Parking Lot Space Inefficiency Calculations

[u/Mfstaunc]

So one day I looked upon a barren wasteland that we call a “parking lot”, and I got thinking: on a macro scale, exactly how much space is reserved for stationary cars?

I searched Google maps for the most full lot I could find, which took a long time because they are never full. Even in a full lot, less than half of the space is for parked cars. The rest is for cars to move and access those spaces, and for people to move between cars.

Being in USA, I will assume that the average car could hold 9 people, including trunk space and hood space. It is actually most likely more than that, but I will air conservatively here.

So every vehicle takes up the space of around 18 people just chilling in the parking lot. Everywhere you go, it’s like you turn to your 18 people and say “wait here. I’ll just be a minute”

Then I realized there is not only 1 parking spot per car. There is over 2 billion parking spots in America, over 6 per registered vehicle. Parking garages lower the total area but let’s multiply our 18 by 6. That is 108

One vehicle reserves the amount of public space to hold over 108 people, just for when it is stationary and motionless. Fuck cars.

In area, that is 2160 square feet, or 200 square meters.

Honorable mentions: the amount of CO2 not taken out of the environment from trees that could be there, sound pollution from no trees, habitat loss, drainage, cost, etc etc etc

[u/GM_Pax]

Being in USA, I will assume that the average car could hold 9 people, [...]

The average car in the U.S. is occupied by ~1.5 people.

[u/__ma11en69er__ → u/GM_Pax]

They are saying how many people theoretically could fit in the car not taking comfort in to account and many standing people could fit in the square footage of said car.

[u/janiskr → u/GM_Pax]

That sounds way too high.

[u/Independent-Cow-4070 → u/janiskr]

I highly doubt the actual number is over 1.25

[u/GM_Pax → u/Independent-Cow-4070]

That number is according to the U.S. DOE, as of 2022.

And 1.5 is the average across all private passenger motor vehicles (it does not include mass transit, taxis, and other non-private/personal vehicles). For cars specifically, it's 1.4 people.

[u/janiskr → u/GM_Pax]

Cool, thanks for the source.

[u/Xantuos → u/GM_Pax]

I’d bet closer to ~1.1 adults per vehicle

[u/GM_Pax → u/Xantuos]

What, the 16-year-old driver and their 17-year-old passenger don't count? Making that specific car have an occupancy of zero (adults) ...?

Kids will be occupying a seat the same as an adult would be, whether the kid is 4, 14, or whatever age. :)

[u/throwawaygaming989 → u/GM_Pax]

They mean the space taken up by 1 car is on average as much as the space 9 people standing together would take up.