In Madison, Ald. Tim Gruber has introduced a pair of amendments that would 1)
reduce the number of parking spaces required for office and retail uses, and 2)
actually cap the number that could be provided. I do not have an opinion on No.
2, but No. 1 should get serious consideration.
Requirements that developers provide X number of parking space per Y square
feet of building space were developed in the mid-20th century as cars became
more common and people worried about congestion and disorder. (Side note: If
anyone is interested in looking at some planning documents from the period, I
have a good sample. They are chilling in their top-down elitism, technocratic
arrogance, and sometimes blatantly racist bent.) To determine how many spaces a
restaurant, hotel, grocery store, office building, apartment building, etc.
"should" have, planners sent various gophers to count cars at various
establishments. Armed with statistically insignificant samples that could not
account for all of the variables that dictate parking demand -- a restaurant in
a walkable area will need fewer spaces than one that is isolated, for example
-- they wrote model ordinances that made their way into code around the country.
These requirements had a major role in post-World War II urban design. With
acres of parking separating buildings, places became less amenable to walking,
biking and transit. The need for parking became a self-fulfilling prophecy. And
because there is usually no good way to charge drivers for parking, even though
parking obviously is costly to provide, it becomes a subsidy to drivers paid by
passing costs to tenants and customers. If you walk to a store, you subsidize
those who drive. Because the poor disporportionately walk and use transit, this
is a regressive subsidy, and one that distorts price signals for motorists. In
instances where motorists do have to bear the cost of their parking, vehicle
miles traveled and demand for parking drop considerably.
The guru of parking reform is a UCLA professor named Don Shoup, who's book "The
High Cost of Free Parking" was a bestseller by planning book standards. You can
get the gist of his argument here:
http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/QuantityVersusQualityInOff-StreetParkingRequirements.pdf,
and you can browse his other publications here: http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/
In short, he argues that we should remove minimum parking requirements and let
developers decide how much parking they need to provide. That way the market
can work to be more innovative in providing parking, by for instance locating
day-occupied uses next to night-occupied uses and sharing the spaces, by
providing shuttles from transit stops, etc. This makes doing business more
economical, makes development more compact, and reduces the environmental
impact -- runoff, heat island, habitat loss, etc. -- that comes with the
current government-mandated oversupply of parking.
The immediate objection to Shoup's argument is that developers will not supply
enough parking, and streets will be clogged with motorists trying to park. But
developers will not do this, at least in any big way, because projects that
require people to hunt for scarce street parking will not sell. To the extent
that they do, the problem is manageable, and profitably so, with tools such as
parking meters and resident-permit street parking.
Shoup argues for removing minimums and imposing only quality controls -- no
parking in front of the building, landscaping to mitigate the eyesores and heat
effects, etc. Some cities have actually done both of these. I understand, but
have no details, that Madison's Urban Design Commission is already considering
quality controls. IMHO, relaxing or removing minimums goes hand in hand with
that.
Gruber's proposal would maintain the minimums but relax them substantially. As
I said, he would also cap allowable parking, a proposal I don't have the
background knowledge to evaluate. The first proposal is here:
http://legistar.cityofmadison.com/detailreport/Reports/Temp/1172007124614.pdf.
The second is here:
http://legistar.cityofmadison.com/detailreport/Reports/Temp/11720071392.pdf.
The Plan Commission on Monday asked staff to analyze the proposals and report
back in a month. At the meeting, Smart Growth Madison spoke in favor of
relaxing minimums but opposed the caps. I believe the Cap Times will have a
story on the issue in the next day or so.
This will be a hard sell, probably, because people who hate freedom will object
that relaxing government controls is somehow a totalitarian scheme to make
everyone gay. Or something. But IMHO it's a major opportunity for bike- and
community-friendly reform, even if it doesn't go as far as Shoup would suggest.
Eric Sundquist
_______________________________________________
Bikies mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies
