Parking Minimums and Why Policy Change Matters
October 27, 2022
As someone who has been working with urban planners who focus on growing sustainable transportation modes and building out bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure in our communities, studying car parking policies across various municipalities falls in the “not very exciting” personal bucket of topics to better understand. However, it’s been pretty difficult to ignore all of the attention that the removal of parking minimums is getting in the urbanism and mobility circles, with the close to home law passed in Cambridge, MA this week, and the statewide reform passed in California last month, on the heels of nearly a statewide reform - one that covers 52 municipalities in Oregon.
So as I tend to do on the hottest topics being talked about, I decided to dig in on parking reform. Fortunately, the Parking Reform Network made that task easy for me, compiling all of the policy changes being made in an interactive map; and last year, the Urban Land Institute launched an interactive report that catalogs these reforms and shares the best practices in working to combat the oversupply of parking.
First, let’s cover the basics. Why do we need to reform car parking policies in our cities?
Many of our car parking spaces sit vacant and there are technologies that have created significant efficiencies for the parking industry - a 2019 MAPC report found that 30% of parking spaces in and around Boston were vacant during peak hours, and it’s much higher in some locations around the country.
Space is a premium in cities and meeting a minimum number of car parking spaces for a development adds significant costs to a developer/landlord, and in turn gets passed along to tenants. A study conducted at UCLA concluded that every added space in a garage costs renters $142 a month, or 17 percent of their total rental expense.
Oversupply of parking means a higher chance of free parking, further incentivizing people to drive and not use a more sustainable and healthier mode of transportation, leading to increased CO2 emissions because of an increase in VMT (vehicle miles traveled), and our cities are clogged with cars and air pollution.
Essentially, the status quo promotes land use patterns that increase traffic congestion and air pollution, and raises housing costs, while preventing walkability, and penalizing those without automobiles.
Now that we covered the basics, what boggles my mind is why the removal of car parking minimums has any opposition. It’s being written about as a bold and even controversial policy move in the Boston Globe. I think it’s pretty plain and simple. Mandating that a development has to cater to one mode of transportation over the others, monopolizes that mode, and is frankly, not letting the free market do its work. Removing car parking minimums is a common sense and market driven approach. Having car parking minimums should have never been a policy in the first place and has resulted in U.S. cities now trying to dig themselves out of these policy mistakes that were made 60+ years ago. Paul Ognibene, CEO of Cambridge development firm Urban Spaces said “It makes a lot of sense to codify this and let the market work; if you need parking as a developer, if your residents want it, then you’ll build it. If you don’t think you need it as a developer, then you won’t build it.”
As much as the cutting of greenhouse gas emissions is dependent on our personal choice and the decisions that the private sector makes, a lot more than many of us realize is dependent on what our local city staff and elected officials are doing now to reform archaic policies that were codified at the dawn of the car being adopted by the average American, and well before we realized the externalities that car culture has produced.
Cities (and states) are finally accelerating these parking policy reforms across the country, especially as there are climate change goals and pledges that have to be hit in the not too distant future, human-powered transportation and the unbundling of the car is rising in popularity in cities, and affordable housing is a key challenge as urbanization grows. Unbundling parking is what needs to come next. According to the Urban Land Institute, the national average construction cost per parking space is $10,000 surface, $24,000 above ground, and $34,000 underground, and in some cities where space is a premium, these figures are much higher. These additional costs have impacts on what people pay in rent. People that would like to have a car at their building can pay to do so, and people that don’t have a car, shouldn’t have to pay for that added cost. As Alan Ehrenhalt put it in Governing last year, “The more you stop and think about it, the clearer it becomes that parking minimums are irrational. They are a tax on developers — and eventually on residents — that rightfully should be paid by the drivers who use the spaces. In the broadest sense, they are a tax on housing.”
Meanwhile, there is hope; local policies and what we build is changing rapidly. New developments such as the Science and Engineering Complex at Harvard University, have decided to go entirely the other way and build only parking for bicycles and active travel friendly commutes. These buildings deserve to be recognized for preserving space wisely and prioritizing sustainability in all aspects of the design process, not only the building materials and energy use. It’s time to future-proof new developments and existing buildings and get ahead of these coming policy changes by creating facilities that no longer only prioritize cars. Building out more bicycle parking and active travel friendly facilities for tenants is a valuable asset now and especially will be in the coming years. I’m excited that there are companies like my client ActiveScore, who is a key partner with real estate companies in helping them build and be rewarded for having great facilities for people choosing to commute and travel by bike, e-bike, e-scooter, or on foot.
We all know that the real estate sector likes a little competition, so let's see who can provide the best active travel friendly facilities in the US (for a fraction of the cost of car parking facilities).
These parking policy reforms need to accelerate and when enacted, drastic changes will not be seen overnight. However, it is one lever that the public sector has, and over time, I do believe they will have the impact that is intended - to promote more efficient use of land and creation of healthier, more vibrant neighborhoods and cities.
