Ensuring a city’s success and innovations based on urban assets requires connections and proximities, urban density and diversity of activities. A city can grow economically and socially without expanding if it is capable of more densely concentrating capital, jobs and social interactions. From this perspective, the efficient organisation of car-parking, evading a substantial increase of required parking spaces, has wide consequences for Tallinn’s economic growth, social cohesion and quality of life.
Searching for added value, metaPARK project views parking policy as an issue of urbanisation, quality-of-life and business, as a driver for better, more competitive and more pleasant Tallinn.
Currently, the dominant man-made land use in Tallinn is dedicated to cars. The space for pedestrians seems substantial but the bare measurement of brutto area of uses does not speak for their qualities and performances. Yet, this data can be used to trigger positive change in the next policies and try to reduce the ratio of parking and street surfaces in favour of other sustainable uses.
Key insights
- The number of cars was expected to grow to 425 per 1000 inhabitants nationally by 2020. This estimation was very modest, as the ratio is already 565 per 1000 (2018).
- The trend is even stronger in Harju County, which had 328 000 cars in 2015, a 56% increase in ten years from 210 000 cars in 2005.
- In the City of Tallinn, the trend of car-ownership is less clear, exhibiting a high degree of volatility. In 2017, Tallinn had 198 000 cars, or 446 cars per 1000 inhabitants.
- After 2005, traffic in the city centre was expected to grow annually by 1-2%. In reality, between 2013 and 2017, traffic in the city centre slightly decreased. One clear reason for this was the completion of the Järvevana tee renovation, where traffic has grown by 34%.
- In the rest of the city, the policy estimated 4-5% annual growth in car traffic after 2005, which would have led to a nearly 60% increase between 2005 and 2015. In reality, between 2012-2017, traffic inside Tallinn city grew by 9.5% and outside Tallinn (city border) by 26%.
- Inversely the aims of the development plan, the mobility share of public transport has gone down by 15 percent units in Tallinn between 2003 and 2016, from 51% to 36%.
- No information or prediction was available for the monitoring of taxi parking spaces and what became the explosive phenomenon of MaaS with Taxify and the easiness of taxi services via apps.
WALKABLE city center is an absolute must for all stakeholder groups. Public space (incl streets) have to be well designed and clean. Changing the door-to -door car culture means, that streets and other public spaces have to be walkable. The normal distance from parking place is 300m. Walkability is also important for shopping area and other venues – often the most difficult route to the venue is for pedestrians. Bus stops and venues are not well connected with pedestrian routes.
DEVELOPERS would like to decide themselves how many parking spaces are needed. City center shopping area developers might wish to have more parking, while apartment developers and office developers do not see the need to develop as much, especially when there is an existing good public transportation. Overall agreement was, that parking normative should be more flexible.
Park&RIde areas are small and there are not too many of them. From our study it appears, that people are organically organising new P&R areas in the fringes of city center. Some of them – like in Kristiine shopping area- also cause problems for the owners. There is surprisingly little knowledge about using P&R areas. Participants do not know, that using PT is free when using P&R. P&R also need more PR!
Lack of communication and acknowledgement of hidden fees of car use are most important findings in general. There is a need for better communication regarding P&R but also larger events (like Laulupidu or big concerts) when there are many people coming from outside the city. More acknowlegment is need for “hidden fees” being free parking – what car mobility does to our health, how much damage it does the environment, how much money is paid by the owners associations, cities and employers to provide free and maintained parking infrastructure. People expect to have free of cheap parking, but no not know its actual price.
Parking trends
Average parking fee per zone:
City center 2,6€
Piritia 1,1€
Downtown: 4,9€
Old Town: 6,1€
Average parking duration:
City center 107min
Piritia 110min
Downtown: 63min
Old Town: 62min€
Moving towards sustainable cities
Striking a positive balance between social cost and social benefit should be the key driver of parking policy.
Searching for added value, metaPARK project views parking policy as an issue of urbanisation, quality-of-life and business, as a driver for better, more competitive and more pleasant Tallinn.
First argument for a new parking policy is economic: reducing parking norms and opening for private-market provision opens new private investment opportunities in real-estate and housing. Densification, urban infill and new business opportunity would get a boost, making Tallinn more dynamic.
Immediately after that come environmental and social drivers. If the City needs less money for streets and less space for cars in public areas, it should open the possibility to improve public spaces, create better bike services, add urban green and make the city more liveable. Local (district) decisions on where and how to use the locally collected parking fees is central to the acceptance and success of new policy
Policy brief – In a nutshell
Fees
- Extend the paid parking zone beyond inner city
- Introduce performance-based parking fees, monitor occupancy
- Give local neighbourhoods power to decide over their parking income
- Limit free/cheap resident permits to invalids in real need
Normatives
- Establish an Active Transit Area ATA, based on data
- Define maximum cap for parking in new developments inside ATA
- Remove fixed parking requirements for new developments outside ATA
- Build mixed parking houses, do not burden new developments with neighbours’ lacking parking
Awareness
- Split sale of flats from parking spaces
- Create an awareness campaign on the cost of parking and sustainable mobility
- Introduce good apps that link mobility and parking
- Test resident and employee mobility packages
Space
- Give walking, bikes, public transit and shared e-cars priority in site layout
- Make pedestrian-friendly street design and add urban green, improve signage
- Support urban infill and historic heritage with all means
- Use shopping malls as park & ride
- Find place-based integrative solutions in housing districts
We propose to establish the Active Transit Area (ATA), defined as the area where public transport is the most accessible and efficient.
The logic is rather simple: on-street parking is on payment where public transport and fast efficient.
The more the public transport will be accessible and efficient, the larger the Active Transit Area will be. Once defined, the ATA will be used to apply parking caps, meaning that new detail-plans within the ATA will have to supply a maximum number of parking spaces (parking caps) instead of minimum. New developments outside the ATA should have no parking requirements and leave developers to decide for the amount of spaces provided based on market research and the projected demand.
This generates a self-reinforcing loop: the more the city invests on public transport – the more efficient it is. The more efficient is public transport, the less need there is for cars. The less need for cars, the more equitable and accessible is the city. The more equitable and accessible is the city, the lower car dependancy. The lower is the car dependency the higher the quality of life in the city. The higher the quality of life, the more people will attract. The more people will attract, the more financing will be available for public transit and so on…
