IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute

The purpose of this study has been to examine how municipal officials and politicians in the municipalities of the Västra Götaland Region (VGR) view the situation regarding car parking in their municipalities, and whether, and if so how, the governance and regulation of car parking is considered and applied as a climate policy instrument. As part of VGR’s work with Climate 2030, a number of "climate pledges" have been formulated that municipalities can adopt. One of these climate pledges specifically concerns the use of a climate-oriented parking plan/policy, so that the municipality carries out annual measures related to parking. Examples include enabling shared use of parking facilities, prioritizing visitor and commercial parking in central areas over other types of parking, ensuring that on-street parking is not subsidized compared to parking garages, enabling flexible parking requirements with incentives for carpooling, or decoupling parking costs from apartment rents. A survey was conducted among municipal officials in 32 of VGR’s 49 municipalities regarding their parking policies and climate commitments. 10 of these have adopted the climate pledge about parking as above.

The results show that small municipalities generally do not perceive major problems related to parking and car traffic and rarely use fees to regulate parking. Instead, time limits and pricing are used to improve parking availability and reduce long-term on-street parking. Larger municipalities, with over 10,000 inhabitants, do have parking strategies, but primarily aimed at managing urban space rather than reducing car traffic or emissions levels. As a follow-up to the survey, interviews were conducted with politicians in three VGR municipalities with 10,000 inhabitants or more. The main conclusions from these interviews are that parking fees and supply are generally not seen primarily as climate policy instruments. Municipalities do use car parking as a tool with time restrictions, and sometimes also parking fees in central urban areas but with the aim to manage urban space and facilitate parking access for visitors, rather than to mitigate climate impact.