In New York and elsewhere, the rules typically take the form of ratios [of parking spaces to retail and housing] that have been copied from one city to another, handed from one generation of engineers to the next without much study or skepticism.
One of the best arguments for ending parking minimums is getting someone in favor to read through them and correctly answer how many spots a handful of hypothetical developments need.
I believe parking minimums make up literally half of the zoning code in my city by number of pages. There’s pages of either vague or outdated minimums. For instance, video rental stores have a dedicated line, but we have zero video rental stores. I believe there is also one for soda fountains.
For low density residential, garages do not count toward parking minimums, meaning you have to have a large driveway even if you don’t need it.
How the hell does this parking garage even work? Looks like a whole lot of the slots are being trapped by other cars or am I missing something here?
I would love to end parking minimums everywhere. Where I live there are a large number of churches and universities which all have large parking lots. This means these streets need to be taken care of but can’t get any city taxes for so the rest of us residents have to pay taxes to maintain them. I have no problems with universities which more than make it up with people and events. Churches are fine but with the parking minimums it means there are massive parking lots that only get close to full a few hours a week. That is the largest waste of them all.
Parking minimums seems like something that people think they need but once removed won’t affect day to day.
Or maybe people need those parking minimums until they have alternatives.
For example, all that church parking. If they didn’t have it, does the congregation have reasonable other ways to get there? Is there sufficient street parking? Is the neighborhood ok with a flood of cars overwhelming the streets every Sunday?
I live in a small city built out a couple decades ago that clearly shows both. There are quite a few churches near the town center without parking. Their congregations are mostly walking distance or can park on the street. We also have more suburban churches with huge parking lots, whose congregations have no option but to drive, there’s no street parking and the neighbors don’t want them flooding the neighborhoods every week.
So the question is how to get those suburban churches to be more like those downtown churches? I don’t think it’s as simple as removing the parking minimums so more buildings can squish into smaller areas. That’s one characteristic of denser areas, but I don’t see how it’s a defining feature
Having some way to get places other than a car, is a more useful feature to focus on
Edit after getting the article to load … in this case the minimum is 1/2 parking spot per unit. That not much. I guess they’re focusing on it being next to a subway so people have transportation options. Maybe it’s just my personal experience, but this is a place where more parking can be good. I used to live in a major city and enjoyed all the benefits of transit and walking: highly recommended! However I was never able to shake the occasional need for a car or even just the anxiety about a car, and eventually moved out to the ‘burbs. If I had a good place to park a car and leave it, I might still be living downtown using transit for almost everything. However partly due to this “all or nothing” approach, I now drive everywhere. How is that a win for anyone? I totally agree with reducing parking minimums for retail or businesses where people have options, but trying to build places to live that don’t provide what people need is counter-productive. Give me a city apartment with a place I can leave my car while I need a car or think I do, and over time if I can get away without a car I’ll carve money by getting rid of it
Edit - fuck. centuries ago. The point was my town was built pre-cars, which is important to this topic.
So the question is how to get those suburban churches to be more like those downtown churches?
Raze the whole suburbia to the ground and rebuild it with proper pedestrian, bike and public transportation, mixed zoning in mind. There is no saving or improving it, it is just too far gone.
Removing parking minimums from new construction is a great method to slowly remove parking as a need to happen. This gives a great quick turn solution with a longer legs since only “needed” parking will be added as the surplus decreases.
I do feel that reduce car use requires both removing of incentives to drive (like free unlimited parked as an assumption) as well as adding other transit options. I know personally that if I know parking is going to be bad I start considering all my options since driving is such a default option. We need it both ways. Especially since adding more transit options are not going to be built unless people use them. People will use them if they have to which brings pressure to make more and better options. This works best when the people who need to use them are affluent and powerful. We need both
A good way can be to keep the same amount of mandated parking minimum but allows that up to x% (30%, 50%, 90% ?) of this parking can be replaced with secured bike parking (with precise specification on what is a secured bike parking, the same way as there is specifications for a car parking spot width, length …).
This way this gives a choice, either the shop owner decide to ~save a fuckton of money on land and construction cost~ be environmentaly friendly and build bike parking instead of car parking spot, or he can still spend money on a huge parking lot if he is really against bike.
~ be sensitive to the environment and build bike parking
Bike parking is good for everyone. Also super easy to do
I live in a small city built out a couple decades ago
It’s probably a fair point to mention that smaller cities and towns have wildly different parking needs than NYC, where the majority of residents don’t own a car. The existence of parking minimums in a place like New York is just bonkers. (Thanks, Robert Moses!)
I still expect plenty of parking to be built after any city repeals parking minimums, it just isn’t an excessive amount, and the city and developers soon start arriving at a natural equilibrium (compared to an inflated floor) of what is actually required, depending on what kind of business or residence it is, where it is located, etc.
The big factor about parking is how much it adds to housing costs. The Government Accountability Office did a report in 2018 that estimated that parking requirements added $50,000.00 to every housing unit sold. Obviously, some parking will probably be needed, but just reducing the amount has the effect of an immediate per-unit cost reduction for a given multi-family project. https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-18-637.pdf
