Is Parking Cash-Out Worth it? Comparing the Cost-Effectiveness and Climate and Equity Benefits in the Bay Area and South Coast Air Quality Management Districts

This research will evaluate the challenges, cost-effectiveness, and opportunities of implementing California's parking cash-out policy in the San Francisco Bay Area and South Coast Air Quality Management Districts (AQMD) in California. The objectives of this project are to

• Identify the current status of the parking cash-out policy in California;
• Investigate the equity dimensions and behavioral implications of this policy; and
• Explore the cost-effectiveness in terms of climate benefits of implementing the parking cash-out policy.

The project team will

•  Develop a model to estimate employee parking based on existing parking inventory;
•  Conduct a statewide survey (using a crowd-sourced online survey platform: Amazon Mechanical Turk) with the goal of designing an experiment to evaluate the willingness and behaviors of utilizing the parking cash-out policy; and 
•  Conduct a cost-effectiveness analysis to estimate the VMT and emission reduction of enforcing parking cash-out policy as compared to other potential sustainable transportation strategies in California.