Parking reform trends

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It'll pay for your membership members.cmu.org slash memberships, and we have a great program today. Katie Gould is a researcher with a sightline institute writing about climate transportation policy. She recently wrote a paper for the Lincoln Institute of Land Planning called Shifting Gears. Where communities are eliminating off street parking requires, and what comes next, which was republished on public square in a popular series of articles and Patrick Sigmund is a transportation planner and economist and founder of Sigmund and associates he has the transportation he has LED the transportation component of more than 70 citywide neighborhood district and campus plan. His career has had a particular focus on parking, and he was one of the earliest proponents of parking policy reform at Cnu. Tony Jordan is president and co-founder of the parking reform network and worldwide membership organization that includes elected officials, researchers, planners, I'm Rob, editor of seeing East public Square today's discussion is all about parking reform and why it is gaining momentum nationwide at various levels of first, there's gonna be presentations followed by discussion among the panelists and then Q&A from the audience and we expect a lively discussion. So please use the function of Zoom to ask your questions as they occur to you. And now I'm going to pass this along to Katie. Alright! Let's get going here. Alright! My name is Katie Gould. I'm a senior transportation researcher, with sightline and we're talking about the end of parking mandates. Very exciting topic today. First, in case you got into this room by accident. What's a parking manta otherwise known as a minimum part? Pretty much since the 19 fifties. Nearly every building in North America, whether it's new or remodeled, has been required by local governments to have a certain number of off-street parking spaces, and the idea initially was right that if there's enough, if there's parking for every car there's gonna be no parking problems and these rules have been really successful in one way, we've built a lot of parking spots our researchers estimate that in the United States there's somewhere between 3 and 7 parking spots for every v but these regulations have not been effective at managing on street parking, and they make a whole host of worse problems, including suburban urban heat islands, tons of impervious surface. It makes new homes and businesses more costly to build, and it really makes it hard to give old buildings new life. And because of all those impact cities are repealing parking mandates in increasing numbers. This map is from the Parking Reform network. Tony Jordan's going to talk in a few minutes, and this map is referenced by cities all the time when they're making the case to get rid of parking minimums because every year it's getting a lot easier for cities to see their peers on this map whether they're big or small hot climate, cold, climate, there's a huge number of cities that are implementing these a lot of these dots are orange. You can see which is for the city center down town areas. That's kind of where this type of parking reform has started. In those areas it's more historic. And there's a lot of buildings that already don't conform with current zoning codes. But that's not where we're headed. We know this chart is a bit of an under count, but we're seeing rapid growth in the number of cities that are eliminating all parking mandates, citywide all uses which is really exciting to be moving on from this down to some notable ones so you might have seen in the news recently anchorage, Alaska, which covers an area larger than the State of Rhode Island, also San Jose, California, which is home to all. There's another really big a recent change this year there's really significant statewide reforms coming out of the West Coast. So last July, in Oregon, the Land Conservation Development Commission adopted a broad rulemaking package called the Climate friendly and Equitable. That applies to the state metro areas. So there's a lot of different rules that are included that reform. But eliminating parking mandates in many areas those categories include all properties that are within a half a mile of frequent transit corridors, but also a lot of other categories like small homes affordable housing childcare facilities housing for people with disabilities and more. And then, in September California adopted a. B 2097, which prohibits cities from requiring a minimum number of off street parking spaces within a half mile of frequent transit station. Statewide so that was the third attempt to pass a bill like this in a decade. So this is a it's a really big victory. Both of these States. The new rules went into effect on January first. So we're still in like the first few months of these rules going into effect. And people being able to build things for the first time, maybe in. And we know a handful of other States have introduced, or considering introducing similar legislation. Anyways, I want to put this picture up here. This is actually the apartment building I live in. It was built in the early 19 hundreds, and is now legalized in a lot of places. Okay, so, now, what? Right? When your city gets rid of off street parking requirements, what happens? The. This is a pretty new reform, but there are a couple kind of leader cities that we're being able to learn from. So first off, this is from Fayetteville, Arkansas. Planners here eliminated commercial parking requirements back in 2015, primarily for the reason that they kept getting the same phone calls about like vacant properties and year over year potential developers were interested in the property and they call. But you know, the buildings were still to reduce the barrier to redevelopment. So this building right here, this is on the edge of downtown. It had been vacant for 40 years, and just 4 years after the zoning reform, it finally reopened its stores as a restaurant, and this building only has 5 parking. Here sometimes is a headache the owners will tell you since they opened there's 2 parking lots in the area. That have redeveloped into hous. But the view was the main draw here that the owners really fell in love with this location for, and it's great that they were that choice. Other building conversions that have no existing parking of their own workout deals with nearby parking garages to kind of so I was told that this building here was once referred to as the largest pigeon coop in this building, and the one next door here they were both former office buildings in downtown Hartford that had been vacant for a long time, and now they're home to 2 and there's no off street parking here, and it would be prohibitively expensive to remodel the buildings to add some so tenants that you have card, and this is a really great win-win situation. Downtown, Denton, everywhere right, has less office workers than there used to be. So this is a good deal for the parking garage, too, to get some more tenants. Some of the best information we have comes out of a study out of Buffalo, New York, which was one of the first cities to eliminate. Last year there was a study published that looked at 36 new major developments that were permitted in the first 2 years after their form, and here left up to the market 83% of all new building projects still provided a and over half the projects provided the same or more then that would have met the old codes. So it's a fraction of new buildings that are using the new flexibility. But it does make a big. Overall, the marketplace, 20% fewer parking spaces that would have been required. And there's no doubt that mixed use buildings. Saw the the most benefits of this new flexibility. Typically when projects have housing and businesses together, parking requirements are additive. So you have to meet the requirement for every use that you have in the building, even though in reality the busy at different times of day, and the parking requirements in total can be quite high. And projects that did you the new flexibility, and ended up building twice as many new homes and over twice as much new commercial as building projects that would have met the old code. So, being able to build a few less parking spaces really opens up a lot of. Seattle saw really similar results when they reduced parking requirements near transit. Back in 2012, there was a really big study that covered 5 years after their form. Researchers tracked over 800 new multifamily buildings and they found that 59% of all the new homes would have been illegal under the old code, so that flexibility allowed 35,000 new homes, which is 10% of Seattle's Seattle's entire housing stock to build the amount of parking they thought they needed without the extra cost or delay, and overall the new buildings constructed 40% fewer parking spaces than they would have been required, and instead of creating like a parking shortage, it's much more appropriate to think of this as like a market correction around the same time king county where seattle is located in, was conducting a study on average and they found on average parking was over, supplied 40%. So we see this correction that's happening. Naturally, when developers can build the amount of parking that they think they need and because of this code change, right? This is a time where in Seattle is really growing, the city was saved from 18,000 unneeded parking spots which would cover over a 100 football fields. So really big impact for the city. This is my contact information. But I'm gonna hand it off to Patrick, and then we'll get to questions. Alright! Well, Hi! Al, can you hear me? Okay. Great. Well, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here, and I'm really looking forward to your questions today. So I will to begin. Let me mention a couple of things first of all, if you're a parking consultant like me, or a transportation planner like me, you may be worried. What are you gonna do in life for money when you are no longer hired by developers who need and that is there's a lifetime's work of work to be done. Okay. Managing curve parking, which is an underdeveloped skill that will be needed more and more because that's what everybody is afraid of. I'm gonna share my screen and show you just a couple examples of recently implemented reforms. And so to begin here, this picture is of my hometown in Palo Alto, California, my mom and dad bought their first house in Palo Alto in well, before I was born, my dad remember, they paid about $16,000 for and at the time it was 10 cents an hour to park on University Avenue. It downtown Palo Alto well, today, if I could afford that house, it would cost me 3 million dollars and it's free to park down 10 so in the space of a generation, we've completely solved our affordable housing problem, for our cars. Now, I think that's backward. But what happens if you say let's make it legal again to build something like this beautiful building by Pedro. And people say, Oh, my God! The parking will become overcrowded on the street people will double Park. They'll drive in circles. It'll be a disaster. Well, fortunately, Ucla, Professor Donald Shoe has proposed 3 reforms and cities all over the country and all around the world are beginning to adopt, and they are first charge the right prices for curb parking by which he means charge the lowest price that will get you one or 2 of available spaces on every block. Most. Oh! And charge the lowest price that will achieve that goal. Second, return. The parking revenue generated to the blocks where it's to pay for public services, and that helps make this politically popular, and then, third, you can remove minimum parking regulations. Well, this is certainly one way I want to point out, though, that there's another way that actually is also very effective. The code of Hammurabi, the ancient first law code that we found it prohibits stationing chariots in the and the penalty was deaf so this completely eliminates, repeat, offenders. It's very good, but I know some of you are softies. So this is a little less of a law and order. Approach. In Berkeley the Liberals there are charging the right prices for curve Parking, Berkeley charges the lowest rate needed to achieve their mandated occupancy goal, which is 65 to 80% occupancy rates are now 50 cents to 4 bucks an hour. I checked yesterday. Here's the map you could see that it's the heart of downtown. The prices are highest in front of the busiest restaurants and blocks and on the streets where the band is much lower and things are less popular it's only 50 cents an hour in it. I helped create this program with a study that back in 2,011, 2,013, it went into effect there isn't a formal policy returning the revenue, but the meters do, in fact, help fund public services for the downtown blocks and it includes security in the form of downtown, who walk the street, keep an eye on things, help us! It includes Cleaning street sweeping sidewalks, steam cleaning, help for the homeless. And this was actually an informal deal in that the city said, Look, merchants, if you agree to let us increase meter rates, we will agree. Join the downtown new property based business improvement district and our we'll be paying our a fee for every downtown building the city owns, which is a lot of property. The enforcement in Berkeley has been eased by modern technologies, and many cities are adopting these. So, for example, every parking Enforcement vehicle is equipped with license plate Readers. You could see the cameras there, license plate, recognition system, cameras, so now, in the residential parking, permit areas in the city, your license plate serves as your and you don't need to. You know. Go down to City Hall and get a plastic bumper sticker and stick it on your car every year. Similarly they are able to use these cameras to enforce time limits, to check actually meter compliance. The other thing that the city is intending to do, and I'm not sure if they've got it up and running yet, since the vehicles are counting license plates on each block, it's not hard for them to measure occupancy and they want to start generating automatic maps of octancy, now the other way, that cities are doing this is using their wireless network parking meters. They're measuring occupancy or estimating occupancy based on revenue data. Right? If people are paying a lot, the results. Well, one year after the program went into effect, scholars at Uc. Berkeley and elsewhere studied the program carefully, using Federal funding, they found that finding parking had gotten much easier. According to most drivers, surveyed fewer people are parking on the street, more are parking in the formerly underused city garage. And there's so much less circling for underpriced but there's 693,000 fewer vehicle miles of travel per year just because people are no longer driving its circle, searching for free curve, parking a surprising amount of traffic in our downtowns consistent people who, you know frankly, they're not going anywhere. They've already arrived. They're just looking for a bargain. San Francisco. I will skip over, but they have a similar program that is delivered great results, and the one thing I will say is San Francisco's demand-based pricing has resulted in a 35% increase in sales tax revenue in the 7 pilot program area compared to less than a 20% increase in the areas where the old fixed price meters were left in place. So if businesses are afraid they'll make too much money, and you know, are really afraid of that. Don't do demand based pricing. Managing ker perking residential areas, you know a lot of us would like to make it legal once again to build the kind of beautiful historic California architecture like this lovely for Plex, and which is beautiful in part because it's not Marred by minimum parking requirements converting all that great well, it's got no Austria parking. If you propose this today, people would worry about overcrowded current. So if you wanna restore the practice of building missing middle housing as damn Crowa calls it, and and allow once again duplexes and courtyard apartments and bungalow courts and a small apartment buildings in single family neighborhoods you need to learn how to manage so first don't do what Boston, Boston, like a lot of cities, set up the policy, said, we're just gonna give everybody free residential permits up to X permits per household. They gave out 3,933 residential permits for the Beacon Hill neighborhood. Years later somebody counted, and just discovered. The neighborhood only has 983 curve parking spaces, so of course, it didn't work to prevent overcrowding. Well by contrast, you can adopt a policy that says we're going to issue no more than one curve. Permit per parking curve parking space that actually legally exists and if you're above that target now, well, you could create a waiting list for new permits until the number in circulation dwind but what Tucson does is they have a policy that says you can have no more than one permit for a property for every legal curve, parking space that's available on the frontage of your property. So suppose you tear down a single family, and you put up a 12 unit apartment building. The city comes. It says, well, you've got 3 legal curve parking spaces in front of your property. So you developer building owner, can have 3 on street parking permits that are good to park in the what if your tenants have more cars? Well, you better either voluntarily build some Austri parking, if you have no you know minimum parking regulations demanding. You build more, or your future tenants are gonna rent. Some of that excess parking that's all over America imposed minimum regulations for so long. Well, with that we could talk residential parkking benefit districts. Later which is another great technical, but in some charge the rate prices for curve Parking return the revenue to the neighborhood to pay for public services and then you can remove all your minimum parking regulations, and this works anywhere. You don't need transit. You don't need anything else. All you need to do to remove minimum parking requirements is learn how to manage and luckily it's pretty fun. And I've enjoyed doing it for many years. So with that, let me turn things over to Tony. Thank you, Patrick. I guess I got it. You have to stop sharing for me. It's really nice to be able to follow up on. Such great informative presentations that cover the basics of parking policy reform. And then I can talk about what I'm best at here is how to organize. So we have we can arrange some stuff here, so I know what I'm doing. Alright! So we've heard what's happening around the country, and we heard about the imported policy that we have to implement in order to to deal with the impacts of eliminating minimums. And what we need to do to move forward and keep these things. I'm gonna share some theories about why these reforms are happening more frequently and how we can accelerate the incineration of costly parking mandates and adoption of complementary policies, and I know Professor shoe is in the audience so apologies. For this great laser slide I made, but I I think we're we're really good forward on this, and it's on stage. So first, these reforms just make sense. They're logical, their revenue neutral, if not positive, and they regularly result in win-wins for cities and communities that implement them and the status quo is ridiculous. It's a house of cards it's an emperor with no clothes. It's just waiting to be called out and that's the genius of the high cost of free parking. Of course, being right doesn't mean you're gonna win. And get what you want, but in my experience, when you point out the hidden costs of parking and the space that it takes up, and then you top it off with examples of how arbitrary the ratios are like these ones in dallas for similar land uses dry cleaner versus laundry service appliance repair versus electronics. People get it, and while only, if select few may become shoe pieces at the very least, people are, find it hard to. They're less likely to oppose reforms. They'll think twice before they were pose or forms when, when when you're proposing them. Another reason. These reforms are happening is that we've got evidence from places with no mandates that this guy doesn't fall for decades. Hundreds of cities and towns have had no parking mandates in their city centers, and the results from vanguard cities with more expansive reforms which Katie pointed out several is actually kind of a mixed bag. On the one hand, we have examples. It takes a long time for significant development without parking to happen and when it does happen, some on street permits and meters are the proper method but on the other hand, we're facing multiple threats like climate change and housing crisis and we need to get busy building housing and retrofitting our city, and of course the herd is on the move. Cities are seeing their peers make big changes, and they seem a lot more reasonable now than they did even just a few years ago. In places that were in the middle of long-term incremental plans are looking around and realizing that they're behind the curve now and are just going for full repeals. And those are the reasons we regularly see. Covered. But it's my opinion we're seeing a lot of this fantastic progress because of the addition of a powerful catalyst with so what is organizing? You'll find a lot of definitions. But at the core it's the hard and gratifying work of moving people to take action for a common goal. That's usually part of a longer term mission envision organizing goes beyond just raising awareness or proposing solutions to things. It involves finding leaders, sharing skills on public comment, persuasion, effective activism. And I believe the most important organizing for parking reform happens at the local level. It's grassroots. So I'm gonna quickly share with you a case study of organizing for parking reforms. It happens to be the story of how I ended up doing this and founding the parking reform network. Okay, so these are pictures from Southeast Division Street in Portland, just a few years apart. In the 19 seventies there was supposed to be a freeway built along this road, and a lot of buildings were torn down, being lightened. Today. This is a destination restaurant row full of shops and apartments, and there's a high capacity bus line that runs down the street. But controversy about these developments almost reverse decades of progress in port. So long story pretty short, and to the city to very little fanfare, eliminated parking requirements along streets with high frequency, and nothing really happened. Then about 10 years later, as a story goes, some developers visited Portland at the peak of our bicycle and transit mode, share, building mid size apartments to No. Off street parking and the building's leased up. So other developers followed, and we had a building boom on our hands. But then the nearby neighbors flipped out, and Portland had never implemented a solid parking permit program. So the city was kind of stuck without a ready solution, and they proposed a new set of mandates. I'd read Donald Trump's book in 2010, so I showed up the City Council and planning commission to oppose these new mandates, and I met like minded people, and we built a mailing list. Then I helped turn people out to testify but we lost and in 2013 the city began requiring parking and buildings with more than 30. But I ain't give up. I got appointed to some parking committees. I kept learning and enjoying 15. I founded what would become Portlanders for parking reform, which was probably the first parking reform specific organization. I got to work reaching out to likely allies on this topic. Housing groups, bike groups, pedestrians, and one of the first groups I presented to is Bike Loud, which Katie was the co-chair of at the time. These groups had reasons to support parking, reforms, but largely they were unaware that there even was such a thing as parking reform, let alone tracking opportunities for advocacy and health, push things along so I started spreading the word farther than the Portland too, I was for example, the only scheduled parking Reform presentation at the first Yimb Count Conference in 2016. Locally in Portland, we spread awareness, and we built a community around this topic with education, outreach and fun, social events. We made memes and infographics. We organized walking tours. And of course we turned people out to testify that photo of top shows a couple of my members of the Port lenders for parking reform, but also 3 of my co-workers, who, I convinced to have a lunchtime burrito to and similar tactics are deployed all over the country, and locally here in Portland, rightly to overcome the inherent inequity and difficulty in how our cities take control. One more slide, and this worked a quick rundown, you know. We found I founded Portlanders for parking reform in 35. In 2016 we averted an expansion of these existing park uniforms, basically obsolete. We passed a performance based parking policy in 2022 and by the summer dozens of Portland Oregon cities will have no parking man. So to summarize, parking reform is a growth industry. It's easier than most people think but it still takes a lot of work, and we're here to help you. At the parking reform network. So, thanks. Okay, we got a lot of great questions at Am that are being asked for the audience. But I'm gonna ask if you questions first. And the first question maybe seem like an obvious one. But don book. The high cost of free parking came out almost 20 years ago, why is the parking issue getting so much traction now? If any of you can pickup on that. Oh, okay. I'll give it a try. So first of all, the housing crisis for people in America has grown worse and worse and worse in the last few years to the point where it used to be mostly really hurting poor people who often don't have the money time skills or influence, to live, to organize a big factor is that not only have a lot of middle class people gotten hurt and started getting angry and becoming politically active on housing for people, but they've also been getting funding, so for example, the Yambi Town Conference was funded by Yamb groups many of those groups are well funded now, like we're talking 1 million dollar budgets and they are noticing Professor Shu's work and other scholars work. And just the plain logic that if you're, you know, creating cities that have free parking for cars, you don't have room for for reasonably affordable housing for humans, and then another thing is the turnover. You know I I in my college classes in 92, discovered Don Chew's writing, and have spent 20 years working in the trenches to reform, and a lot of a lot of the people who use to oppose me are have enjoying they're enjoying a peaceful retirement. Bass fishing somewhere, and it's great. So it's a new generation of planners. Other thoughts. Yeah, I would agree. At the housing crisis is in every now. Right, I think, is much more common knowledge that we've been under building a new homes for decades now, and we're really seeing the cost impacts of that. And there's just not enough housing options. And I hear from developers all the time. Right? They say when they are trying to figure out what they can build on a property, they figure out, what can the property park? And then they build the amount of units that they're allowed to build based on the parking spot, right? Like. That's how we've been designing our communities for decades. And it's just it has, like the wrong priorities. So I think when you know government officials are looking like, how can we? What's what's a good solution for the housing crisis? And to boost housing supply getting rid of these regulations doesn't cost right. This is something that has a big benefit where there's going to be more homes added to your community and less red tape for government officials to go through in the permitting process it's it's a very low-hanging fruit solution. Oh! But you do. You do have to be confident that there's not going to be a parking crisis in the next year. So until recently, this parking seemed to be exclusively a local issue. And now we're seeing a bunch of states taking action. And so what has changed? And why? Politically, Tony, thoughts on this? I think that a big part of that is, I kind of alluded to is just the awareness it hasn't. It doesn't like that that it's possible, seeing some evidence from the cities that took the first steps on. This, I think, is big. I do think that you know that and add to just add, on a last question, it's, we have housing crisis, but we also have, you know, an increasingly dire climate crisis. And people are more aware of the impacts of just automobile central development in general, which I think is is providing it's not the top line issue all the time, but it provides an energy. So I think when just the these that's big white offices. And I think that also it's recognized that it is the cities that want to do these policies can definitely use the cover and the help from from having a statewide bill. So I think to some degree, there's a bit of request or demand from from municipalities to have some impetus to to eliminate or reform their policies. Take a second look at. So I'm gonna ask you to like. So put yourself in the position of opponents. You know there are still opponents to this. What are the most effective arguments you hear against parts, and how can they be answered? Got a tree. So! Opponents can take advantage of the fact that even most college graduates in America are not required to take an economics class, and the average person is motivated by the fact that they currently park free on 99% of all trips to want to believe that a zoning code is like a book of magic spells, and that if you write in it that parking must be free and abundant, that the magical developer Jeannie, will show up and provide the parking for free at no cost to anybody else, while in reality the parking cost as initially paid for by the developer but then passed along to the since. Most people don't own know that it's real easy for opponents to claim that the developer just pays for the cost of all the parking requirements, and that if you remove the requirements they're getting you know the developer is getting away with something well that's been a pretty effective argument for supporters of removing minimum parking mandates like me. The counter argument is that the evidence shows very clearly that, in fact, how's that, for example, don't come with onsite parking rent for a lot less than so for a lot less. So actually, yes, while the cost to the developer goes down. Profit also goes down, you know the sales price goes down so it's really a give back to Rters and home buyers to remove minimum parking requirements. But for opponents they cannot often effectively claim. The opposite is true. I would argue that also there's not as much the most effective barriers here are not so much arguments as appeals appeals to self-interest. Everyone's got cars. Everyone wants to drive. The current situation doesn't work for me or appeals to, you know, this is going to impact people who are low-income. This is going to impact people who have disability. So I make that distinction because usually they're not coming with evidence. They're not actually arguments. They're just pointing these things out as a way to slow down or put stumbling blocks. And we can really look at the evidence of who owns the most cars, who dropped what access equitable access really looks like in a community. And those appeals fall apart but you have to kind of be confident and have some ready-made, you know evidence and believe in that. This is, there are some trade-offs occasionally, but that this is generally a net positive overall to be able to push back on those opponents. So we got a bunch of right now, so I might as well just dive right into that, because I think that's most interesting. But the first one there was a what do you guys think about getting rid of off street parking requirements for only affordable housing developments or housing for folks with disabilities does keeping them in place only for market rate housing create some strange equity and and I think that's an interesting question, who wants to take a stab at that? Good. I'd love to. There are, I would say, in my experience of like, what are the buildings that or the developments that that come forth in the years right after a parking form that are like really raring to go, that parking really made a huge difference for that building we do see a few categories of redevelopment that seem to happen over and over again in different cities, and that is affordable housing, housing for people. Disabilities reuse of historic build, and are also like buildings that are near transit, right? Those are kind of categories where people have a slightly lower rate of car ownership than average because of lower incomes or people are unable to drive. But this is really also a political question. Parking mandates don't make sense anywhere. Holding every apartment, building inner city to build exactly the same minimum number of parking spots doesn't make sense, no matter where you are. You're going to be hurting someone and you're going to be reducing the number of apartments being built in your absolutely. So this is really about the politics, right? If the the politics aren't there to get rid of all parking mandates citywide. This is kind of an intermediate step that people take, that people who are concerned about the lack of parking maybe can get behind right for certain categories. But if a partial step but those are the category that definitely will, we'll utilize the flexibility in the rules, for sure. So we have a question about the economic advantages of reduction in off street parking. Both, for I think in the macro sense, for the city as a whole, in terms of greater value of buildings versus parking lots, but also, what is the what is the personal income? The potential advantages of getting rid of minimum parking requirements. Patrick is the economist. Sure I so it varies a great deal from place to place, basically minimum parking regulations do the most damage in the places where land values are the highest. So they? Because that's where people are really motivated to reduce the amount of parking they build by the fact that it's very expensive to buy a lot of surface land and also very expensive to go aboveground with structures or below ground spaces the so the answer varies a great deal from place to place, for evidence on this topic. I really recommend many of the studies that are summarized in books like Oh, for example, parking in the city which Donald Trump edited, I wrote a chapter for also the high cost of free parking so, for example, on the topic of housing one recent study found that requiring a single enclosed parking space adds about 17% to the average apartments or the average homes rent in the United States. That's nationwide a single space. So if you can save, if that by renting a space without, I mean Renting a an apartment without a parking space bundled with it, you can save 17%. On rent on average across the United States. It's amazing. Here is an interesting question given that streets are public space, which also it's a high opportunity cost for other uses, such as cycling infrastructure, bus lanes, loading zones, etc. Etc. Is it really wise to favor on street parking over off street, parking. Katie, Tony. I would say that. No, I mean no, you know. Obviously we should use part of part of the what I think the better things about when you start to work on parking or form, as you do start to see what the other uses you once you start looking at the curve as a valuable space, and not just a storage space for vehicles and you think about that it in you recognize its value in places where it is in high demand. You can start to actually more effectively figure out what the best use is for that space Covid, of course, opened up a lot of people's eyes so the fact that the curb could be more than just a place to park a car. But I think that that part part of the nice thing when you're doing for example, these performance based parking or demand-based parking management that Patrick described it makes it more possible to remove, for example, a section of street for a bike lane or a bus lane remove parking from an area, because then the demand, that overflows to the adjacent spaces increases the value of the spaces. So the city doesn't necessarily lose the revenue it might be using, for from from that from that parking, and it also kind of just it, it self manages the the. So I think clearly. Yeah, definitely, these reforms help to expose the highest Us use of the curve. I think some of the confusion may be that are on street parking spaces are not mandated. They're there, or they're not there. Where is the off street ones were, in fact, mandated by law to be created? But I took that question to say that you know, if you, if you eliminate the off street ones, this is gonna go for the on street. Barking and well, in any event, that was a good answer. Is there a point where my market parking meters do not break even for smaller communities? So is there a scale issue? Is there a population threshold? The needs to be meant to make implementing some of these strategies, particularly charging for on street parking, feasible? I'll dive into that one. So I've I've looked into this question a lot for different cities and different places, and the the answer basically is, you know, there are some areas out in the countryside where it may not make sense to charge for parking because and generally, if an area is, has so little parking demand even with that, even after you've removed all minimum parking requirements for new development, that the streets don't fill up. For example, let's suppose it's ranch land and Montana, then it doesn't make sense to charge for parking, and the the evidence for that is that you've got rid of minimal parking requirements. The street hasn't filled up with parked cars. However, if you ever reach the point anywhere where the street is filling up with parked cars, then it's quite likely that it is. Gonna break even, or more than cover costs to charge for parking. There's couple of reasons for that. First of all, it's no longer necessary to install physical infrastructure in most places on the street to charge for parking modern nations don't have any parking meters on the street. They simply use pay by phone, because just about every driver. Now carries a cell phone and you can always have the backup of paper permits sold at different outlets for the very vanishingly small group who don't have them. A meter. So you just put up signs allowing people to pay by phone. The, it's true that enforcement doesn't always break, even. But there's one more thing. Keep things in perspective. The cost of buying. Maybe, and putting it in and managing curve. Parking is. It's like the equivalent of loose change behind the couch when it you compare it to the size of most transportation projects. States are throwing billions of dollars in freeway expansions that make no sense. Don't get hung up on the minor cost of meters and stuff. Go get some Federal money or State money and use it for the startup costs. We have a question with regard to popular tourist destinations, and how would you approach for reforming what kind of reforms are you seeing in places that are popular tourist destinations you don't have a how to control demand in places like that where there is maximum demand for parking often. Katie, have you seen any of that, or? I think Patrick could take this in in terms of on street parking, but I would say, for these towns that get a lot of seasonal visitors, they also need the flexibility to build the amount of housing for their residents in their workers to live right this is something that a conversation that happened in anchorage when they were talking about getting rid of their parking minimums. Is, they have this area that's far outside of town. Good wood, which is a ski area, and there's people that work there at those key resorts that can't afford to buy a home in that area right? So they have, like a long commute down a from another part of town, which is like one reason why they got rid of parking requirements. Citywide right? Because there's people in all areas that need to have a lower barrier to finding housing. Very good. Point. I tell you, here in San Francisco we were, remember the words of Mark Twain, who said that we should pay for things by taxing foreigners who live in other countries, and that is our practice. Here we break in millions of dollars in parking revenue, where, charging 8 bucks an hour for curb parking in places like fishermen's land, from people who drive in from all over, and we use that to fund great things like free concerts in the park and lots of other good stuff, the cars of tourists are the product that causes a lot of cities to say, well, we're we got too many tourists here in San Francisco. The cars of tourists are this gigantic fountain of money. So the first thing to do is charge for parking. Get rid of all of your minimum requirements. We also tax parking, you know. We if you're a tourist, and you park in an off street in San Francisco, we charge you a ton. We charge like 50 bucks, a spot for baseball games. You know we it's a fountain of money. It's just great. And so just charge the heck out of out of parking and cut taxes for your residence. And like it, especially if you live in a residential area near a tourist destination. It's a fountain of money for your neighborhood. Laguna Beach charges 3 bucks an hour to park at meters in residential streets near the beach, and the residents get to park at those same meters for a $40 a year permit and they make millions which funds all the lifeguards and beach cleanup, and everything else that we like. 100,000 visitors a year leave behind when they come. So it's great. Yeah. So we got a question, how does the proliferation of Rideshare and delivery fit in? Especially the curve parking policies and parking mandates. You know Hales ride hailing may cut down on parking, but it also probably adds to traffic congestion, which is another factor. But so any thoughts on that. I I do think that the I mean anything, that these are double edged sword. Of course, right? I mean, like on one hand, they can increase congestion. On the other hand, they think that they do expand people's imagination on what it is to live, and not at least drive yourself around as much, or whether you need to have access to your own personal car. It's a little bit of a hot take, but like I think that that, like, you know, really the existence of Rideshare companies. When I got rid of my car, almost 15 years ago, everyone thought I was totally crazy. I had a kid you know. We did have a Zip car, but like it was like that was like, How can you do this? And just a few years later, after the Rideshare companies came along. It's like, Okay, that's not for me. But I can understand how this is a possible way to live where, it's an emergency way to live. Where, in an emergency or whatever people are cooking up, you know, like, how do you get around? So I think that they definitely help. I mean they can't. They provided an a reliable answer to the idea of how does someone do something without a car? And what what I can take. My personal experience. You just end up driving less and less the longer. You don't have a car, most likely, but I think that they are putting additional pressure onto the need to manage the curve. So I think that that they are putting additional pressure onto the need to manage the curve. So I think that these drop, you know more. Deliveries, drop zones, ride shares. They are pushing cities to rethink how they're using their curve and create more of a flexible approach, and looking at also the value and the revenue that could be coming out of the curb space. Let me add. Go ahead! Oh, I was just gonna say what we're seeing in city after city is that even before ride sharing the curve parking in most cities was well used, and often overcrowded. While the off street parking, which had been required to build too much. Was half empty, oftentimes so. Rideshare and other options have exacerbated that now there's even more competition for the thin fringe of curve parking spaces or loading areas, and the off street. Garages are even emptier, like substantially empty, so San Francisco has done a couple of good things. They have institute the tax on every pickup and drop off that occurs in the city by right sharing agencies to help offset the congestion, and second, at places like San Francisco airport. They've started converting some off street areas into dedicated rideshare pickup and drop off zones like an entire level of garage at San Francisco airport. We have a a comment on the complexity of managing curbside parking in residential blocks near commercial zones. This is sort of off in the flashpoint of parking requirements. And how do you deal with that? I think it's important in these conversations to point out that they're getting rid of parking mandates isn't going to bring a lot of like new buildings to your neighborhood that's going to destroy your neighborhood in your community. There are already lots of buildings that exist that could not possibly meet today's zoning code, and that if something terrible happened to like the street or the neighborhood you live on, and it had to be rebuilt to today's code, it's going to be much more spread out and require much more parking, then, is probably their existing today. And I think that's a really important point for people to talk about when they're because, you know, a lot of people. If you haven't heard of a parking mandate you hear we're going to get rid of this parking regulation and you think, Oh, my gosh! That means there's gonna be less parking then. Now. But in reality there could be a similar amount. Right parking could be built at the same rate that already exists in your neighborhood. So that, I think is like an important point to bring up that there's lots of buildings that are likely beloved by your community, and that you wouldn't want torn down. But that don't have enough parking to meet what's in the code. And I think those are really good examples to bring up when we're having these conversations about regulatory reform. I think this issue also gets to the you know, the parking scarcity, like particular blocks where there is parking scarcity, where people are going to avoid the parking meters, and then the parking residential sense. How do you deal with that? You know, when we are presenting to audiences about this kind of situation, often where a new development is proposed near a residential neighborhood, I usually present a toolkit of strings, and the first thing I do is talk about the importance of protecting resonial neighborhoods from Spillover parking, and I present a toolkit of options. One is a parking benefit district, where, just like Laguna Beach, they could allow us a limited number of visitors to park in their neighborhood and get money. Another option I present is what I, when I set up this at Stanford, which was a residential permit zone for the faculty neighborhood where nonresidents are simply not allowed only residents and their guests who have guest permits and then the next thing we often do is we show a toolkit. A parking reform measures that reduce traffic and pollution from new development, and most of those are things like, Hey, let's require the unbundling. A parking cost from rents at new apartments in the district. Here's the evidence showing that this will cut traffic in half and vehicle ownership in half from those new apartments. Now it. We can only do this if we protect you with a residential permit zone. Would you like a residential permit zone? And everybody's like, Oh, yeah, we'd love what? So at least many reasonable people are that way, and usually we can get durable majority support for managing the curve. Parking with one of those tools. So we have passed the hour point, and I will point out to people that in tomorrow we will post this video. So if you have to go, you can see we're gonna probably continue answering questions for for a little bit longer, and you can go check out the video if you have to leave now. So! Okay, there's a question about the fire department requirements for 20 clear zones when retrofitting suburban streets. We usually wanna have these streets have street trees and sidewalks, and that leaves a tight amount of space. Any thoughts on that. There's a great report from the National Association of City Transportation Officials, and another really good report from the Congress for the new Urbanism Emergency Response Initiative, which I co-ed and the Ducto report basically is a report on buying trucks that fit the kind of cities you wanna have rather than and basically buying vehicles, large vehicles that fit the kind of cities you wanna have in most of the civilized world. They use fire engines that fit and work for and operate perfectly on streets. That have only 10 to 12, feet of clear width between. For example, the hoses attach at the rear of the fire end. When you're pumping water instead of on the sides, like American trucks. So the first thing is, spend a little money to get some vehicles that actually fit the city. You want. Absent, that if you set parking prices or curve parking permits at a level that leaves some some spaces between parked cars, you know that. Say you bring occupancy down to oh, maybe you decide 6% is what you want on that street. Then that's another way to make sure. There's ample gaps. But frankly, you know, if you've got front facing driveways, third of the street is probably driveways, anyway. So there's probably plenty of room for people to pull over. See. I mean, there's a question having to do with a parking management programs. Which ones are most effective, because you a when, when you're eliminating the parking requirements, you know minimum offspring requirements, you have to have parking management in place generally, and I think if you already talked about this to a degree, patrick but any other thoughts on parking management programs. What thing I was. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Kay. I mean, I I was gonna say, I wanna add, you know a lot of times we talk about this. We think about big cities that are already really busy there's a lot of cars parked at the curb, but a lot of the cities that have eliminated parking minimums are really small towns that maybe don't have a parking meter don't have bus service there is not an immediate need for curb management, like the year after you eliminate parking minimums is really good to have those tools right to kind of assage people's worries that we can manage the parking supply. And there's not going to be a crisis and a shortage of of parking available for you. But you don't have to be a big city with lots of management programs to do this tool because the reality is is the parking requirements in your community are building more parking than is what is getting used today. And that is, I haven't met anyone from a single town that that has said otherwise. So there are very small communities that have done these reforms, and it doesn't mean that people have to sell their cars or stop driving. There's still an abundant amount of parking, and most people have no idea that this reform even took place. Yeah, look at it. Look at a map of the county by county changes in population in the United States over the last decade. And you will notice that most of the counties in America are losing. So frankly, if you're losing population, do you really think you're gonna need more parking. We have a question about examples of residential street parking management programs that are more equity focused where people who live in apartments have equal access to street parking. Also, they would like, appreciate insights into political, other challenges of managing residential street parking. Oh, so equity! Okay, I can give an example here in Portland. You know it's not there. There's not. We're still, this is still really an area that does need a lot of work on implementation. I think there's plenty of ideas and strategies, a lot of them are pretty logical, makes sense, like of how you, how you can. You can make these systems work better. Important, in Northwest Portland, we have combined meter and permit districts and the there's a couple of things going on there. One they do allow people who live in apartments that are recently built with no parking to purchase permits, but they are not. They like. The apartment has a smaller allotment than an apartment that might have been built prior to the parking benefit district. Going into place. They also use a lot of the revenue in North West Portland for a thing called the Transportation Wallet, which is transportation benefits towards you know there's a program for low income households that's like a free set of transportation benefits. And then there's a wallet which is available just at a discounted price to any resident in the in the permit district. So I think that that I mean, I think well, keep hold we'll keep advancing these policies and especially with the technology that's available, maybe move towards more. You know, auction or bidding based things were kind of all. May Park all must pay access. And then redistributing that money to people in the actually, the people in the district is would be my, you know, kind of, I think, ideal here. But I don't know if other folks have someone here. There are also low income permits right that are quite cheap. I mean, on street permits are pretty cheap, usually less than what you'd pay to park in a private garage. Right they do in Northwest. They discount the price I mean, I think that it's worth criticizing that a little bit in that. If you're a low income household that has a car, you get a discounted permit and if you're a low income in many places, we do discounts like that, and if you're a low income household that doesn't have a car, you're not receiving any subsidy, from the city so I think that we should, when we're looking at that equity offsets for these look for universal transportation benefits, or more universal transportation benefits rather than directing subsidy towards households that are for. I mean one thing that's really important to remember and to describe whenever you start a conversation about this is the status quo in the United States is deeply unjust. 99%. Well, first of all, the average household, that is, low income gets around by walking. Butking and riding the bus and wealthy households get around by driving far more the wealthy people drive more park, more they own more vehicles, they use a lot more parking and they're getting it all for free. The cost is being hidden in the cost of other goods and services that we are pay for. It is, it is actually not an active equity that you raised taxes in your downtown to build a garage. And now the blind person who walks downtown to buy his groceries has to pay for parking through his taxes that he can't use and doesn't need. So! I often find it useful to examine the city budget, to see how much money is going into the status quo of paying for all that parking, and then notice that it's not being paid by just the motorist, but by everybody the another. You know. Another thing is to show all the research on your city's minimum parking mandates are driving up rents and home prices and pushing some people into homelessness because the rents are more expensive. So don't let anybody get away with saying, Oh, well, the status quo is a model of social justice, and by fighting for continuing to let rich people park on the street for free. I'm a big social justice warrior. It's like no, the frankly, one thing you do have to be careful about as a politics like here at San Francisco. All the meter revenue in the city is dedicated to Muny, and the vast majority of it goes to the bus system. That's very equitable. It's much more equitable than most American cities. The problem is all those low-income uni riders are not a strong political force. That is well organized to go demand more curve parking charges. To fund better bus service. So you, the revenue, return to the neighborhoods that Don you recommend is politically, really savvy. And I think it's also often much more equitable. But keeping. You gotta balance both these things. So you get done. Nothing done. There's a question about the correlation between parking minimum Olympics or rollback and acceptance and areas that have robust public transportation. Another way of thinking about is, does it really help to have public transit in in parking reform? It helps politically, because people who don't live near public transit say, that's fine for them. I'm happy with these, you know. Possibly no parking buildings going in away from my house, not where I live. But parking mandates don't make sense anywhere, but we are seeing right a number of reforms that are transit related. But that's probably not gonna stay the case over the next decade. Yeah, I think in a way, the level of transit that people like that the opponent to reforms expect needs to be in place is unattainable in most places in the United States. In any sort of reasonable timeframe, and I think that that it's useful to, and I think it's also, you know, we have to really think about. There's a lot of talk about transit oriented development, or why we put these things on corridors. But I think you got to recognize that when you're building a parking space, you're betting against transit. You're betting against walkability, you're betting against all these things in that neighborhood. So the best way to build out your transportation network at the very least, I would say, if your city or or your State, or anything, is looking at a transit oriented reform it's better than nothing. But try and get them, at least to do projected transit, you know. Allow the allow the exemptions on places where there's a transportation project in your regional transportation plan, or something, so that because it takes a long time to build anything. So you want to build the things today that support the city that you want to look like tomorrow. Yeah, and this debate is happening. I mean, I'm pretty familiar with Washington there's some bills in the State Legislature right now, and there's kind of this attitude that has, like I feel like Ben explained a lot of well, the transit is not good enough for me to stop driving therefore, I don't think this reform makes sense, and that's fine. But there's already people that live there in your town that don't own a car, or maybe just own one car right? You can go to the census data, and you can find out how many households in your city own 0 or one cars. And you can look up what the parking requirements are, and once you know that a two-bedroom apartment requires 1.7 5 parking spots but then there's 7,000 households that don't own 2 cars right the own 0 or one car these people are already not being served, well with like what's legal to build for housing. And all this does. Is it legalizes options, and it gives people more choices for what kind of place they would like to live. Nobody has to move into a building that doesn't have a parking spot for them. If that's not what they want. If you have, like 3 children in 2 cars, find a place that has a parking spot. You know so what we're really talking about is increasing the number of options. But transit shouldn't be a barrier to this reform, because you're city doesn't have good enough transit for everyone to sell their car. That's not what this reform is about. Oh, I you know what we're seeing in cities around the country. Is that senior citizens in auto dependent areas are reaching the point where there are realizing they shouldn't be driving or in off. Many cases they're failing eyesight or other disabilities are making it impossible for them to drive. They don't want to leave their neighborhood and home of deck, so. Many senior citizens, for example, have home equity and want to build an accessory dwelling unit on their property and rent it out. I had. I had one neighbor who used to rent her old garage that been converted to an 80 year to a college student. In return. The college student did yard maintenance and gave her rides to all her critical appointments. Like doctor's appointments because she couldn't drive anymore. Well, if you're a somebody who says that no, she shouldn't have been allowed to convert her garage, that she should have been forced to comply with one size fits all Austri parking requirements because she's a senior citizen in an auto dependent neighborhood well, she couldn't have confirted their garage into the housing that created the student. Who gives their free rides right? So when you impose one size fits all mandates, because you think you know what's best for senior citizens in auto oriented areas and can't understand their disability and can't understand their creative solutions, you are showing I think a level of self-importance and arrogance that planners like us should really try to avoid. We should try to give more options and put more focus on letting people do what they want on their own private property, and planners like us can learn how to manage the curve parking that the city actually owns. Yeah, and most of the time, right? We're not talking about buildings to have 0 parking at all. We're talking about a builder who wants to build 17 spaces instead of 23 right? We're talking about really small changes, but that requirement poses a really big barrier. If the property can't support that amount of parking spaces. Okay, well, we're not really getting we, you know, we've had so many questions. We're probably not going to get to them all. Maybe. This one? Somebody asks in what city our parking requirements most damaging, or maybe have been most advantages any nominations for that Houston we saw, you know, photos. Is, where probably can't say. Wow! But can you? It. 2,013. I went to the closing meeting for my work on the East Palo Alto. General plan update. This is a historically African American city. And near my hometown of Palo Alto and Stanford, that is now full of families living over it, overcrowded single family homes. The density of homes has been limited to avoid curb overcrowding. The city impose a strict minimum parking mandates. Well, they finally got. I was surprised when I walked into the meeting, because it was packed to overflowing with angry citizens and I thought, What's going on? It turned out that the city had finally gotten funding to hire 2 code Enforcement officers, and they had gone door to door enforcing minimum parking regulations for the first time in many years, and that meant that they were red tagging a whole bunch of houses for having families living 2 or 3 to a home illegally living, and garages well, the city that had turned out dozens of families onto the street, who were now living in things like their cars and church parking lots because they chose to prioritize housing for cars over housing for people you know, they were focused on let's make ample free curve, perking and not on how many people are gonna lose their homes when when we force people to comply with minimum parking requirements. So that is something I'll never forget and I can't have an equity conversation about parking without thinking about the pastor and all of those families who were like, we need homes. We need homes for our families, not. It's a a great example. Thank you, Patrick. You know, I think that we probably will close this now. I'm sorry for questions we did not get to, but there was just so many. But this is been a really great conversation. I thank everybody who joined us, and thank you. Katie Patrick Tony for a I really enlightening discussion on parking, and we'll see everybody later on on the part Bench. Alright! Thanks, Rob! Thanks for hosting us. Hi! Yeah.Thank you.