As London’s population grows, so does the strain on its infrastructure. Road congestion is just one symptom of a world city approaching mega city status of 10m inhabitants.
So, what is happening on London’s roads and why does it matter for the residential sector?
Ultimately, responsibility for controlling congestion and the problems it brings, such as pollution and its impact on productivity and quality of life, lies with the mayor and Transport for London.
Limiting the number of vehicles on the roads is very much a carrot-and-stick approach. Congestion charges, road tax, high VAT on petrol, all help in discouraging those who own and drive cars. Infrastructure such as cycle super highways, quiet ways and conducive road layouts also help to encourage participation rates for two wheels over four.
Not being able to park a car near to where you live is also a very good deterrent.
EG has tracked car and cycle parking provision in London’s new-build sector through London Residential Research data. Included are all schemes of five units or more across the inner boroughs and 10 units or more across the outer boroughs. The figures are stark.
Over the past 14 years, cycle provision in new-build developments has increased by 3,250%. Back in 2004 just 0.04% of homes came with a spot to park your bike. In 2017, that figure is now 1.3 spaces per home. Over the same period, car-parking provision has dropped by 60%, going from 0.78 to 0.31, across the whole of London.
The benefit of fewer cars and more bikes on London’s roads is obvious from a health point of view, with less congestion and pollution. But what about in the property and real estate world?
Placemaking and increased footfall, with all that they entail, are the obvious benefits.
Moreover, less basement car parking in new housing developments means a quicker build, as well as improved viability due to lower costs. Also, less surface-level car parking allows more space for housing. Simplistically, whether schemes are in inner London, Zones 1 and 2, where they are much more likely to be built at basement level; or in outer London, where surface-level car parking is more common, it would seem providing fewer car parking spaces is desirable in both cost reduction and increased density.
However, that crude assumption does not take into account that many house buyers both want and need a car, where locations depend on more than just public transport, as well as those who simply can afford the luxury.
With new-build house prices in general now so exorbitant across the capital, many purchasers have the wherewithal to also own a car. Therefore, developers need to offer car parking provision to appease buyers, certainly in upper prime markets, or potential customers will go elsewhere.
LRR has tracked the cost of car parking spaces in developments across the capital for many years, with those schemes due for completion in 2019 averaging £50,000. The most expensive is Almacantar’s Centre Point, WC1, where a parking space will cost £200,000.
A car parking space in Almacantar’s Centre Point, WC1, will cost £200,000
In short, providing car parking spaces not only comes with a windfall for the space itself, it most likely helps with sales rates and is often a necessity when competing with other schemes.
It is no surprise to see Kensington & Chelsea, the City and Westminster at the top of the list, with Barking and Dagenham and Sutton at the bottom when it comes to their cost, or opportunity, depending on your stance.
The fall in car parking provision over the past decade is therefore more due to planning policy and developers maxing out their option.
However, with a slowdown at the top of the market, less overseas money and more homes specially for the build-to-rent market, are things about to change?
At the time of the last census in 2011, those in owner occupied housing averaged 0.8 cars per household. The corresponding figure for non-owner-occupied housing was 0.4. It is a fact that homeowners are twice as likely to own a car than renters. With the nascent build-to-rent sector, the split is arguably even greater with those schemes close to city centres and transport connections.
Take Get Living London’s latest approval at East Village, for example. The wider estate comprises 1,500 homes across the former Olympic Village. Many more phases are still to come. The latest was revised this year, after initially being approved in 2014. Instead of landbanking, the developer was seeing what worked and what didn’t in the day-to-day management of the asset, so that phases further down the line are operationally improved.
The latest iteration sees not only the number of homes increased by 24%, the number of car parking spaces has reduced from 90 to 16 and the cycle parking provision has bumped up from 509 to 844.
Neil Young, chief executive of Get Living, says: “At East Village, we have found that our residents are much more likely to be cyclists than they are car owners. While just 25% of our 1,500 homes use a car parking space, we have had to increase our bike storage spaces to cope with the demand.”
As EG data shows, the trends are clear. Even though demand and the cost of car parking spaces rise (the cost of course could be partly attributed to lack of supply), parking provision in residential schemes has continued to fall. At the same time, cycle provision has exploded, encouraging more sustainable forms of transport.
Can London’s mayor do more though? Sadiq Khan certainly seems so.
In the recent Transport Strategy, the draft of which was published in June 2017, he says: “Through TfL and the boroughs, the mayor will impose high expectations on developers to deliver transport solutions that will promote sustainable mode shift and reduce road congestion.” The strategy goes on to say that the mayor will “restrict car parking provision within new developments, with those locations more accessible to public transport expected to be car-free”.
The Transport Strategy also says: “New parking standards may be developed (through the new London Plan) to ensure car-lite development.” What those new standards will be, like much of the detail in the London Plan, remain unknown until its next draft in November.
What is assured in the new London Plan, however, is the dependence on town centres, and the resulting increased densities around areas of good transport connectivity, which the mayor sees as pivotal in hitting housing targets.
With that in mind, schemes that are car-free and cycle-heavy will surely be prominent.
One borough that has become synonymous with cycling in recent years is Hackney. According to 2011 census data, 15% of Hackney residents travel to work by bicycle. That does not mean much six years on, as that figure will have risen further. For context, however, back in 2011 the closest borough to Hackney was Islington at 10%, the average across all 33 boroughs was just 4%.
Many factors have an impact on cycling, and participation levels differ across the capital for understandable reasons. Hackney being on the City fringes is a short distance to a host of areas where there are ample job opportunities. A lack of Tube stations and a relatively young, creative and transient community give rise to cycling numbers far above the London average.
How much of this is due to market forces and how much is engineered is hard to measure. Anecdotally, however, it would seem that Hackney as a council does more than most to encourage cycling use.
Pembury Circus, a scheme by Peabody completed around two years ago, was originally proposed with separate, but near identical applications, one with 80 car parking spaces and one without. Hackney refused the scheme with parking. It is thought to be one of the largest schemes in Europe to be car-free.
With the huge increase in recent years of private hire taxis, many are using cars more than ever, just not their own. With the promise of driverless cars, combined with the technology of hail riding apps, the essence of cars being “stationary” could soon become obsolete in city centres at least.
Moda Living recently announced a partnership with taxi firm Uber to reduce the amount of car parking provision in a development in Manchester. In return for the lack of a car parking space, tenants get £100 in Uber credits every month instead.
Technological advances mean basement levels may need to be repurposed sooner rather than later if the advances in car automation are to be believed.
But will that mean even more cars on the roads?
Repurposing road layouts, highways and public realm to give pedestrians and cyclists greater priority over cars is already happening, much to the dismay of drivers. Major junctions such as Archway, Blackfriars Circus and Stockwell have been remodelled to improve the pedestrian environment. More, such as Old Street Roundabout, are to follow.
The extent of the cycle superhighways continues to enlarge. Just this week consultation was launched for the CSH4 route, with more than 4km of segregated cycle tracks proposed, stretching from Tower Bridge to Greenwich. This goes along with CSH9, which was proposed last week, another 6km linking Kensington Olympic with Brentford, with segregated track.
London falls well short of the likes of Copenhagen and Amsterdam, and many other European cities, particularly in Scandinavia, when it comes to cycling. But then London is a beast of its own, with none of those approaching 10m inhabitants.
In short, developers should get used to the new playing field, with both planning policy dictating ample cycle provision, and increasingly car-free schemes. The good news, especially if you are in the build-to-rent market, is that tenants will most likely be happy with that arrangement.
To send feedback e-mail paul.wellman@egi.co.uk or tweet @paulwellman eg or @estatesgazette
