The Parking Minute

A minute of parking news and commentary

Tony Jordan

Residential Permit Programs: Parking Management or Protectionism?

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Austin planner Meghan Skornia tipped me off to an article she wrote (which was inspired by a magnificent screencap from a PDX city council hearing a few years back) about residential parking permits (RPP). 

Austin has a permit program, approved by council in 1996. The program is similar to most RPP: cheap, exclusionary, and protectionist. Permits cost $15 (4 cents a day!) plus sales tax a year. Residents of multi-family buildings with more than 6 units are excluded, if the building was permitted after 1959 when minimum parking requirements came to be in Austin. The purpose of the program is entirely to protect the convenience of residents to park. It does not appear, unlike Portland, that limited time stay parking is permitted for the public in permit zones. 

Meghan is very critical of this program, for good reasons, but I think the problem is that very few permit programs are actually trying to manage parking for the general good.

Do permits privatize public space?

I don’t think it’s a given that RPP privatize space so long as: the permits cost a market rate, they are available to anyone with a legitimate interest in parking in the area, some amount of time-stay parking is allowed. Do most permit programs operate this way? NO! But they should.

Do permits raise the cost of development?

I think this is the weakest critique in the article. Even Austin’s permits are only implemented if parking on the street is congested. Parking permits should (and I know they usually don’t) go hand-in-hand with eliminating parking requirements. Structured parking is expensive, permanent, and takes up space that could be used for housing. It’s much preferable to manage the on-street supply with a market-based approach than to require on-site parking.

If a permit is available to all people who live in the zone & is priced appropriately, then some parking may be built, but it would still likely be very much less than with minimums.

Are permit programs unfair to low-income residents?

I do think we need to be sensitive about impacts on low income people, but those concerns must be held in context of the impact of new structured parking on housing costs and supply. Also, given that time is money, allowing people to choose what their time is worth is fair. 

Of course no parking minimums and no permits is also fine, but if the parking is actually congested, then the city should be implementing a permit/metering zone to make sure that people can access the area if they need to drive.

If the city is doing it right, they will limit the permits sold to some percentage of the actual supply, if permits are warranted, this will lead to higher prices for permits. How that money is spent is the key. Portland has a great program called the Transportation Wallet. 

I advocate for direct redistribution to low income residents. This might be in the form of transit passes or other subsidies (like the transportation wallet), but I would say it should actually be a cash rebate sent to SNAP recipients or some other such identifier. What I don’t like to see is discounts for permits, a subsidy only for car owning low income people. 

What’s the future of permits?

I think technology can be used wisely to allow for pretty dynamic “virtual permitting,” particularly in areas impacted by commercial parking. In these zones, visitors (be they customers or airBnB guests) could purchase neighborhood parking at market rates w/o meters. This raises more revenue for transit subsidies!

 In the end, it’s like  @DonaldShoup  says: “All may park, all must pay.”

If there’s more demand than supply for parking we should use markets to manage it. I’m a socialist for healthcare, education & housing. I’m a capitalist for parking. 

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. 

Friday Fun: Is this the best parking story ever?

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The student claimed that there was irreparable physical and mental harm caused by the lack of parking spaces.

Last night, a tweet from @_The_Clearing brought this story from a year ago to my attention: West Linn HS senior sues city over parking restrictions.

Rory Bialostosky, who is now a college freshman, sued the Oregon city of West Linn for what he considered illegal parking restrictions near his high school.  West Linn is an affluent suburb near Portland with an estimated 2017 median income of $100,188. West Linn Mayor Russ Axelrod correctly assessed the root cause of the problem: “There’s a lot of money in the community. Kids have access to cars. The first inclination is to jump into your car and drive to high school.”

“Bialostosky said he was wrongfully cited for illegally parking on Easy Street.” I couldn’t even make something like that up.

The situation, which Bialostosky called a “crisis” was so bad that “kids are getting up at 6 a.m., 6:30, just to get to school to park and the school starts at 8:30.”

The high school provided parking permits, for $40 a year, to 275 students. Additionally, two primo parking spots are auctioned annually for, reportedly, thousands of dollars each. Bialostosky’s senior class was estimated to be 461 students. 

At least one member of council was sympathetic to Bialostosky’s complaints, Councilor Brenda Perry was surprised the school wasn’t required to build parking to accommodate the growing student population.

I wasn’t able to find whether the student’s case was settled in his favor (UPDATE: Almost certainly it was not), but Rory Bialostosky is in the news again this month. This time he’s suing West Linn City Council President Teri Cummings over public access to her hand-written meeting notes. That’s a cause I can get behind!