Philadelphia is losing parking spaces, but finding a parking space is getting easier

Philadelphia has fewer parking spaces overall, but it’s now easier to find a space in the city’s garages and lots. What gives?

Philadelphia has cut its number of parking spots

Planners in Philadelphia do a parking census every five years, and Plan Philly reports that in the past five years, the number of public off-street parking spots around Center City (the name for Philly’s downtown areas) shrank by seven percent, or a little over 3000 spaces.

Most of the decline in off-street parking is because surface parking lots have become new buildings, some of which built new parking but many of which did not. A lot of spaces that were lost used to be in public parking lots or garages that were sold to make way for new office and apartment buildings.

Center City is getting denser and demand for land means that it’s more lucrative to redevelop these parking sites for more than just car storage. Some of the parking will be replace once construction is done but most spots are gone forever as some of the buildings reserve what parking they have for tenants instead of anyone just looking for a place to park to visit elsewhere.

The percentage of people using parking spots has fallen as well

Meanwhile, there’s a smaller percentage of people parking in Philadelphia’s available spots. It’s much easier to find one than it was five years ago.

It turns out that there are simply a lot of people in Philadelphia who choose to use transit, walk, or ride a bike to get around.

Cities are realizing they don’t need to build parking

The news from Philadelphia’s parking inventory is the latest in a trend that shows that cities are getting smarter about parking. A critical first step for many cities is to simply count how many parking spaces it actually has. Philadelphia is ahead of the curve in that respect.

But Philadelphia also runs a lot of its garages through the Philadelphia Parking Authority. DC doesn’t manage nearly as many garages, with over 20 different garage operators filling the role. Getting good information on the total number of spots and how often they’re used might be harder for DC to collect.

But once a city knows how many spaces are availablem it is in a much better position to actually plan for how much parking it will need in the future rather than relying on parking ratios that may be decades old. Philadelphia’s inventory is a good start and confirms a lot about what we’ve learned about parking here in DC as well.