How Japanese parking compares to America – and why we should strive to emulate them

Tokyo is a beautiful city – the bustling streets and flashing neon signs mix with quiet, residential areas condensed to a human scale, a unique blend of cutting-edge architecture and historic temples scattered throughout the metropolis. But there’s one thing you’ll rarely see in photos of Tokyo’s streets that significantly bolster their beauty – parked cars.

Since the passage of a 1962 law (which can be read here in Japanese and translated through Google Translate), on-street parking has been generally outlawed throughout not just Tokyo but the entire nation of Japan. According to the law, “no person may use any place on a road as a place to store a motor vehicle.” 

A car cannot be stored in the same location on the road for more than 12 hours, and it cannot be stored for more than eight hours overnight. Breaking this law is punishable by up to three months imprisonment or a fine of 200,000 yen (about $1400, which is nothing to scoff at).

There are less than 800 on-street parking locations in the entire nation of Japan as a result. Quite a few on-street metered parking spaces exist, but these are generally restricted to a single hour of parking or less.

This ban on street parking is just one facet of Japan’s parking industry, and the laws and development of this industry might be a key component of why Tokyo and Japan as a whole have not become nearly as car-dependent as the Western World.

What laws has Japan passed on parking?

As home to some of the biggest car manufacturers in the world, such as Toyota, Honda, Subaru, and Nissan, Japan does have fairly high rates of car ownership. This varies throughout the country, of course; for example, a 2008 estimate puts Tokyo’s car ownership rate at just 335 per 1,000 people.

Despite this, laws on parking are at a national level, and the aforementioned restrictions apply to the entire country. Even in more rural areas of Japan where cars might be more important, there is no leniency in these laws, which preserves the integrity of the roads throughout the country.

Although the ban on street parking might have had the unintended effect of reducing car ownership, this was not the stated purpose. Due to the narrow size of many streets in Japan, the influx of automobiles in the 1950s prompted Japanese authorities to intervene to make sure the roads were not hampered with parked cars.

Perhaps even more impactful than the ban on street parking is another article within the 1962 law that does indeed impact car ownership. In order for any person in Japan to own a motor vehicle, they must provide proof that they have a designated place to store the vehicle.

This parking place must be within two kilometers of the person’s home (or business in the case of a commercial entity) and the car must be able to fit entirely within the parking space. The owner of the car must also demonstrate that they have the right to use the land where the parking space is. 

Any time a vehicle is registered or when moving homes, a parking place certificate must be acquired. A small fee is owed, an extensive form must be filled out, and a location map plus layout of the parking space is required to be submitted to the local police. If the National Public Safety Commission has found that a person does not have a place to store their vehicle, they can restrict the owner from being able to drive it at all until a spot is secured.

Kei cars are generally excepted from this rule, and only a notification of the storage location is required. However, some locations still require parking place certificates even for kei cars, such as prefecture capitals, cities of over 100,000 people, and cities within 30 kilometers of urban centers.

This law shifts the onus of parking from the government or any business on to the owner of the vehicle itself. Along with a 1957 law that does not mandate any parking requirements for buildings under 2000 square meters, the parking system of Japan has differed dramatically from the Western world. According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), these three policies have had the indirect effect of transforming the Japanese parking industry into one that is market-oriented.

What’s it like in America?

Cars dominate the United States. According to the Department of State, 95% of American households own a car as of 2010, and 85% drive to work – only 5% consistently commute by public transit. These numbers have even increased since; as of 2017, 91% of people commute to work in personal vehicles, according to data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

The average American spends nearly an hour driving each day, yet they only travel about 30 miles. Only 15% of daily trips are for commuting – 45% are for shopping or errands, and 27% are for recreational purposes. Most Americans are driving short distances for tasks that could easily be done in another form of transit –  if one were provided, of course.

This differs starkly from Japan. Official government statistics show that in 2019, 25.2 billion trips were made by rail, almost five times more than trips taken by car. Similarly, 435 billion kilometers were traveled by rail, more than seven times more than by car. 

With how prevalent cars are in America, there needs to be somewhere to store them. Unlike in Japan, street parking is not banned at a national level, so all throughout the country you will find cars clogging up the streets. As has been pointed out by many before, it’s quite odd to allow someone to store their personal, private property in a public space. It’s fine for cars to be stored on the street, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a city in America that would let you put a desk or a couch on the side of the road without issue.

Of course, street parking is not the only place where cars are kept. Massive parking lots are built everywhere in the country. CNN states that there are nearly two billion parking spots in the United States that cover an area the size of Connecticut.

This parking often goes unused as well. Researchers at ETH Zurich stated that “the average car is parked for about 95% of its existence.” Excess parking is built to accommodate four or five peak days in the entire year near Christmas time in many American suburbs, while the rest of the year they are wasted.

These massive, empty spaces are truly being wasted, as Joe Minicozzi of Urban3 explains. In Peoria, Illinois, for example, parking is taxed at $1.40 per square foot, while buildings are taxed at $34.60, which incentivizes businesses to leave their parking as is and not develop the land. In Minicozzi’s words, “‘there’s a disincentive to add value to the community because the more value I add, the more taxes I pay.’”

This rate is even more egregious in Minneapolis, where some buildings are taxed at $65.34 per square foot, nearly 42 times higher than the parking. Due to minimum parking requirements, many facilities throughout the country are mandated to provide a certain number of parking spaces, and then disincentivized to remove these spaces because of the tax benefits they reap from this undeveloped land.

How street design and parking have shaped Japan

Given the previously mentioned laws in Japan, the parking situation is naturally different. Large scale parking lots do exist, especially in the suburbs, but most parking lots within the cities are tiny, fitting a small amount of cars, generally two to five. These are nestled throughout the urban fabric of the nation and, crucially, they can be used by anybody. Parking that was generally restricted to patrons of banks, restaurants, etc. can now be used by the general public.

These policy decisions made by the Japanese government led to the development of a market-based parking system, as the Asian Development Bank points out. What this means is that parking is provided on an as-needed basis, instead of being required to meet minimum standards like in the US. In fact, many suburban towns and smaller cities are finding that an oversupply of parking has become an issue.

This parking system has arisen as an indirect result of these policies. Since many homes and businesses are small (many are exempt from the minimum parking requirements thanks to the 1957 law), they do not provide parking, meaning that there is a market demand for off-street parking. 

The cost of equipment for parking, like ticket machines, is decreasing as well, which makes it more feasible for property owners to run small-scale parking lots at a profit. Furthermore, a 2006 revision of the Road Traffic Act of 1960 cracked down on illegal parking, further shifting demand towards these small-scale private lots. 

Beyond parking, the design of the streets and cars in Japan has shaped the urban landscape as well. Roads in Japan are quite narrow; according to the researchers from ETH Zurich, “the narrow roads are an inheritance from pre-Meiji urban design and show the inability of the planning system to have them widened since 1870, or even since the Second World War.”

Indeed, the Statistics Bureau of Japan reported that as of 2007, 86% of roads in the country are less than 3.5 meters wide, and 34.8% of all roads are too narrow for cars to fit. This is also taking into account that Japanese cars, such as kei cars, are far smaller than most American cars. The percentage of roads that could not accommodate American SUVs or pickup trucks would be far greater.

These narrow roads have remained since feudal times and have helped maintain the dense, human-scale of Japanese cities. The ADB notes that the proof-of-parking law “probably had the indirect effect of avoiding the pressure to increase street width standards for residential areas to accommodate parking,” which has, of course, led to smaller cars, less car dependency, and a focus on transit instead of predominantly car culture.

Lessons for America

Emulating the Japanese model would be ideal for America, and could help us to achieve the highly desirable density, walkability, and transit-oriented development. It is a shame that the researchers from ETH Zurich end their well-written article on Japanese parking with a decisive statement: “the Japanese path of development cannot be replicated elsewhere.”

Of course, doing so would not be easy. Political pressure and the will of the people would be a formidable obstacle, as would monetary costs, redesigns of streets, cities, zoning laws, etc. To replicate what the Japanese have done would indeed take decades of work, political savviness, planning, and manpower.

But it can be done. It is a difficult task, to be sure, but it is a task that can be done. To simply write off change as something that “cannot” be done is sheer folly. Banning street parking nationwide in America, like in Japan, would be a major step forward. To do so rashly would naturally be detrimental, as America does not have the public transit infrastructure like Japan does, and investments would need to be made to alleviate the dramatic reduction of parking.

Narrowing streets, allowing for more modes of transit, and a shift away from car-dependency would be required to improve our cities and our country. In the short-term, life would change drastically, and there would invariably be pain. But in the long-term, we’ll thank ourselves for what we do now as we reap the benefits later.

It will be expensive. It will be long. It will be difficult. But it is not something that “cannot” be done. There is nothing that we cannot do if we do not set our minds to it.