Description
This research explores the potential impacts of California parking cash-out policy changes on the Bay Area and LA County. Parking cash-out—a California law since 1992—requires that certain qualifying employers who subsidize employee parking offer employees the option to give up their parking space and receive cash instead. Studies show parking cash-out substantially reduces VMT and emissions, yet enforcement remains voluntary. Current policy covers few firms (<1%) and employees (around 11%) in the study regions. Policy reform to include companies with 20+ employees could increase this to 18%. Our experimental-design survey (n=963) explores behavioral changes in response to multiple policy variables and finds that 76.9% of employees would accept cash-out if offered, and that participants who had to pay the market rate for parking and were full-time commuters were more likely to switch to using public transportation at lower cash minimums. VMT related to employees covered by parking cash-out are substantial (5.6 million in the Bay Area; 5.7 million in LA County), and account for a combined 6,593 daily tons of GHG. As even limited adoption could have significant environmental benefits, parking cash-out would be a more cost-effective approach to reducing VMT than traditional TDM programs such as trip-reduction programs, workplace parking taxation, or transit subsidies and road diets, though further evidence on the direct influence of parking cash-out on commuter behavior is needed.
Publication Date
8-2024
Publication Type
Report
Topic
Planning and Policy, Sustainable Transportation and Land Use, Workforce and Labor
Digital Object Identifier
10.31979/mti.2024.2335
MTI Project
2335
Mineta Transportation Institute URL
https://transweb.sjsu.edu/research/2335-Parking-VMT-Pollution-Equity
Keywords
Parking, Vehicle miles of travel, Travel demand management, Transportation equity, Pollution
Disciplines
Environmental Policy | Public Policy | Transportation | Urban Studies and Planning
Recommended Citation
Fynnwin Prager, Tianjun Lu, Ashley Membere, and Parveen Chhetri. "Is Parking Cash-Out Worth It? Comparing Cost-Effectiveness and Climate and Equity Benefits in the Bay Area and South Coast Air Quality Management Districts" Mineta Transportation Institute (2024). https://doi.org/10.31979/mti.2024.2335
Research Brief
Included in
Environmental Policy Commons, Public Policy Commons, Transportation Commons, Urban Studies and Planning Commons
