I agree that allocation is hard and in particular that if regulations overboard with trying to ensure that there will always be more handicapped spots than there are people who need them, there’s a point at which adding spots becomes net negative.
Indeed. The difficult question, of course, is: what exactly constitutes “going overboard”, here? How often is it acceptable for a handicapped person to need a reserved parking spot, but not be able to get one (because they’re all full)? Whatever answer we come up with, I sure don’t envy the politician who has to defend that answer to the public!
But also, how would we come up with an answer? (Would we have to go all the way to fully general utilitarianism, where we calculate how many utils are lost by the average disabled person who has to park in a regular spot, and how many utils are lost by the average non-disabled person who has to park slightly further away due to the presence of empty reserved spots? How would we account for the effect of the presence and number of reserved spots on people’s behavior?)
How do these decisions actually get made? Like, in real life—how is it determined that there shall be this many handicapped spots in a shopping center parking lot?
In other words—you write:
Third, because if you’re a decision-maker of any kind, recognizing a handicapped parking situation means you have the opportunity to be conscious about allocation choices, or look for ways to make allocation smarter and more flexible.
Do you know of any resources that go into detail on this? Are there such?
I didn’t know much about this subject when I made the original post, because I was interested in handicapped parking as a design pattern rather than a specific topic, but it turns out that the ADA has a very clear answer: 2-4% of all spaces, with a minimum of 1 space.
I don’t know how they came up with that percentage or if there’s any mechanism for updating it based on the prevalence of mobility limitations. Requirements are considerably higher for hospitals and rehab facilities, which does seem sensible.
This is a topic I’d like to learn more about sometime. I imagine it causes some tension for urbanist types because they tend to love accessibility but hate parking space mandates.
Indeed. The difficult question, of course, is: what exactly constitutes “going overboard”, here? How often is it acceptable for a handicapped person to need a reserved parking spot, but not be able to get one (because they’re all full)? Whatever answer we come up with, I sure don’t envy the politician who has to defend that answer to the public!
But also, how would we come up with an answer? (Would we have to go all the way to fully general utilitarianism, where we calculate how many utils are lost by the average disabled person who has to park in a regular spot, and how many utils are lost by the average non-disabled person who has to park slightly further away due to the presence of empty reserved spots? How would we account for the effect of the presence and number of reserved spots on people’s behavior?)
How do these decisions actually get made? Like, in real life—how is it determined that there shall be this many handicapped spots in a shopping center parking lot?
In other words—you write:
Do you know of any resources that go into detail on this? Are there such?
I didn’t know much about this subject when I made the original post, because I was interested in handicapped parking as a design pattern rather than a specific topic, but it turns out that the ADA has a very clear answer: 2-4% of all spaces, with a minimum of 1 space.
I don’t know how they came up with that percentage or if there’s any mechanism for updating it based on the prevalence of mobility limitations. Requirements are considerably higher for hospitals and rehab facilities, which does seem sensible.
This is a topic I’d like to learn more about sometime. I imagine it causes some tension for urbanist types because they tend to love accessibility but hate parking space mandates.