on the demand and supply of parking, with a particular emphasis on the lack of information at a local governmental level on available on-street and off-street parking spaces. It draws a comparison between housing density and the corresponding number of vehicles parked on-street, and explores the demand for parking by time of day.

Interestingly, the report indicates that no parking fees apply to around 94% of all ‘destination parking’ acts. Of the remaining 6% that do pay, over 82% pay less than £3, and almost half pay less than £1. Overall, the analysis suggests that, excluding any charges for residential parking, the average annual parking cost is about £42 per vehicle, and, with an average of 1.14 cars per household, this translates to about £47 per household per year. By contrast the amount spent on fuel alone is about £1,600 per vehicle.

The report also includes data on parking policy from local councils as well as an analysis of survey results on public attitudes to parking, the impact of emerging parking technology and parking standards. As the mainstream media report, local councils do use parking to generate a revenue stream for their operations, with only 15% reporting a deficit in their parking activity.

‘Spaced Out: Perspectives on parking policy’ can be viewed in full on the RAC Foundation site here.

Westminster City Council, in central London, is set to become the first to use in-ground sensor technology to detect whether a car is parked in the space.

According to UK's Telegraph, the three month trial will be run across a number of streets, with plans to roll out the technology to the rest of the West End and the whole of the City of Westminster, by the end of 2014.

The information gathered will be available on smartphones, iPads and tablet devices, telling motorists where they will be able to find an available parking space. It will also enable Westminster to monitor parking patterns, which could see a variable pricing scheme introduced according to demand at different times.

When fully operational, the system will require payment by mobile phone, which will send special alerts to drivers when their paid-for time is running out.

Ultimately cars registered on the system could set up an account which would enable “contactless payment” with another sensor fitted on the bottom of the vehicle.