Because construction costs vary by location, there is no single measure of
how much a parking space costs. But we can estimate the price tag in different
locations by using published estimates of local construction costs.
Rider Levett Bucknall (RLB), an international consulting firm that specializes
in estimating real estate construction costs, publishes quarterly cost
estimates for several real estate categories in cities around the world,
including 12 cities in the United States.1 Table 1 presents RLB’s estimates
of the average cost of parking spaces in these 12 American cities in 2012.
Even within the same city, the cost can vary according to the soil conditions,
the height of the water table, the shape of the site, and many other
factors. RLB therefore reports both a low and a high construction cost; for
simplicity; I have used the average of these two costs for each city.
Columns 1 and 2 show the average cost per square foot to build underground
and aboveground parking structures. The average parking space,
including the access aisles, occupies about 330 square feet (31 square
meters). Given this size, Column 3 shows the cost per parking space for an
underground garage. For example, the average cost of constructing an
underground garage in Boston is $95 per square foot, and the average space
occupies 330 square feet, so the average cost of a parking space is $31,000
($95 × 330). Across the 12 cities, the average cost per space ranges from a
low of $26,000 in Phoenix to a high of $48,000 in Honolulu, with an overall