Modern Changes to U.S. Parking Requirements
A.C. Grish, 2019
University of Illinois at Chicago
College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs
The proliferation of the personal automobile in the 20th-century United States continues to have an astounding impact on the shape of our cities and towns today. What the average citizen may not realize is how much of this is due to zoning requirements. Zoning laws began slowly spreading in the U.S. in the early 1900s to separate residential and industrial land uses. Although some believed zoning to be an overreach of government, in an early legal battle the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the city imposing zoning, setting a precedent for cases going forward (Village of Euclid v Ambler Realty Co., 1926). As more Americans began to own personal automobiles, and amidst a rash of government funding for car-related infrastructure, many cities began writing minimum parking requirements into their planning codes. These requirements varied widely from place to place, but generally had a specific number of spots needed per housing unit, square foot of space, or storefront. In this newly automobile-centric culture, updating old, pedestrian-focused infrastructure was seen as a mark of modernity, a sign that a city was able to cater to the contemporary needs of residents and business owners. This was particularly important to convey as the fully car-friendly suburbs were drawing away city residents in droves.
And so for many years, city planners, developers, and all others beholden to zoning ordinances played by the rules and supplied the required parking — lots and lots of parking. In one study it was determined that there are around 800 million parking spaces in the United States (Chester, Horvath, & Madanat, 2011). All of these spaces exist to serve the roughly 250 million cars in the country, each of which spends about 95% of its time parked somewhere (Shoup, 2017). Cars account for a massive amount of infrastructure in the U.S., totalling between one third and one half of all urban land, by one estimate (Duany, Plater-Zyberk, & Speck, 2000).
The implications of parking minimums are far-reaching. As parking expert Donald Shoup (2017) puts it, these requirements “subsidize cars, distort transportation choices, warp urban form, increase housing costs, burden low-income households, debase urban design, damage the economy, and degrade the environment.” Almost every building being constructed today comes with an additional cost of building the required parking, and naturally developers and business-owners are passing that cost along to the consumer. Because of this, it is impossible to opt out of paying for parking, regardless of whether one uses a car or not. In this way, even those who exclusively walk, bike, or use transit are forced to essentially subsidize drivers, which serves to encourage more driving despite the knowledge of the harm it causes. It then becomes easier for policymakers to justify spending on automobile infrastructure rather than other modes of transit due to the overwhelming percentage of drivers, making our built environment increasingly unfriendly to bikers and pedestrians, and starving our public transportation systems of desperately-needed funding to make repairs and expand service… Making it even more desirable to simply drive instead. It is a repetitive, self-fulfilling prophecy.
Minimum parking requirements also burden the creation of more affordable housing, already a rampant issue in many cities. One study found that “minimum parking requirements can, at the level of an individual parcel or small neighborhood, make it less profitable to build units for lower-income households by forcing the developer to provide them with more parking than is profitable” (Lehe, 2018). Another determined that “parking norms reduce the housing stock by 1.2% and increase rents by 2.4%” (Andersson, Mandell, Braun Thörn, & Gomér, 2016). This may not seem dramatic, but consider the implications of preventing even a small percent of lower-income renters from accessing homes in places already extremely starved for affordable housing such as Denver or Seattle. Not only can the cost of building parking be prohibitive, but the physical space it takes up might be better utilized as more housing.
Another troublesome aspect of minimum parking requirements for residential units is that these requirements do not take into account the fabric of the specific neighborhood in question. For example, a multi-unit apartment building in a pedestrian-centric urban neighborhood with public transit options will likely draw more tenants that do not own cars, or who use cars sparingly and are used to searching for on-street parking. Plenty of city dwellers live in conditions like this across the country without issue, largely because many of these buildings were constructed prior to widespread car ownership. But new construction is beholden to new parking minimums. Jeff Speck (quoted throughout this paper as the author of Suburban Nation and Walkable City) and his family experienced this first-hand when building their own home in a historic area of Washington, DC. Their block was lined with rowhouses built in the 1890s, packed together on a small one-way street with parking on either curb. Building the required off-street parking for their new house would take up precious space that the Speck family, who did not own a car, preferred to utilize for their living area. They applied for a variance to omit parking, which took an absurd nine months to be approved by the city (Martin, 2008). Jeff Speck, an urban designer, was privileged with the knowledge and wherewithal to navigate this process plus the time to wait for the appropriate paperwork. The average developer likely wouldn’t bother. All of this time and effort on the part of private owners had to take place despite their entire block of neighbors getting by just fine in the same location with no garages.
There is a distinct irony in the fact that many of our country’s most treasured, historical communities would be illegal to build today due to modern zoning codes. For instance, “popular historic styles like courtyard housing cannot be replicated with today’s parking requirements” (Shoup 2017). Greenwich Village in New York City is a fine example of a dense, walkable community that has been in high demand for decades. It is full of a mixture of apartment buildings, multi-family flats, brownstones, shops, restaurants and corner bodegas, all packed tightly together. There are cars, of course, but street parking is scant and there are almost no garages or alleys. With most modern parking requirements, replicating a place like this now would be impossible. And yet, Greenwich Village shows no sign of being less desirable to potential residents. In fact, many of its charms arguably come from the fact that the neighborhood is scaled properly, with no garages breaking up the streetscape and no wide swaths of parking lots to prevent people from ducking into a bar or shop on a whim.
Such small local businesses, a part of the neighborhood fabric commonly touted by city officials, are also impeded by parking minimums. One of the early motivations in creating commercial parking requirements was to ensure that parking for local businesses would not spill over onto nearby residential streets (Mancini Nichols, 2019). Putting aside the seemingly obvious point that renters and homeowners do not own the city streets outside their doors, parking is also quite expensive to build. Jeff Speck (2012) posits that “the cheapest urban parking space in America, an 8½-by-18-foot piece of asphalt on relatively worthless land, costs about four thousand dollars to create — and not much urban land is worthless The most expensive parking space, in an underground parking garage, can cost forty thousand dollars or more to build.” For a small business owner, this price can be prohibitive. It can even mean the difference between an entrepreneur taking a chance on a business idea in a downtown area, moving it elsewhere, or scrapping their idea entirely.
In 2009, a small town in Idaho called Sandpoint eliminated off-street parking requirements in its downtown commercial district. This movement was spurred on largely by a 3-story bank being built downtown with so much parking required that it wound up buying out surrounding businesses to demolish and turn into the necessary lots. Many residents were still hesitant to change the zoning code but Aaron Qualls, Director of Planning & Community Development for the city of Sandpoint, recently wrote an article looking back positively on the past ten years since the decision. He stated, “Since that contentious decision by the Sandpoint City Council, millions have been invested downtown — projects that would not have been feasible, but for the elimination of parking requirements. Several jobs, building renovations, and expansions by local businesses were essentially made possible by adding a single line of code” (Qualls, 2019). Qualls details several businesses who were able to build expansions or renovate old buildings downtown, projects that would have been financially or spatially infeasible with the previous parking requirements, that now contribute to the fabric of the city as well as the local economy. Small infill sites in particular become ripe for development when not beholden to parking minimums that may have eclipsed the actual building project. It is also important to note that residences and businesses generate much more tax money for Sandpoint’s local economy than a parking lot ever could.
In recent years many cities have been reviewing their parking requirements and making changes to reflect the modern wants and needs of their communities. A handful have even gone so far as to completely eliminate parking minimums. In 2019, San Francisco became the largest city to do just that. San Francisco has greatly suffered from housing and affordability issues since the boom of Silicon Valley in the 1990s. Fair market rent in the area is considered to be $3,121 for a 2-bedroom apartment per the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development guidelines, and a family of four earning $117,400 yearly is classified as “low-income” (Zraick, 2018). As such, longtime residents and the working class have been getting priced out of their homes left and right. Some of San Francisco’s housing woes stem from an array of antiquated zoning laws. For instance, much of the city is zoned so developments in residential areas cannot be higher than 3 stories tall, preventing unit density that is desperately needed in the area. In addition, being on the west coast, much of San Francisco’s population growth came during the automobile era, and as such the city has catered heavily to cars.
Among other benefits, the move to eliminate minimum parking requirements makes good financial sense for a city with housing struggles like San Francisco. In a recent study, researchers found that “the cost of garage parking to renter households is approximately $1,700 per year, or an additional 17% of a housing unit’s rent” (Gabbe & Pierce, 2017). Minimum parking requirements are made even more obsolete in a city like San Francisco that is highly walkable in most neighborhoods, with excellent public transportation and largely bike-friendly weather. In fact, in a shift consistent with that of the younger generations as a whole, the number of households with no cars in San Francisco is increasing. Michael Rhodes, a transportation planner, analyzed U.S. Census data and found that “between 2000 and 2012, the city has seen a net increase of 11,139 households, and 88 percent of them have been car-free” (Dawid, 2014). There might be hope after all for a different self-fulfilling prophecy, in which cities with less parking beget citizens with less cars.
Cities with very different climates and struggles are changing their parking requirements too. Buffalo, New York and Hartford, Connecticut are both cities that have experienced a marked decline in population and wealth since the 1950s when many local industrial jobs moved overseas. During the mid-century years, in an attempt to keep up with the accommodations of the suburbs, countless historic buildings were razed in the name of surface parking. Both cities have been suffering a steady exodus of residents as well as high poverty and building vacancy rates — essentially the polar opposite problem from San Francisco. And yet, these northeastern cities have also done away with minimum parking requirements. It may sound overly simplistic that such different issues can be solved with the same technique, but cutting down on parking really does have positive implications for most communities. In Buffalo and Hartford, the hope is that this shift will financially benefit the cities by better enabling growth and development downtown which will provide jobs and income as well as bring in more revenue to the city in the form of property taxes — in Hartford, a Planning & Zoning Commission chairwoman stated that parking uses were costing the city $50 million in tax revenues each year (Bronin, 2018). In both cities, about 30% of occupied housing units do not have a car (U.S. Census Bureau, n.d-a). This is higher even than cities like Chicago and Portland, who have extensive public transit systems. In Buffalo and Hartford, the reason is likely attributed to the high level of poverty. But this is all the more reason to banish parking minimums — because, “in essence, parking minimums in the city were disproportionately benefitting higher income residents who drive regularly” (Quednau, 2018). As it seems a large portion of the city is using alternate modes of transportation, Hartford even doubled down and changed their zoning to require bicycle parking for all residential and commercial uses besides 1–3 unit residences (Bronin, 2018).
The other big change Hartford made was to enact parking maximums. Parking maximums are exactly what they sound like — the inverse to parking minimums. They put a specific cap on how much parking one can build. While they ostensibly sound like the logical next step from parking minimums, many urban planners aren’t convinced. This is because parking maximums make one of the same major mistakes as minimums — they are imposed without context. Just like the Speck family had to jump through hoops to omit parking on their own lot, a store owner may face difficulty in providing adequate parking even when they know they need it. The context of the specific city matters too. In San Francisco for instance, there is a robust public transportation network with plenty of options for residents to use to get around besides cars. In smaller towns that may have meager transit service and a lack of pedestrian-friendly infrastructure, parking maximums can cause undue burden on a community with few options. One research also found that “applying parking maximums only to city centers — an approach that many US cities are currently taking or considering — may not be as good an idea as it seems. In that case, peripheral areas without parking restraints could become more attractive for those inner-city residents with higher perceived values for private parking. If such preferences lead more investment to flow to the suburbs, the result will not only be a decline in development in central areas but also a future increase in travel demand” (Li & Guo, 2018). The hope in doing away with both parking minimums and maximums is that cost and effort will be self-limiting. There will be no minimums needlessly imposing acres of mostly-unused parking lots, but most business owners are not likely to spend money and space on an excess of parking spots if they don’t think they will be utilized.
So the usual concern that follows is, if less parking is built, where will people park? Although it is true that parking spots greatly outnumber cars in this country, parking areas in very busy, populated commerce centers may often be at capacity. The problem, according to Donald Shoup, UCLA urban planning professor and parking expert, is that parking is not priced appropriately. He found that a stunning 99% of vehicle trips taken in the US end with a free parking spot (Shoup, 1999) despite the fact that parking infrastructure is extremely costly to provide and maintain. He also determined that lack of available parking in an area leads to “cruising,” in which drivers circle the block continuously until they find a place to park. In a study Shoup and his students conducted in a busy Los Angeles commercial district, they found that cruising in that location was causing an extra 4,000 vehicle miles travelled every day. Said Shoup (2007), “Over a year, cruising in Westwood Village creates 950,000 excess vehicle miles travelled — equivalent to 38 trips around the earth, or four trips to the moon. The obvious waste of time and fuel is even more appalling when we consider the low speed and fuel efficiency of cruising cars … cruising 950,000 miles wastes 47,000 gallons of gasoline and produces 730 tons of CO2 emissions in a small business district.”
So what is the happy medium? How do we encourage less parking infrastructure but also cut down on cruising? We simply need to price parking correctly. Jane Jacobs tried to spread the word back in 1961 that “parking and traffic facilities are innately inefficient and wasteful without time spread of users.” Time spread must be encouraged for those utilizing on-street parking. Curb parking is consistently priced too low — it is frequently free or very cheap compared to off-street options. Particularly in metropolises like New York or Chicago when garage parking can be many times more expensive, people are encouraged to cruise for street parking instead. So we need to price street parking at a rate that conveys the cost and encourages turnover, enabling more people to be able to park throughout the day. Shoup (1999) even has a preferred ratio to make this happen — he advises setting the price of parking meters so that consistently, about 85% of spots are occupied with about 15% of spots vacant. This way, there will almost always be available parking for those that drive, eliminating excessive cruising, but prices will be restrictive enough that some people will elect to take public transportation, carpool, or another method. Of course this will not be an exact science, as occupancy and vacancy rates will fluctuate throughout the day, and particularly when a place first sets these new prices some careful observation will be needed to adjust the price as needed. Officials may want to consider demand-based pricing as well. They can do this by using data on when an area is most busy, and adjusting the meter pricing for these times as appropriate. Washington, DC even has new technology that allows meters to measure vacancy rates in real time and adjust pricing per demand.
Naturally, when implementing this practice it can be common for local residents and business owners alike to protest a price increase. People are of course reluctant to pay for something they were previously getting for free, and business owners worry that the additional cost will drive away business. However, with a system appropriately priced to support a 15% vacancy at (almost) all times, residents may be surprised to find by paying a little extra, they are receiving an improved service as parking is now readily available in places where it previously would have been difficult to find. Business owners find that parking meters help increase turnover which means more foot traffic and potentially more sales. One study in a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood of Toronto found that local merchants greatly overestimated the portion of their patrons that traveled to their business by car in the first place (Chan et al., 2016).
Shoup suggests that a good way to placate those that may still be hesitant to raise parking prices is the creation of a Business Improvement District. With this model, all or a large portion of revenue collected from the new parking meters would go to funding streetscape improvement projects in the same area: planting additional trees, fixing street lights, adding benches, or any other asset to directly benefit those using the area. This would also make the area more desirable to users, potentially increasing the amount of customers visiting local businesses. Using this method, the local Business Improvement District in Redwood City, CA, collected $1 million in a year that they were then able to use for sidewalk sweeping and increased police patrols (Shoup, 2007).
The reason Business Improvement Districts work is that they are a shiny “carrot” accompanying the perceived “stick” of higher pricing. As evidenced by the shortcomings of maximum parking requirements, a cutback on car infrastructure is best accompanied by bolstering other opportunities to facilitate a less car-focused environment. If parking is removed downtown in a small community where everyone has no option but to drive, what has been accomplished undermines the local context and community. The reason why 56% of New York City residents do not own cars (U.S. Census Bureau, n.d.-a), yet are still able to go about their daily lives is of course because the city has ample public transit and biking/walking infrastructure. Neighborhoods are densely structured so that residents can meet many of their daily needs within a few blocks — grocery stores, schools and daycares, gyms, bars and restaurants can mostly be found within walking distance or a short bus or subway ride away. But there are also large swaths of the country that do not enjoy this same density of services. In fact, both of these types of communities can be well-served by Transit-Oriented Developments, or TODs for short.
A study sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration states, “TOD is viewed and defined differently throughout the country, with its most common traits being compact, mixed-use development near transit facilities and high-quality walking environments” (Transit Cooperative Research Program, 2004). Though popularized in the past two decades, TODs actually have their roots in the “streetcar suburbs” days at the turn of the 19th century before cars dominated the American landscape. The construction of new streetcar lines was often accompanied by a flurry of development, as prospectors could reasonably expect people would be more willing to live further from a city’s central business district when it was easily reachable by a nearby streetcar (Giuliano & Hanson, 2017). The streetcar lines were often flanked by mixed-use, multi-story buildings that housed residents on the upper floors and businesses at the street level. Structures like this eventually fell largely out of favor as they did not cater to the personal automobile that would become popular a few decades later, although many can still be observed in historic districts of cities today.
Note the rail lines and mixed-use streetscape in this photo of Logan Square, Chicago from 1900. This part of the city is still home to many two-story storefront apartments today, as the underground train line still makes this a convenient place to live.
In densely populated places such as Logan Square, there has been a fairly recent trend to reinstate this old idea of the streetcar suburb with TODs. They are frequently built where car dependency is already low. There is no one all-encompassing guideline to the amount of parking spots provided by TODS, but they are generally given the ability to shirk their local parking minimums and often provide much less parking or none at all.
TODs can also be useful in communities that do not have the density or pedestrian infrastructure they may need to forgo driving altogether. Plenty of suburbs located on commuter rail lines of major cities have also built TODs in recent years, enabling people even in smaller towns to skip their car commute downtown in favor of the train. When properly paired with street-level retail, even suburbanites may be able to take their car out of the equation for other trips as well.
A significant part of urban planners’ jobs going forward is to undo the decades of car-centric planning that has inflicted immeasurable damage to our cities. Minimum parking requirements have been overlooked for quite some time, but adjusting them should now be a top priority. Jeff Speck (2012) states, “[Parking] is the not-so-hidden force determining the life or death of many a downtown. Parking requirements and pricing determine the disposition of more American urban land than any other factor, yet until recently there was not even any theory on how to use parking to a city’s benefit. That theory now exists, and is just beginning to affect policy nationwide.” Urban planners today have many tools with which they can help take back the city from cars and return it to the hands of the people.
References
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