Next, cities can also use a shared parking model to accommodate reduced parking requirements. This will reduce the need to build more parking by activating unused office or apartment parking at times of the day when the spaces typically sit empty. “Shared parking is a mechanism that leverages complementary land uses peak parking by allowing them to share those spaces, instead of building individual spaces for each use,” says Nichols. “This opens an opportunity to provide parking without building more parking spaces for customers, workers, residents, even delivery drivers. Allow shared parking and you get a cost-effective approach to address parking shortfalls, while increasing the capacity of each parking space in the system.  This opens more land for uses other than parking and reduces overall development costs, which can have the parallel effect of lowering rents.”

Using the cash flow from paid parking is another way to fund more transit projects, which in the long-term will accommodate reduced parking. “Implementing paid parking can also be leveraged to fund mobility options based on a city's transportation, economic, and sustainability goals,” says Nichols. “Parking meter revenue can fund bicycle, pedestrian, and transit related improvement and operations that decrease the need for car ownership, which ties back into reducing minimum parking requirements.”

While new technologies have created less of a reliance on cars, car ownership is still increasing, and while it is good for developers to look ahead, it may be too early to opt out of parking altogether. “Nationwide vehicle ownership by household has increased since 2006, likely the result of a stable economy and low unemployment rate. Further, given the suburbanization of poverty and jobs/housing/transit mismatch many workers, who don't have a transit option, rely on their car to get to work,” says Nichols.