Chapter 18: Parking and Accessibility

Parking and accessibility each has been the subject of considerable prior research, but only rarely in conjunction with one another. The parking problem was first identified as such by McClintock (1930).¹ Walking distance (to and from available parking) was identified as a critical aspect of the parking problem by Eno (1942),³ Mogren and Smith (1952), Burrage and Mogren (1957), Gittens (1965), and others, but has been downplayed or ignored in more recent studies.⁴

Accessibility, measured in terms of travel distance or time, has long played a critical role in models of location, land use, urban development, and travel demand. Linking origins to destinations (trip distribution) is fundamentally a function of accessibility, whether measured in terms of gravity, intervening opportunities, or any other evaluation criterion. Regional accessibility measures rarely take parking cost or availability explicitly into account, however, apparently assuming that parking is negligible as a factor limiting highway accessibility.