Skip to Content
Streetsblog New York City home
Streetsblog New York City home
Log In
Air Quality

Report: Pollution From U.S. Parking Spaces Costs Up to $20 Billion Per Year

Parking spaces keep getting more costly.

false

As we often discuss on Streetsblog, parking encourages people to drive rather than ride transit, bike, or walk. And all that asphalt also taxes sewer systems by making vast swaths of urban and suburban land impermeable.

But an overlooked cost is that building and maintaining each parking space belches out poisonous emissions at a prodigious rate -- in some ways rivaling emissions from driving. That's the big news from a study by the University of California Transportation Center.

UCTC researchers analyzed the environmental impact of U.S. parking infrastructure as a whole. Their research compiled the total noxious emissions produced in the process of building and maintaining parking lots -- from materials mining to asphalt production, transport and, finally, construction and repair.

Their "life-cycle" analysis showed that each parking space in the United States comes at an annual cost of $6-$23 in health and environmental damages to society caused by air pollution alone. Nationwide, that adds up to between $4 billion and $20 billion annually.

The wide range is due to the difficulty of estimating the total amount of parking in the United States. Researchers examined multiple scenarios -- the low-end estimate being 722 million parking spaces, the high-end more than 2 billion -- based on available data.

For certain pollutants -- such as sulfur dioxide and coarse particle pollution -- the emissions caused by parking spaces were actually greater or equal to the amounts produced by driving.

Yet another reason why reforming policies like mandatory parking minimums will result in better public health and wellbeing.

"We hope that our life-cycle assessment will help planners and public officials understand the full cost of parking," the research team told UCTC's ACCESS magazine (edited by UCLA professor Donald Shoup). "Underpriced parking not only increases automobile dependence but is also environmentally damaging to construct and maintain."

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog New York City

Adams Keeps Park Row Car Free, Will Cut Cop Parking

Bringing cars back to Park Row would spell disaster, according to the city.

January 24, 2025

DOT to Albany: Don’t Forget to Reauthorize Our Life-Saving Speed Cameras

New York City's speed cameras are an unqualified success, but they still need to be renewed.

January 24, 2025

OPINION: Slow Down on Our Bike Paths!

Our bike lanes have become what social critic Ivan Illich once defined as degraded public space. Here's one possible fix.

January 24, 2025

Friday’s Headlines: Ice Ice Baby Edition

Icy bike lanes posed hazards for New York City cyclists all week, but temperatures are finally going to get above freezing today. Plus more news.

January 24, 2025

Congestion Relief Zone is Also a CRASH Relief Zone: Data

Congestion pricing critics will have one less reason to say the toll isn't working

January 23, 2025
See all posts