Quick Math

Think about what it takes for every person who comes to work at an office job downtown to drive there. As a general rule, every office worker is budgeted about 125 square feet of space for their daily activities. On the other hand, when designing a parking lot, ‘transportation planners’ dedicate 300 square feet to every spot. Now consider the absurdity of attempting to build a vibrant downtown which is dependent on the automobile. About 2 ½ as much space would be needed for parking as for general office functions.

But let’s say for a minute that you decided that parking ramps were, in fact, the motif by which you wanted to characterize your city. Currently, there are about 50,000 people per day working downtown. Let’s say the ten year goal is to increase employment by 20% and every one of our new employees wants to drive to work. Let us put aside the purely spatial concerns in locating this many new parking spaces, which are by no means minimal (about 3,000,000 sq. ft. - as a point of reference, the entirety of the newly renovated LCo at Exchange is about 600,000 sq. ft. so think of 5 structures the size of LCo built for and surrendered to parking cars!). Speaking in monetary terms only, on the conservative side, each ramp space will cost about $15,000 to build. For 10,000 structured parking spaces, then, will cost $150 million to house the cars these new workers come in.

fill'er up!