This section examines the research covered to date on
work place parking. A large body of work has been
completed but it is the subtleties of the findings that are
the most interesting, the most noticeable of which are
presented here. Shoup (1997a) has carried out a consider-
able amount of work in the area of work place parking.
He presented the results of eight firms studied complying
with California’s parking cash out requirement. He found
that for the 1694 employees of the eight firms the number
of solo drivers to work fell from 76% to 63% after cashing
out. The number of car poolers increased from 14% to
23%, the number of transit riders from 6% to 9%, the
number walking increased from 2% to 3% and those
cycling increased from 0.8% to 0.9%. Low-priced or free
employer-provided parking at the workplace may discou-
rage use of public transport (Merriman, 1998).
There are numerous ways to address workplace parking.
Parking charges can be applied (or increased), the number
of parking spaces can be reduced or some reserved for
car sharers, a benefit-in-kind tax can be applied to
the provision of spaces, a workplace parking levy can
be applied by the local authorities, or employees can even be offered a cash-value in lieu of a parking space, typically
referred to as a cash out.
There have been a number of recent studies which
addressed the business response to the implementation of
workplace parking levies (Gerrard et al., 2001; MVA Ltd.
and WS Atkins Ltd., 1999; Wang and Sharples, 1999).
Most employers stated that they would pay the levy rather
than reduce the number of parking spaces or pass on the
cost to their employees. Many employers are concerned
that parking measures devalue the fringe benefits of their
employees, and thus will compensate for any effects of the
measures on their employees (Van der Mede and Visser,
1999). Hence, the effectiveness of a workplace parking levy
will be severely affected by whether an employer passes on
the levy to employees or reduces the number of parking
spaces available (Van Vuren and Johnson, 2000). Further-
more, an employer may not be willing to introduce parking
measures that will discourage employees from travelling to
work or which force them to use less convenient modes
of travel to work which could have repercussions for
punctuality and attendance (Simpson, 2001).