Remembering Donald Shoup, free parking foe

Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking

"It's unfair to have cities where parking is free for cars and housing is expensive for people."

"When we compare the cost of parking with other costs in the transportation system, we can see that the parking supply is probably worth more than all the motor vehicles in the U.S. Because drivers pay almost nothing to park, the subsidy is staggering, about the size of the Medicare or national defense budgets."

— Donald Shoup

UCLA Professor Donald Shoup, one of the most influential planning thinkers of our time, died February 6. In his book, The High Cost of Free Parking, he explained what misguided parking policies have done to America. The book is full of outrage, but also humor making it remarkably entertaining.

Ann Cheng, a board member at the Parking Reform Network and previous El Cerrito city council member, reflected on his passing: 

“Donald Shoup let his light shine and sparked countless thousands to his cause of transforming parking into anything else. He did this through ingenious edutainment. He says he has to be funny before anyone will take parking seriously. Nothing could be truer. He clearly articulated how excess parking deeply exacerbates inequality and reliably gives us the asphalt-coated communities most of us actually don't want. “