The Parking Minute

A minute of parking news and commentary

Tony Jordan

A Conversation About Parking Reform With Paul Barter

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I’m very happy to announce that I’m a guest on the most recent episode of Paul Barter’s “Reinventing Parking” podcast (Sticher | Apple Podcasts | Google Play) . 

Paul Barter is a transportation policy researcher who is very engaged in parking reform work.  Professor Barter lives in Singapore and has worked on parking policy in many Asian cities. He manages the Parking Reform International facebook group and also produces the excellent Reinventing Parking website.

A few months ago, Paul launched a companion podcast for his website and I’ve been patiently waiting for an opportunity to have another conversation with him about the work I am doing in the United States.

You can subscribe to Paul Barter’s podcast on most podcast services and you can find individual episodes to download at his website. His post about our episode can be found here: https://www.reinventingparking.org/2019/03/portlanders-for-parking-reform.html.

Thank you very much to Paul for having me on his show and I hope you enjoy the podcast.

San Diego Passed Some Great Parking Reforms This Month!

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On March 19th, San Diego’s City Council re-affirmed a decision to eliminate minimum parking requirements within 1/2 mile of planned or existing transit stops, zones they call Transit Priority Areas (TPAs). The new rules also require developers to provide transportation demand management (TDM) benefits when they build in the TPAs. The amount of TDM benefits varies depending on factors like how dense the new development is and how close it is to transit-accessible jobs.

TDM is required for all new buildings, whether parking is provided or not and the parking reform package requires that any stall built be unbundled from the lease or purchase of housing units in the building. There is an exemption granted for the TDM and unbundling requirements if the building contains a minimum of 20% on-site units affordable for people making 50% or less of the average median income. 

In downtown, the new policy bundle flipped it so developers can’t build more parking than they previously were required to build as a minimum amount (with a few mitigating exemptions).

The reforms passed an initial council vote on March 4th and there was some opposition and threat of legal action from a local attorney, Cory Briggs, on behalf of a group called “Citizens for Responsible, Economical and Environmental Development” or CREED-21. Briggs’ threats prompted a thoughtful op-ed prior to the second vote by Maya Rosas and Brendan Dentino from YIMBY Democrats of San Diego County. 

Overall this is a very good example of parking reform. The parking exemptions themselves are aggressive for a scheme based on transit proximity. Allowing for exemptions within 1/2 mile is great and allowing them near transit stops that are planned within the next 30 years (!!!) is even better. The TDM requirements apply evenly and the amount is increased for areas that are further away from transit and amenities, which is the proper way to do it. 

San Diegans should look into developing good on-street parking management programs for areas which might be impacted by spillover parking due to the new rules. When development without parking starts to come online, neighbors will be angry and the city should be prepared with residential permit programs and performance-based metering. Residents won’t be happy to have to pay for parking, but at least city staff and officials will have a ready answer to their complaints. 

Parking Reductions for EV Charging: Good deal or bad idea?

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A Tesla Vehicle Charging Sign

In my last post I argued that it’s bad policy to tie eliminating parking requirements to demands for developers to provide more transportation demand management, affordable housing, or “green” upgrades. But what about allowing a reduction in required parking if the developer provides publicly accessible EV charging stations?

Oregon House Bill 3045 would allow developers to swap any two required commercial or residential parking stalls for one stall with a publicly accessible electric vehicle charger. Is this a policy Shoupistas should support and, if it passes, try to replicate?

One the plus side, this is a statewide bill and would allow for a sweeping reduction in the absolute number of stalls required at most locations. Many cities are reducing or creating avenues for reducing parking requirements and bills like HB3045 would amplify those efforts. Swapping EV stations for additional parking could be a major cost saver, too.  Commercial EV stations run about $5,000 each, while a structured stall in Portland seems to run upwards of $50,000 nowadays. 

The requirement that stations be publicly accessible, however, would blunt the potential upside of the bill. Surface stalls, which are most likely to be publicly accessible, are significantly cheaper than structured parking. Structured residential stalls, like those commonly found in residential apartments, are unlikely to be publicly accessible.  In fact, many municipalities require exclusive use for stalls to meet parking requirements, so an effective policy would need to also legalize the sharing of parking between multiple uses (like office and residential).  It’s also unclear if publicly accessible is intended to also mean “free.”

Combined with legalizing (or even requiring) shared parking, a bill like this could incentivize developers and property mangers to open up their parking spaces to public use, for a price.

It would be a better policy to eliminate all minimum requirements and provide other incentives for providing publicly accessible charging stations. I don’t think this is a bad policy, but I don’t know if I’d put it on my list of suggestions. 

Time To Flip The Script On Parking

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Photo of driveway with a sign that says “please respect the driveway” there is text around the image that opines, the driveway has not earned respect.

Parking is not a community benefit, it is an attractant to the pollution, noise, and violence of cars. When we force developers to make new concessions in exchange for eliminating arbitrary and expensive parking requirements, we reinforce the narrative that more parking is somehow good, but it is not good.

If cities required new apartments to have toilets made gold, it would surely cut into profit margins. Eliminating mandatory gold toilet requirements would not be a windfall for developer profits, it would be eliminating a stupid and arbitrary requirement. 

On-site parking is a luxury amenity that has significant external costs to the community. The developer who builds more parking than is required is making a generational commitment to more greenhouse gases, more traffic fatalities, longer commutes, and fewer, more expensive, homes. 

The developer who builds more parking should be the one paying transit subsidies to tenants so they might drive the cars stored downstairs less often.  The developer who builds more parking should be the one who provides more on-site affordable housing. Building sites with more on-site parking should have more trees and green space to counteract some of the pollution they support. 

Cities should absolutely explore policies to require integrated affordable housing, transportation demand management, and greener building features. But policy that allows a developer to build car parking in lieu of affordable homes, or more trees, or transit subsidies is a backward policy.

We need to flip the script on the common narrative. New parking supply is bad for livability and that must be pointed out as often as possible. 

Are Minimum Bike Parking Requirements A Good Thing?

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Yesterday I posted about micrologistics and how, if we expect people to drive less, we need to provide more options for storing and moving personal items. Evan Landman commented on twitter that lockers “should be part of any future secure bike parking.” (https://twitter.com/evanlandman/status/1106252959199854592?s=21)

This got me thinking a bit about bike parking requirements and I wonder if we might be missing some lessons from mandatory car parking. Are bike parking requirements, particularly for residential developments, much different from car parking requirements? Certainly bike parking takes up much less space and bikes have far fewer externalities, but if we accept that it’s difficult or impossible to guess how many car parking spaces a land-use really needs, can we claim to have better insight about bikes?

Supporting bicycling requires more than secure bike parking. People need places to change clothes, to dry rain gear, to make repairs, etc. We can require developers to build bike parking, maybe even showers and locker rooms, but cyclists will often be using poorly designed facilities shoved in some semi-useable surplus space. 

One strategy to reduce new car parking supply is to require (or at least allow) shared parking in new developments. Another strategy is to allow developers to pay in-lieu fees for car parking that can be used to build public garages that serve the commercial district. 

Shared parking is great, but I’ve been critical of new district parking proposals because I think their time has passed. But I think district and shared parking for bicycles could be a very good and timely idea. Empty storefronts or fenced off stalls in parking garages could provide simple secure parking or, even better, valet bike parking and bag storage. 

As mode shifts, perhaps we can get some of our own bike parking garages, like they have in the Netherlands?