The Parking Minute

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On the road: Portland Airport’s Parking Plans

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This morning I took TriMet to PDX on my way to San Francisco for the National Planning Conference.

Image Port of Portland – Rendering of new terminal. On left is 9 year old, $156M 3,000 stall Long Term Garage.

I’ve been coming to and from the Portland Airport since I was a teenager and the number of times I’ve parked here could be counted on one hand and it’s been over 10 years. Generally the MAX to the terminal is the best option and off-hour arrivals or departures are usually handled by a neighbor or TNC (or combo of that and public transit).

But there are 2,400+ people who park, for free (and more who park for less than a dollar a day), at PDX every day… Port of Portland employees and airport vendors.

This is a significant figure because the Port is currently proposing to build another 2,400 stalls at the airport, ostensibly to meet rising demand for parking (the airport is expanding it’s D terminal as I write this).

According to the Port, this new parking is needed because “two or three days per week, the Long-Term Parking Garage is either full or near capacity.” When that happens, customers may use the Short-Term garage, “pushing the Short-Term Parking Garage closer to capacity!”

The Long-Term Parking Garage is, itself a $156 million expansion completed in 2010. At the time it was opened, during the recession, the Port had to close surface lots to push demand into the garage so it wouldn’t be empty.  The new project will cost another $265 million, the Port insists rental car concessions and parking fees will pay for it. I think long-term prospects for rental car businesses at airports might not be so rosy.

And as for passengers, certainly the Port wants to provide accommodating experiences for all visitors, but we have light-rail to the terminal. Will an entity with such large debt to recover from parking be incentivized to push transit as the best way to get to and from the airport? Providing a TriMet day pass with every ticket would be great, but when the Port needs that parking money flowing in, why would they offer that to passengers?

The Port should start by charging higher earning employees market rates for parking at the airport. Perhaps a mix of that and some more encouragement for passengers to take MAX would allow them to muddle through with only 17,000 stalls. 

Update: Port of Portland PIO Kama Simonds provided the following statement: “Employees have a choice: they can park in the airport employee parking lot on Alderwood (Road) for free, pay $20/month to park in the surface lot due east of the air traffic control tower, or pay $80/month to park in the parking garages.”

The Alterwood Road lot contains 2,400 stalls. The $20/month surface lot contains 450 stalls.

We’ve got too much parking now and it’s about to get worse

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Many new luxury cars can already parallel park and car companies are working on more advanced parking assist technology. Tesla commercials portray a near future where drivers exit at the entrance to a parking facility and the car does the rest. 

Photo by Pathum Danthanarayana on Unsplash

Soon, some parking garages will be adapted with sensors or special paint to assist vehicles, using currently available technology, to stack up in garages, millimeters away from one another. As cars become more networked with one another, it’s easy to imagine 150 cars parking in a space that currently holds 50, with the cars shuffling out of one another’s way to allow one of their own to return to its owner.

At the same time, companies like Citifyd in Portland are developing systems that allow for under-ulitilized private parking to be more-easily made available to the public. City centers might see a rapid inflation in the effective supply of parking, undercutting efforts to reduce car trips to downtowns and business districts. 

Parking demand at airports, hotels, and entertainment destinations is already being reduced because of new ride share, ride hailing, and car share services. We could see a rapid shift in the economics of downtown parking with demand dropping as supply is increasing. Some lots and garages would be redeveloped, but much parking in city centers is under productive buildings, it’s here to stay for a long time.

This narrative should make any developer or development agency think twice about investing in new long-term parking assets. Operators of newer structures will be at a major disadvantage, due to debt service, when competing with older facilities. 

Transportation officials should consider the impact such a shift would have, parking prices at private garages could drop rapidly, including more driving in the short run. Entry-exit parking surcharges could discourage driving, particularly during peak hours.

Parking reformers should seize on this narrative when working to oppose new publicly funded parking structures and when arguing against existing parking requirements. Every new stall built is a bet against both these emerging technologies and against our efforts to combat climate change and congestion. We’ve probably already built more parking then we’ll actually need, and we definitely built more than we should have. 

Five Parking Stories We Wish Were Jokes

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Former Vancouver, BC chief planner, Brent Todarian suggested on twitter today that, instead of fake stories, we share #ThingsWeWishWereAprilFoolsJokes, so here are five parking stories that we wish were jokes.

Historic Parking Lot

Picture of a parking lot.
Neighbors claimed this was an historic parking lot.

In 2015, some residents in Washington, D.C.’s Spring Valley neighborhood objected to a retail development on the grounds that the parking lot it was replacing was an historic landmark. The parking lot was adjacent to an historic shopping center and neighbors argued that the “adequacy of parking is also a factor in determining the property to be historic.”

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s LEED Platinum Parking Garage

I covered this last week when I was on spring break in Colorado, but it’s definitely a parking story I wish was a joke. The scientists and researchers who are working hard to save us from dependency on fossil fuels enjoy free ample parking at a brand-new $31.5M, 1,800 stall, LEED-Platinum certified parking garage. Electric shuttle buses would have been my guess for how they’d spend the money.

Light Rail, Heavy Parking

Here in Oregon, TriMet, Portland Metro’s regional transit agency, is planning a new light rail line along our Southwest Corridor. The line, which would go online sometime in the mid-late 2020s is planned to be served by at least five new “free” parking structures containing over 3,000 stalls. Voters recently approved a housing bond containing $65M for low-income housing near transit. The potential cost of the park-and-rides is conservatively $160M and will likely be closer to $300M.

Parking Garage Nearly Bankrupts Spokane

In the mid-1990s, the civic leaders in Spokane, WA backed construction of a parking garage with $31.5M in bonds in order to facilitate development of a $110M shopping center. Consultants promised the parking garage would make money and when it didn’t City Council defaulted on the loan, causing the city’s bond rating to plummet. Parking meter money in Spokane will be paying off the loan until 2027. 

Privatizing Public Parking In Chicago

In 2008, Chicago’s Mayor Daley engineered a deal to lease the city’s on-street parking franchise to a Wall Street backed consortium for $1.16 billion in cash. While the deal has allowed for some removal of political machinations from parking pricing, overall it’s been a disaster. The lease will last until 2083 and if the city wants to remove on-street parking before then, be it temporarily for construction or to facilitate bus-only lanes or bike lanes, it has to pay Chicago Parking Meters, LLC for lost revenue. 

So there you have it, five lessons for us all in what NOT to do (hint: don’t build new parking garages).

On The Road: District Parking and Scenic Lots

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Yesterday was spent in and around Boulder, Colorado. I’d been to Boulder a couple of times before, most recently in 2016 for the first YIMBY conference. It’s a beautiful place, but not without its own housing supply and development fights. 

When you look at the satellite photo of the city it’s mostly low density residential, but there are three areas that stick out to me, the central Boulder business district, around the Pearl Street Mall, the University of Colorado – Boulder campus, and the area around 28th Street on the east end of town.

A sign with text Did you know that parking dollars are reinvested right here? Funds support community events & programs, employee eco pass program, mall improvements, bike racks & garage improvements. BoulderParking.com
Signs are up on the pedestrian mall to let people know how their parking money is spent.

In the 1970s, Boulder created parking districts around the Pearl Street Mall and the UC-Boulder campus. No parking was required in these districts and district parking would be provided and paid for by an overlay property tax. Money from on-street and garage parking is spent on pedestrian/bicycle improvements, community events, and on transportation demand management (transit passes, mostly) for district employees. 

Satellite Photo of Downtown Boulder
Central Boulder is compact and walkable thanks, in part, to district parking.

As you can see from the satellite imagery, these districts are walkable, lively, and compact. Boulder was a pioneer, for American cities, in the park-once & walk concept. I think this is no longer a great strategy for many cities, because of the risky investment that parking garages are today (and increased costs) but they pulled it off and it works well. 

Satellite photo of University of Colorado - Boulder
The area around the university is optimized for pedestrian and bicycle travel.

The area east of Central Boulder, however, is a sea of surface parking supporting chain and big-box stores.

Surface Parking East of Downtown Boulder

But thanks to the majestic Flatirons, nearly every lot in Boulder has great views. The views from the top of downtown parking structures are 360 vistas.

A majestic view from the top of the 15th and Pearl parking garage in Boulder
the view from the top of the 15th and Pearl parking garage is great!

But these lots don’t compare to the horseshoe shaped lot at the nearby National Center for Atmospheric Research on Table Mesa. The center itself is a beautiful I.M. Pei designed campus with great exhibits on weather and climate change. The parking lot has beautiful up-close views of the foothills and Flatirons and a commanding view of Boulder and the surrounding prairies. It may be among the country’s most scenic parking lots. 

Tony Jordan at the National Center for Atmospheric Research parking lot with majestic foothills in background.
Your parking lot tourist at one of the most scenic parking lots he’s visited: The National Center for Atmospheric Research.

On The Road: The World’s “Greenest” Parking Garage

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The National Renewable Energy Laboratory parking garage

I’m on a family trip in the Denver Metro area and I couldn’t help but take part in some parking site seeing. Totally normal, right?

A few years back, my friend Joe Cortright brought a new parking garage at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to my attention.  The garage holds 1,800 cars and cost the government $31.5 million dollars. The structure is certified LEED-NC Platinum and contains all sorts of features to reduce energy use and encourage activity for the 900 employees that use it, for free, every day. That’s right, 1,800 stalls for 900 drive-alone employees.

The lab is open for tours once a month, but not while I am here, and it’s a bit of a rigamarole for an employee to set up a visit, so I didn’t have much hope of making it into the structure. I decided to drive down to the South Entrance of the NREL facility and see how close I could get without getting in trouble. 

The campus is surrounded by open space with beautiful views.

Fortunately, there’s a bit of a parkland along the side of the garage and, after confirming I wouldn’t get in trouble, I was able to walk along side of the campus and see the garage up close and personal. 

This is a BIG parking structure and it, like everything else on the campus, is COVERED in solar panels. There were signs that should have told me how occupied each level was, but they weren’t working. I could see cars up on the third level and the first and second seemed pretty full.

The campus is spacious and has beautiful views of the mountains.  There are several surface lots and, one would think, plenty of room to build less permanent car-focused infrastructure. 

After my visit, I took a 2 minute drive down the road to the Colorado Mills shopping mall.  The mall is surrounded by acres and acres of surface parking. You can see the NREL garage from the mall’s parking lot, leaving me to wonder if that $31.5M was a necessary expenditure.