One expert recently put some numbers to the amount of parking in the United States:

According to Donald Shoup, an urban planner and parking research pioneer at the University of California, Los Angeles, the government doesn’t track the number of parking spaces. But speaking with WSJ, he estimates that on the low end, the U.S. has at least 700 million parking spaces, and on the high end, the estimate is more like 2 billion. That works out to somewhere between 2.5 and 7.0 parking spaces per registered vehicle in America.

As this article goes on to note, some believe that is way too many parking spots. (Hence, the /s tag on the post title.) All of that parking takes up a lot of space, continues to further the commitment in communities to driving, and has negative environmental consequences.

At the same time, I could imagine many drivers in the United States like having all of this available parking and might even want more spots. In a car-dependent society, people need a place to park. People expect to be able to find parking quickly and close to their destination. If parking is limited and/or costly, drivers will express frustrations. Some might note that even if they wanted to use other forms of transportation (and avoid parking issues), these are not always available or convenient.

Commitments to reduce the number of parking spots in the United States long-term probably requires a lot of small changes to different parts of planning and communities. Just as a quick example, increased mass transit use and service would help reduce the number of drivers and reduce the need for parking spots. But, that chain does not happen quickly and there are multiple levers to move. I wonder if one of the important moves would be for some key communities to change their parking guidelines, find that it works or is successful (and also enables other good opportunities for land use), and this becomes a model for others to follow.