The high cost of being a pedestrian on a heating planet during the winter holidays

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…” because every town in New Jersey offers free parking. Towns promote this as an act of goodwill toward local shopkeepers and a way to support shopping locally—reminiscent of the 1950s. But we’re not in the 1950s anymore. Free parking, even during the winter holidays, reinforces selfishness and individualism. It props up the car-centric planning that defines many suburban towns in New Jersey and the U.S., directly clashing with solutions to the urgent climate crisis.  

The holiday season is supposed to inspire thoughtfulness, yet free parking does the opposite. It increases air pollution as drivers circle endlessly for spots. Parking lots contribute to runoff with high levels of pollutants and create heat island effects that worsen local environments.  

Free parking also endangers pedestrians. It incentivizes careless driving and contributes to an uptick in crashes during the holidays—up to 35 percent more from Black Friday through New Year’s. Pedestrian fatalities tend to increase during the Christmas holiday season due to factors such as impaired driving, speeding, and poor visibility, particularly at night. From 2010 to 2022, pedestrian deaths in the U.S. rose significantly, driven in part by heavier vehicle designs (SUVS) and insufficient pedestrian-friendly infrastructure. In NJ pedestrian deaths rose by 40 percent according to a story by the New Jersey Monitor. Free parking that encourages automobile driving that causes all kinds of harms also has the added bonus of siphoning money away from investments in public transit. Instead of subsidizing free parking for private vehicles, we could fund public transit and bike infrastructure.