Tony Jordan

Activists Oppose Federal Reserve Bank Parking Project In Minneapolis

July 1, 2019 By Tony Jordan 2 Comments

The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis has proposed an 800 stall parking garageon the bank of the Mississippi River. The justification for the project, which requires a variance, is that new redevelopment of nearby surface lots has made parking too frustrating for bank employees and visitors.

Rendering of new garage in the context of the city.

The plan for the garage contains all sorts of good-feeling stuff like the “largest, most useable Open Green Space” which “can be developed to help interpret the past history of the site,” currently a surface parking lot. While this certainly will be a ramp to visit for a garage aficionado like myself, I wonder how pleasant a park with a massive driveway running through it will be?

The Fed doesn’t seem to have published the expected cost of the garage, but the nearby airport is currently constructing an 11 story garage with 5,000 stalls for $240 Million. At a comparable $48,000 per stall, this garage would cost around $38 million dollars.

Fortunately, the good folks of Minneapolis are aware of the problems more auto infrastructure will bring to their city and a group of them have begun organizing to “Halt the Ramp” (link requires facebook) online and in the streets! The group has been gathering signatures and encouraging letters to the City Planner Lindsey Silas, Mayor Jacob Frey, and Third Ward Council Member Steve Fletcher. Today, July 1st, is the last day to send letters so they will be seen by the planning commission.

The local Sierra Club has written a letter opposing the project and is seeking signatures to an online petition.

The proposed garage is certain to bring more traffic and congestion to the area.

Every new parking stall is a 30 year commitment to undermine climate action, housing affordability, and traffic goals. The Federal Reserve Bank should expose more of the cost of parking to employees and visitors, offer additional compensation for employees who don’t drive to work, and aggressively pursue transportation demand management programs.

It is unclear at this time how much, if anything, employees at the bank pay to park in the nearby lots and the existing garage, but the Careers page for the bank says “parking is available in the Bank garage for all officers and select other employees.” According to the 2018 Fed report, there are 63 officers at the Minneapolis Fed and 927 full time employees. The bank provides a “commuter subsidy program that provides tax savings” and free indoor bike parking for workers who don’t drive.

The City of Minneapolis should develop a comprehensive performance-based on-street parking management program. No one should be building 800 stall standalone garages in the middle of a vibrant city.

Sign the Sierra Club North Star Chapter’s petition and Reject the Ramp!

On The Road: Parking Ramp Tourism

June 20, 2019 By Tony Jordan Leave a Comment

I’m on a road trip from Louisville, KY to Portland, OR. (Follow me on https://www.instagram.com/parkingminute/)

As I’ve been traveling across the country I’ve visited a number of parking garages in small (and big) towns. It started kind of as a cheeky thing to do, but I’ve found that it’s a good way to see these places from a different angle, with often great panoramic views.

Panoramic View from garage deck in Davenport, IA

I’ve also noticed that these top decks are often empty, but they must have cost millions to build! Best to get SOME use out of them!

I’ll compile a more comprehensive post, but in the interim I am posting a lot of my parking garage tourism at the Parking Minute instagram, so check it out! https://www.instagram.com/parking-minute/

On the Road: #CNU27 in Louisville, KY

June 12, 2019 By Tony Jordan Leave a Comment

This week I am at CNU27 in Louisville, the annual gathering of members of the Congress of the New Urbanism.

I will be giving a short talk on Saturday as part of an Open Innovation panel on transportation. My presentation is titled: “Parking Reform: It won’t just happen, you have to work at it.” I’ll be making the case that the missing link in parking reform efforts is plain old organizing and elbow grease. It’s Saturday at 1pm, if you’re attending.

This conference is also a bit of a soft launch for an organization I, and parking reform colleagues Lindsay Bayley (Chicago), Jane Wilberding (Chicago), and Mike Kwan (D.C), are bootstrapping called the Parking Reform Network.

I’ll be tweeting about the conference at @twjpdx23 and posting my thoughts (and photos from parking garages) on the Parking Minute throughout the week!

And with that, enjoy this photo of a sunset from the parking deck next to the Seelbach Hotel, relatively unobstructed by any cars.

Panorama from Seelbach Garage in Louisville, KY

Should transit benefits be taxed more than parking benefits? Let the IRS know what you think.

June 4, 2019 By Tony Jordan 1 Comment

There’s another opportunity to tell the IRS how you feel about parking taxes and transit benefit taxes, comments are due on Friday, June 7.

Buried in the Trump Tax Cuts was an esoteric change to how fringe benefits for commuters are taxed. Prior to the cuts, employers could provide free parking or free transit passes, up to a little more than $250 a month as a non-reported non-taxable fringe benefit. But after the tax cut went into effect, transit and parking benefits would be taxable to the employer at the corporate tax rate, even if the employer was a non-profit hospital, university, or charity. This could lead to many employers ending transit benefits. It might not be so bad if parking was really taxed the same way, but it isn’t.

Some employers, mostly in urban centers, pay third parties for employee parking, those employers would have to pay corporate taxes on the cost of parking, but employers with their own parking, or bundled parking in their suburban office park leases, would pay much less, or nothing, based on IRS guidance issued last year.

Having received many comments, the IRS is now asking the public to weigh in on what tax issues that we think should be their priority to work on this year.

This could really be a very damaging thing for transportation demand management programs and other efforts to reduce single-occupancy commutes. The Coalition for Smarter Transportation has a page with more information, read up a little and comment, your bus pass could depend on it.

Don’t waive parking requirements near transit, just waive them everywhere.

June 3, 2019 By Tony Jordan 5 Comments

When cities reform their parking requirements, they often implement new rules reducing or waiving on-site parking based on a new project’s proximity to transit. But, just like ratios that came before them, these rules seem arbitrary and based on gut feeling rather than any real evidence.

In some cities, the ratio is based on proximity to bus stops, in others it’s how close it is to the street where the bus runs. In some cities 351 feet is too far away to waive parking requirements, in others 501, and in others 1321 feet. Some cities treat light rail different than buses, others allow a waiver for planned transit. In most cities the bus or transit needs to run frequently enough for the site to qualify for a waiver, but “frequent service” means something different everywhere you go.

In this map of Portland, the areas in blue are “close enough” to qualifying transit and parking is not required. Many areas excluded are transit-rich walkable communities. Source: City of Portland

Proximity based rules like this are a lazy way to make reforms. A map of areas that qualify for a waiver in Portland, Oregon shows voids in the waiver area that are walkable, bike able, transit rich neighborhoods full of amenities, but just a couple steps outside an arbitrary boundary. Meanwhile, areas with wide streets, few sidewalks, and strip-mall development patterns are in the waiver zone because a light rail stop happens to be 1/4 mile away.

In this example, a new development may be saddled with a 1:1 parking ratio because it is 70 feet “too far” from a bus line. The site is in the middle of a bike network, which would be degraded by the addition of 244 more cars to the neighborhood.

Such mobility based rules rarely account for bike networks, walk-scores, or bike-share amenities. Frequency rates are often based on commute times to city centers, only, discounting the idea that people might want to work near where they live so they don’t have to drive or take the bus.

While these reforms are better than nothing, the one-off problems they cause aren’t worth the trouble. Developers will build parking if their projected tenants will demand it. If cities are managing their on-street parking, there’s no free lunch for anyone and there’s no need for an arbitrary rule telling people how far they can walk to a bus before they’re forced to pay for parking whether they use it or not.