FROM HORSE AND BUGGY TO FLYING CARS PARKING - WE’VE COME A LONG WAY BABY!

I’m old enough to remember using manual crank style single on street meters putting in pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters to buy ‘parking’ time.  Seems like a distant memory but it really wasn’t that long ago until the first smart meter was rolled out around 2002 although 20+ years seems like ancient times.

Thinking about the evolution of parking, what has really changed?  Parking has changed depending on human behavior, society, and technology.  Our municipal leaders, developers, residents, businesses all had to deal with some type of ‘parking’ plan, design, and construction.

Let’s look at the horse and buggy – this was the main mode of transportation during the early 1800’s to the early 1900’s before the widespread adoption of cars starting around 1908 and then the construction of highways to accommodate cars.  During the horse and buggy era our communities had similar parking issues:

ü Unregulated parking – precursor to timed on street parking.

ü Dedicated parking – precursor to permit parking.

ü Municipal stables – precursor to the garage

ü Shared road with street cars – precursor to curb management.

Many of the same parking principles were prevalent even over 200 years ago focusing on managed parking in the sense of efficient use of space, safety and accessibility.  I’m sure everyone wanted to park their horse and buggy right in front of where they were going and there was plenty of ‘horse trading’ going on!

Our planning, design and construction is in an ever-changing state.  We are constantly transitioning and now more than ever we are in a fast chaotic space as it relates to the parking and mobility industry.  Technology is changing faster than we can say ‘technology.’ As tech changes so does human behavior and society. 

Let’s look at what is going on right now.  The Parking Industry is not just about  parking operators.  We are the drivers of technology, we are the tech leaders, critical thought leaders and connected partners leveraging parking dollars to create community sustainability, resiliency, and quality of life.

It’s all about parking, literally every conversation with the public and private sector includes parking.  Now, more than ever, it’s not just about how do we operate garages, but how do we repurpose garages, on street parking to include curb management and monetization, shared mobility options, seamless mobility, and apps, connected cars, and on demand transportation options.  We are living in a 24/7 world, juggling a macrocosm of outside forces coming at us fast and furious:

ü Shared Roads - We are designing our cities and towns to create safe and accessible shared roads through curb management initiatives for all types of vehicles, transit, bikes, and pedestrians.

ü Environmental collaboration - the Parking Industry is part of the environmental path including electric vehicle charger installations, green infrastructure initiatives to ensure water quality programming in our parking facilities, redesigning on street parking and managing the curb and decreasing carbon emissions related to delivery truck idling.

ü Electric Vehicles - We are already seeing a fast pace and collaborative verticals mainstreaming electric vehicles as they take center stage in mixed use development, zoning regulations, shared on demand technology, funding, and manufacturing.  With new emissions standards scheduled to take place by 2032, it is expected that 67% of new car sales will be electric.

ü Autonomous/self-driving vehicles - have been in the planning, design and testing phase for a while.  We still need to create safe, accessible, and affordable options which include construction and infrastructure changes as well as human behavior acceptance.  The buzz is that this will be more accepted before 2030 but I’m still on the fence.

ü Flying cars - As we run out of planet earth real estate, are flying cars that far off?  Not really.  It may seem like something out of a Jetson cartoon or Marvel movie, but it’s already in the planning, design and testing phase.  The construction and infrastructure phase will take some time which will require our garages and other mixed-use developments to be repurposed and reconstructed to accommodate flying cars in a safe and accessible space.

ü Shared Mobility - we are transitioning from vehicle ownership to on demand subscription/membership shared mobility platforms  including on demand transit, TNC’s, electric vehicle chargers, electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles and yes flying cars.

A lot is happening all at once! But let’s not forget that every community, every development, every town, and every city is at a different point in this ever-changing evolution.  Demographics, population, geography, behaviors are evolving at different paces.  What works in one place will be different in another.  With these differences come opportunities.

As parking and mobility leaders we are responsible for recognizing that our world is changing fast, to educate our customers and constituents and to partner with each other and be nimble.  Human behavior sometimes changes at a turtle pace.  And so goes society. Planning, Design and Construction will forever be evolving.

Our industry is at the epicenter of changing our world and our future.  We’ve come a long way, baby, giddyap!

First appeared in the June IPMI Parking and Mobility publication - https://parking-mobility-magazine.org/