War on Parking Just Got Real: NMA E-Newsletter #717


Back in the 1960s: Joni Mitchell once sang: “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” But city planners who once were blamed for creating space for cars are now reversing direction. The new strategy is to “save paradise and take away a parking lot.” How did we get here?

The only way to build affordable housing is to get rid of cars?

 

Cities as far-flung as Berkeley, Boston, Minneapolis, New York City, Raleigh, Sacramento, San Diego, and San Francisco have already eliminated parking minimums for new developments. So many parking spaces were mandated for each apartment. Depending on the square footage of commercial ventures, parking space allocation was mandatory. The first state, California, has recently legislated to stop these requirements in new real estate developments.

 

California Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed AB2097 into law, which generally forbids cities from imposing parking minimums on any commercial or residential development within a half-mile of a public transit stop.

 

Governor Newsom said in a video address before signing the bill:

“We’re making it cheaper and easier to build new housing near daily destinations like jobs and grocery stores and school. This means more housing at lower prices closer to walkable neighborhoods and public transit.”

 

AB2097 sponsor Los Angeles County Assembly Member Laura Friedman said the objective was to create more opportunities for housing by lowering the cost of building parking spaces instead of housing. The Parking Reform Network has estimated that building a space in a new building can run from $10,000 to $60,000. Some California developers stated that the cost could be up to $75,000 per parking space. Land is expensive everywhere, but the cost per foot to build in metropolitan areas can be astronomical. From a land developer’s perspective, there is little return on investment for building parking spaces. They can make more money with housing or office space.

 

Lawmakers, housing advocates, and environmental groups have worked over the past decade to reverse the mandates. They argue that these parking minimums hinder efforts to fight climate change and increase California’s vehicle dependency. 

 

UCLA Urban Planning Professor and Parking Reform Proponent Donald Shoup told Time Magazine recently:

“At the local level, NIMBYs (Not in My Back Yard) are in charge. That’s why it’s important that California has done this at a state level because state governments have [more long-term] goals: more low-income housing, and less traffic congestion, air pollution, and carbon emissions.”

 

California’s housing deficit is estimated at more than 3.5 million units. Due to the scarcity, rent prices have soared and contributed to the state’s homeless population (accounting for as much as a quarter of all homeless people in the US). 

 

But all traffic is local, and losing local control over parking minimums can cause more headaches for counties, municipalities, and motorists. Only twenty city councils have voted to ban parking minimums in the past five years. This doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it is the beginning that sets a critical precedent, and now that a state has taken on what formerly was a local zoning issue is enormous.

 

A similar measure failed last year when lawmakers around California objected to local governments losing zoning control. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti was a vocal opponent of this year’s legislation and successfully built a compromise that would give local governments some leeway if they could prove within 30 days of a developer’s application that parking minimums were needed.

 

After eliminating parking minimums, San Francisco and Ventura introduced demand-based pricing for on-street parking to discourage short trips in a car. Demand-based pricing is similar to congestion pricing (motorists pay tolls to use streets based on time of day) but for parking. In 2017, the Department of Energy reported that nearly 60 percent of all vehicle trips in the US were less than six miles. Three-fourths of all trips are ten miles or less. Officials believe that eliminating parking minimums and imposing parking congestion pricing would discourage these trips and encourage walking, biking, or transit. 

 

People drive for many reasons and eliminating parking where residents live, and work could be expensive, disruptive, and inconvenient. Less parking in new developments could mean parking problems in other areas of cities where there is street parking. Driving around looking for the elusive parking spot causes personal time disruptions, increases traffic congestion, and exacerbates the city’s vehicle emissions problem. Suppose residents need a vehicle for whatever reason (handicapped, caregiver, service provider, etc.) and have to pay to park in a city lot. In that case, they might not be unable to afford to do so any longer. 

 

Forcing residents to make different transportation choices is the aim, and maybe that is a good thing if jobs and housing are near transit. In many parts of the country, that is not the case. 

 

Ironically, California city planners were among the first in the US to impose minimum parking requirements back in the 1920s. The initiative accelerated in the 1950s when the state’s car culture evolved after more people bought cars and drove places. At the time, city leaders feared less parking or inadequate parking for offices and apartments would increase traffic issues in surrounding residential neighborhoods.

 

And guess what? The same thing will happen now, but it’s much worse than in the 1950s, with many cities allocating space for bike or bus lanes at the curb, eliminating street-parking spaces entirely.

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