Life Lessons from Dr. Donald Shoup
Article by Jessica Alba and Lauren Mattern
Losing Dr. Donald Shoup in our industry in early February has been surprisingly hard. He’d clearly led a long and full life but somehow still had a youthful and always-evolving energy that tricked you into thinking he was invincible. I suppose that’s because his ideas are invincible.
His work was central to the effectiveness of the TDM practice. He of course championed the parking policies at the heart of demand management and positioned parking management as perhaps one of the most critical elements of a TDM plan. Reducing parking supply, unbundling parking costs, and market-rate parking pricing rank among some of our most effective industry tools - all concepts Shoup best articulated for us. In our early work on TDM and parking projects, it was Shoup’s data that pushed parking into TDM plans. He amped up our mode shift gains: his reforms were the perfect complement to strategies that boost walking, transit use, and biking. Simply put, he made our industry much more effective.
Beyond the canon of his work, there was much to admire. Here are some of the life lessons we picked up from him over the years:
- Be dignified but not too serious. Shoup loved a self-deprecating joke. Laughter diffuses tension on challenging topics
- Be prepared. Yet he was no joke – he prepared extensive notes for remarks he delivered – the academic’s way. He chose his words very carefully and was always extraordinarily prepared. Noone is too smart, good, or famous to show up underprepared.
- Be kind. He was surprisingly kind. You can see it in how many people feel empowered by him. He dished out compliments when deserved.
- Focus on where your unique value add is. His ideas extended far beyond on parking policy but he was so extraordinarily useful on this orphaned topic no one was paying enough attention to. There is a great deal of bad parking, traffic, and congestion policy masked as irrefutable science. He likely understood his economics training would be most useful pointed toward that type of challenge.
- Recognize bad science and false precision. There is plenty of this left to interrogate in the planning world – so buckle up and channel Shoup.
He accomplished so much and there is so much left for us to do.
When we began working on parking reform projects in the 2000s in San Francisco, it was much more of an uphill battle than today. Most practitioners were dismissive at best, and many openly hostile to the concepts that parking was overbuilt and poorly managed. There was, frankly, ideological warfare in the industry on the topics he champions. Jessica deployed the concepts at a firm early to their adoption, part of a generation of planners that braved some pushback and created an opening for future parking and TDM planners to step into. Consultants can be very effective in spreading ideas across cities - and the early Shoup days were a great example of that. The early Shoupistas were pushing uphill, armed with his book, and convincing - and reconvincing - people we could do things a better way. Lauren was shocked (and terrified) to be hired to adapt Shoup’s pricing principles onto a major city parking system in 2009. There were more established transportation engineers one would have thought would get the job, but in hindsight: SFpark’s leader Jay Primus was trying to shape a new way of doing things: Shoup’s way aided by new technology and data tools – and ditch some of the industry’s heavy methodological baggage. Today nearly all mobility firms promote Shoup’s ideas – 16 years ago, those ideas and his early followers were openly scorned. It demonstrates an incredible pace of change that his concepts are now so broadly championed.
Now, implementation takes more time – he himself noted that the vast majority of zoning codes in US cities do not reflect his recommended practices – yet. TDM ordinances are increasing at a notable pace, championed by many ACT members.
Even in passing, he leaves us with a blessing that we have a clear signpost for how to honor his legacy and continue his work. Only Shoup would be so kind as to make all of us planners feel so useful in this new chapter without his leadership.
-Lauren and Jessica
Jessica Alba first met Shoup as an early parking strategist in San Francisco in the early 2000s, spreading his concepts in consulting projects and now in a university setting at Stanford.
Lauren Mattern began implementing his pricing concepts in 2009 joining the SFpark team and integrates his pricing concepts into the core of her work today at Journey.