Metro Vancouver’s apartment on-street parking study results surprise

Early in June, I posted about a Metro Vancouver study on parking utilization rates for on-site parking within apartment buildings throughout the region. They found on average that one space was used per unit in the South of Fraser. Some units used more parking, while other units used less parking. They also found that the closer apartments are to high-quality transit, the less parking is utilized.

Map of apartment locations used in parking study. Select map to enlarge.

On-site parking is only one part of the equation, there is also on-street parking to consider. Metro Vancouver looked at the same 73 sites, including one in Langley City, to examine on-street parking utilization. They looked at on-street parking utilization within up to 200 metres of the apartments survived. This translates to an up to two-minute walk. They observed on-street parking at the following times: weekday evenings around 6:30pm, weekday late nights around 11:00pm, and Saturday evenings arounds 6:30pm.

One of the golden rules of parking management is to ensure that there is no more than 85% on-street parking utilization per block. This means that there should always be about one or two parking spaces available per block at any point in time.

Of all the times survived, the following locations exceeded 85% utilization of on-street parking within 200 metres in more than one survey period. The Langley City site was not on that list.

Map of sites with more than 85% utilization of on-street parking in 2 or more survey periods. Sites highlighted in red. Select map to enlarge.

Based on both the on-street parking information and the on-site parking information from earlier, the following table was developed. There were no locations where there was both high on-street and on-site parking utilization. In fact, the majority of apartment sites had both low on-street and on-site parking utilization.

Table of on-street versus on-site apartment parking. Select table to enlarge.

These results don’t surprise me as there are whole blocks in my neighbourhood, which has a high concentration of apartments, with no cars parked on the streets most of the time.

The Metro Vancouver survey looked at one site in Langley City. It would be worthwhile to perform a in-depth study around parking in Langley City which could be used to updated parking policies and requirements in our community, looking at all housing and business types.

Townhouses were not part of the Metro Vancouver study. It would be interesting to have a region-wide study to quantify the typical on-street and on-site parking utilization rates for this type of housing form.