Public Policy Lab conducted this research to provide concrete data on how street space is allocated in Malé – how much is occupied by parked vehicles, how this affects mobility and safety, and what the implications are for urban design.
This short paper outlines the results of data collection on the space taken up by street parking in Malé City. The study involved measuring how the widths of 27 different streets were used, with measurements from points across the length of each street sampled, to analyse how the total width of streets were utilized.
This is a short study to highlight a general problem: the amount of space in our public areas and streets which has become unusable from a human-centric perspective because it is occupied by parked vehicles.
This issue is exacerbated by the high rate of vehicle ownership in Malé. Considering that vehicles are only in use for a small percentage of the day, they spend most of their time doing nothing except taking up physical space on our streets. Parked vehicles also constrict the remaining street width, leading to increased traffic, reducing ability to implement comprehensive public transport, causing urban heat sink effects, and even preventing access for cars or ambulances in many smaller streets.
These numbers are not a numerical measurement of the total percentage of street area taken up in the city. For future studies wishing to do a more thorough analysis of the overall square footage of streets and how they are used, drone photography might be a way forward. We attempted other methods like analysing from satellite images, but between things like coverage by trees or building angles in many streets and a low resolution of images, calculating this was not possible.
Our approach with limited resources was manual sampling by driving to a shortlisted set of streets near randomly selected coordinates, making sure to select different types of streets from very narrow ones to larger main roads. We took 133 samples from 27 streets. This process took around 19 hours. For effective use of laser rulers, it had to be done at night. For higher-traffic areas, sometimes we had to wait for a lull in traffic to take measurements.
At each sample location, five measurements were taken with a laser ruler held at successive points across the street width:
Physically, this means the laser pointer was held at the following points (assuming the near side is the left, with the measurement taker moving from left to right):
Only 56.5% of the drivable width of roads – just over half of the entire drivable width – is actually usable for driving. Out of the full width of roads, only 50% is actually usable for driving.
For either driving or walking (including the drivable area and pavement), only around 61.4% of the width of these roads is usable. For an average street, this means around 38.6% of its total width cannot be used for either walking or driving because it is blocked by parked vehicles.
Ambulances have similar, if not slightly larger, width dimensions to cars, so they face the same issue. Ambulances are unable to reach the doorstep of many homes. They would not be able to fit safely through around 41% of the roads surveyed, including to the buildings on them. With street parking cleared, however, ambulances would be able to reach every doorstep.
Currently, a significant limiting factor for the widespread use of public transport is the limited number of bus routes and stops:
Replacing private vehicle rides with public transport leads to more efficient fuel use. Furthermore, electrifying a fleet of buses and setting up a single charging station is far easier as a first step than replacing thousands of private vehicles with e-bikes and installing dozens of charging stations, although the eventual goal would also include transitioning to e-bike use.
Public transport is a more effective use of space and fuel, reducing overall traffic. One person on a motorcycle, including the necessary safety buffer space between vehicles, occupies around 36 square feet. In contrast, a person seated on a bus takes up only about 4 square feet. On a double-decker bus, two people can occupy that same footprint.
The road space required for just one person on a motorcycle could accommodate 18 people seated comfortably in an air-conditioned double-decker bus.
Without parking clogging our streets, we could have a much higher volume of public transport that reaches more doorsteps.
Without so many vehicles causing congestion, introducing more buses would be practical, as there would be fewer motorcycles frustrated by them.
Without so much of streets' width being blocked by parked vehicles, buses would not block the drivable part of streets because motorcycles would have ample space to drive around and past them.
With more bus stops closer to homes and offices, people would not have to walk long distances in the heat.
Short walks would not be as unpleasant without heat-absorbing metal and rubber from motorcycles blasting heat out, and without heavy hydrocarbon pollutants sitting close to the ground and retaining heat.
This is especially true if the added space can be used for more shade, like trees and reflective shading, to reduce the urban heat island effect.