It's assumed the answer to my question is "yes"--some recent articles arguing for changing zoning requirements in the city to reduce the number of parking spaces required.
I'm not so sure. As long as people commute from the suburbs to the city for their jobs, it seems to me parking is going to be a problem. Yes, in some cases I can imagine a Reston commuter to DC getting a car at 7 for a 30 minute drive to DC, the car then returning to Reston to pick up another commuter at 8 for another 30 minute drive. But then it's going to need to be parked until the evening. So if the two individuals were each driving solo into the city and parking now, that would reduce the number of parking spots needed. But that's a special pattern
Granted, you can imagine with autonomous cars and a drive sharing app, we could have much more flexible drive sharing so the number of people in the car rises from 1 to 2 or more on average. And there likely will be realignment of jobs and homes based on the availability of autonomous cars.
My bottom line: the change requires people to change their habits, meaning it's going to take a while before the impact on parking spaces is felt.
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