If you think it takes forever to find a parking spot, you’re not entirely wrong. Americans spend an average of 17 hours a year looking for parking. In urban areas, that figure rises to up to 107 hours. The wasted time, fuel, and increased emissions have economic ramifications in the billions. There are health effects in pursuit of parking, too, with 61 percent of Americans reporting stress and 23 percent experiencing road rage.
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They paved paradise — so where’s my parking spot?
There are more parking spaces than people in America, but finding parking is still a problem to solve.
But a study examining the ratio of parking spaces to houses in five American cities found that homes were consistently dwarfed by the amount of available parking (New York City excluded, perhaps thanks to its vast public transit system and population density of 27,000 people per square mile). By a conservative estimate, there are about eight parking spots for every car in America. So why is it so hard to find a place to park when you need it?
Even though statistically there are enough spaces for the number of cars on the road, it’s all dependent on where you live. To state the obvious, an empty 400-car lot in Wyoming means nothing to a driver in congested downtown Boston. Urban planners have been hard at work trying to solve the parking problem for decades, and some cities continue to take heed. Entrepreneurs have entered the space too, with apps that let users reserve parking spaces ahead of time.
Another solution to parking woes is to drive a more compact car: As hard as it is to find one space, finding two to fit an SUV might truly be the stuff nightmares are made of. But you don’t necessarily have to trade the comfort of a big car in the process. The first-ever Lexus UX is a nimble luxury crossover specially engineered to fit into convenient “compact only” spots, with a 177-inch overall length and best-in-class 17.1 ft. turning radius. And even if you end up idling briefly for that perfect spot, the Lexus UX’s new-generation hybrid engine will maximize fuel efficiency while you do.