Parking requirements hide the cost of storing a vehicle in housing costs, making driving a more attractive option for vehicle owners than using alternative modes of transportation.This study uses data from the 2013 American Housing Survey to determine if the presence of bundled parking is associated with a household’s transportation mode choice. After controlling for differences in socioeconomic and built environment characteristics, the presence of bundled parking is found to be associated with a 27 percent increase in vehicle miles traveled. Bundled households drive approximately 3,800 miles more, spend nearly $580 more on gasoline, and emit 14.47 more metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. Bundled parking is also negatively correlated to transit use, and households with unbundled parking are significantly more likely to be frequent transit users. This provides further evidence for the already strong case against parking requirements.

The population of California is aging as life expectancy increases and birth rates decline. Projections from the U.S. Census Bureau show that by 2030, the number of seniors in California will increase to 10.6 million, almost a quarter of the state population. Closely related, but far less studied, is the aging of the workforce as the population ages and many older people delay retirement either because they enjoy working or depend upon earned income to meet their needs. From a recent low of less than 6 percent of the working population, the share of employed Americans who are older than age 60 has climbed to over 10 percent of all workers and is projected to exceed 13 percent of the employed population by the middle of the next decade. The objective of this study is to determine, using data from the California Household Travel Survey, whether there is a relationship in California between mobility (e.g. access to an automobile, the physical ability to drive, living in transit-accessible locations or proximate to business centers, and working from home) and delayed retirement. Delayed retirement will be measured as those who remain in the paid workforce past age 60. Specific research questions that will be explored include: Are the elderly who continue to work those living closer to jobs and transit routes and are they more able to drive or travel by public transit than those who have retired? Longitudinal trends will be examined using one earlier CHTS. While important statistical associations are expected to emerge from this analysis, they will not tell the whole story because it is difficult to disentangle cause from effect. Do people continue to drive or live near transit so that they can go to work or do they continue to go to work because they are able to drive or use public transit? To explore subtle causal relationships, the research team also will conduct interviews of older workers and recent retirees. The interviews will enable researchers to complement the statistical findings with insights from qualitative descriptions of personal decision making about work, residence, and commuting. The results of the qualitative analysis will allow useful interpretations of and lend confidence to the results of the quantitative analysis.