The Parking Minute

A minute of parking news and commentary

Tony Jordan

New public parking is bad for our budgets as well as our environment

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Earlier this week an article in the Willamette Week shed some light on a $200K study the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) commissioned to explore adding up to 392 parking stalls at a cost of nearly $18M to a public parking garage on the waterfront in Old Town.

Parking Garage

I was quoted in the article, making the case that the city has no business investing in parking amid the growing climate crisis. But that’s not the only problem with the project.

Fiscally, it should be a non-starter. Spending up to $60,000 of public money per stall to replace private parking stalls lost to redevelopment is not only risky because of the possibility of disruptive transportation changes, but it would be money spent directly undermining the city’s own climate action and transportation goals. 

PBOT is simultaneously working to implement a $60M plan called Central City In Motion which includes protected bike lanes and priority transit lanes to serve the same area of town as the parking garage. Most of those projects aren’t funded, yet. A quarter of the project could be built for this same cost, and those priority bus lanes would benefit more than 392 commuters.

The article caught the attention of John Van Horn (JVH), publisher of Parking Today magazine and kicked up a little dust. There have been several op-Eds published as a result. I’ve met John and Parking Today is willing to platform all sides of the transportation discussion and I’ve posted a reply you can read here.

But John is a anthropogenic climate change skeptic, he doesn’t believe that all the sprawl we’ve built and the driving it necessitates are sufficiently proven to be a threat we can address. I think he bases this skepticism on the Climatic Research Unit email controversy known as Climategate. Climate change denial makes it hard to establish a foundation for debate on parking policy. Fortunately, there are plenty of other reasons to be anti-car culture. Sprawl, air pollution, wasted time and money, and traffic violence to name a few.

Six Parking Policies That Could Be Better Than Congestion Pricing

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Painted sign reading “$ Pay BEFORE returning to your vehicle”

Congestion pricing is becoming the commonly prescribed cure for what ails the city. But what if there was another approach to traffic management that could yield similar results with less infrastructure, fewer privacy concerns, and help make housing more affordable, too?

First, eliminate minimum parking requirements already. 

Second, use curb zones for their best uses and price them appropriately. Bike lanes and transit priority lanes are the best use. If that’s not politically possible, then the space should be permitted and/or metered and market priced for performance. Allocate space for parking scooters, bikes, deliveries, and passenger loading, charge for these uses when in high demand. (Important: give some of the money directly to poor people and spend the rest to subsidize other modes)

Third, require a employers who voluntarily pay for employee parking to offer all employees a cash equivalent option. Parking cash-out is a simple and nearly free policy, but most employers won’t offer it unless they have to. So make them!

Fourth, implement a peak-hour commuter parking surcharge. If an office worker enters or exits a daily/monthly garage during peak traffic hours, charge a couple bucks.  Bonus if the charge is equivalent or more than a transit pass.  (Important: equivalent peak hour surcharges for ride hailing or autonomous vehicle trips are critical, too)

Fifth, impose a tax on surface parking lots. Ideally, the tax would be based on the site’s potential use, but a flat per-stall rate would be a fine start. This should encourage re-development of existing lots and discourage new ones.

Sixth, charge impact fees on new parking stalls to discourage new parking supply. Parking is not a beneficial community amenity, the external costs of new parking should be paid by the developer (who will pass the cost onto the user).

Individually, these are all good policies, but they combine like a classic recipe! A good comprehensive parking policy can do a lot of the work congestion pricing does, but it’s less invasive and easier to implement. By discouraging driving, repurposing space to transit and bikes, and reinvesting parking revenue in other modes these policies can help us combat climate change, save lives, and make housing more affordable.

Who will open the first autonomous-only parking garage?

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We’ve got cars that are able to park themselves and we’ve got research into retrofitting garages to help the cars park themselves, but when will we see a parking operator open an autonomous-only garage?

Some potential benefits of autonomous vehicles (close follow distances & seemingly choreographed intersections) are really realized in scenarios where they don’t have to mix in with human-driven vehicles. Similarly, the benefits of autonomously parked vehicles (no need for clearance & self-valet-style-stacking) can’t be realized in a mixed environment.

Special AV Sections

There aren’t enough self-parking cars today to support an AV only garage, but what about autonomous parking sections? A savvy parking operator in an affluent city could set space for cars to park themselves close together and allow valet-style drop-off at the entrance.  The first operators to do this will stake positions in the car parking market of the future.

A Marketing Opportunity For Electric Autonomous Vehicles

Are Tesla only parking garages in our near future?

Tesla operates a nationwide supercharging network for its customers. As a promotional incentive, the company has offered free lifetime access to this charging network for early-adopters of Tesla tech.  What if Tesla, or another luxury car manufacturer, purchased parking assets in cities with high ownership density and offered free parking in those garages for Teslas? 

A garage (or portion of a garage) limited to a single manufacturer would allow the cars to communicate with one another via wireless protocols. Cars parked in the Tesla-only parking level could not only park close together, but could double or triple stack themselves, moving out of the way when a car’s owner was ready to leave. 

These garages could also allow for EV charging technology to be tested. Systems which allow cars to charge in place (wirelessly?) or via (possibly mobile) robotic charging stations will be in great demand in the future.

Why would I propose this?

This might seem like a strange proposal from a parking reformer, but I am eager to see whether my theories about parking supply will play out in reality.  If AV technology can increase the efficiency of existing parking garages, that will have big impacts on the parking industry. A successful example of this technology would be another warning sign for cities and developers considering spending millions on new parking garages. 

Portland Parking Permit Programs Pushing The Envelope

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I just published a post at Portlanders for Parking Reform’s blog about changes proposed to the permit program in NW Portland. 

Parking in NW Portland

NW Portland has been taking innovative steps to manage on-street parking since 2012, but the policy changes really accelerated after the district was denied a request for minimum parking requirements in 2016.

Currently, parking permits in NW Portland cost $180 a year, $120 of which is a surcharge that funds a package of mobility options called the Transportation Wallet. Funding from permits and meters also goes towards, bike parking, infrastructure improvements, data collection, etc. In addition, Zone M permits are progressively priced (2nd costs more than the 1st).

Across town in the Central Eastside Industrial District the price of on-street permits is truly trailblazing. Zone G permits valid from May 2019 through April 2020 currently cost $370 per year. At just over $30 a month, these prices are among the highest I’ve heard of, but they are still less than half the market rate for off-street parking in the district. 

The Central Eastside parking benefit district also subsidizes a Transportation Walletwith parking revenue, but the district spends additional revenue on a dubious parking lot circulator shuttle and other questionable programs.

Warts and all, Portland’s parking permit and meter district pilots are innovative and increasingly effective. Parking reformers, consultants, and planners around the country should be paying attention!

We need a PARK(ing) Day for Every Day

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I have a confession to make. I’ve never participated in PARK(ing) Day™️. If you’re not familiar, PARK(ing) Day™️ is an annual event on the third Friday in September where people are encouraged to transform public curbside parking spaces into public spaces. The concept originated in 2005 when a group of folks in San Francisco turned turned a parking spot into a park, for 2 hours.

Coming soon to a parking space near you.

I like (even love) the idea of PARK(ing) Day™️, but there sure are a lot of rules to follow for a tactical urbanism event! For one, the name is trademarked (and that’s fine) and you really are only supposed to observe the holiday on the third Friday in September. Also, in Portland, where I live, PARK(ing) Day™️ is an official event. The city requires applications and approves about 18 installations for that day and there’s a list of about a dozen requirements for what happens in the space and what spaces are allowed to be repurposed.

Place-making is fabulous and I am very happy that my city embraces it, but I’m a parking reformer and I think once a year isn’t enough. I also prefer something a little more transgressive. So I was amused and inspired when I saw these tweets last week from Victor Pontis who decided to “set up a desk and work out at a parking spot for a couple hours to show that parking real estate can be used for better purposes.”

Victor isn’t a Shoupista (yet), he wasn’t aware of PARK(ing) Day™️ and he hadn’t read The High Cost of Free Parking, but he tapped into something and his cheeky brand WePark (twitter @WeParkWeParty) has some buzz. This has brought out a few detractors who don’t think Victor gave enough credit to reBar, the founders of PARK(ing) Day™️, but Victor is alright with me and I just hope he takes a crash course in Better Parking 101 and uses some of his spotlight to advance awareness of bad parking policy and the reforms that can fix it. 

I’ll also suggest that people organizing WePark events do so in a way that moves things forward. Of course HAVE FUN, but here’s some ideas:

  • Locate the event near a consenting independent business, like a coffee shop. Try to support a local business that is owned by a non-white person. If you can, start a tab for people at your WeWork.
  • Put out a donation jar and ask the people who show up to throw in some money (sliding scale) to be given, that day, to a local homeless charity.
  • Be intentionally inclusive. Invite people to sit with you, as long as they aren’t disruptive or dangerous, all should be welcome.
  • Help people make a connection with the policy. Have a little literature on hand about the high cost of parking, or exclusionary zoning. Use this as an educational opportunity.

So next week I’m going to get together with some Portland Shoupistas and find a couple good spaces and work outside. Lucky for me, my current job is talking about parking, so look for me behind a desk with a sign that says “We have too much parking and it’s too cheap. Change my mind.”