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The core of this post is the linked article The Pseudoscience of Parking Requirements. The core of that article is three bullet points: • Remove off-street pa

The core of this post is the linked article The Pseudoscience of Parking Requirements. The core of that article is three bullet points: • Remove off-street parking requirements. Developers and businesses can then decide how many parking spaces to provide for their customers. • Charge the right prices for on-street parking. The right prices are the lowest prices that will leave one or two open spaces on each block, so there will be no parking shortages. Prices will balance the demand and supply for on-street space. • Spend the parking revenue to improve public services on the metered streets. If everybody sees their meter money at work, the new public services can make demand-based prices for on-street parking politically popular. Given the mix-use urban buildings I've encountered recently, hotels from floor 1-5, offices from floor 6-10, condos up to the top (or something like that), street level shops, office space, I don't see how removing off-street parking requirements would address anything. If you have office workers you must allocate off-site parking space. You're still building for cars, cost of parking is subsidized by the employer or the business. The Tysons development in Northern Virginia is an example of this hell, it's attached to a giant mall and also near a metro (so there's commuter parking involved). I suppose the people who can afford this enclave will not need cars but most everyone else who visits must have one. Every time I go there I think I'm in a dystopian future where the swells live and work in shiny high towers and take futuristic transport to "the country" to take in the air and their children can pet goats. It's not a space for built for humans, at all, but I bet the architectural model looked great. Point (2), you have to make charging for parking frictionless. There's another development in Northern Virginia called Reston Town Center, they switched from free parking to paid with an app and that caused in an unexpected furor that hasn't died down yet, I think renters are still suing the developers over that. People may be willing to pay cash but making them pay with an app, and a crappy app at that, took them over the edge. Still don't know why you just can't pay with a swipe. Also, payment systems are vulnerable to theft. People who had a choice of driving there or not, decided to not. It's mixed with condos so the people who live there, shop there, but then you've only made an enclave, have you solved anything?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dpark 5y ago
> I don't see how removing off-street parking requirements would address anything. It doesn’t. It allows developers to dump the problem on public streets. Seattle does this stuff now. 42 unit buildings with 5 parking spots. This is great for developers. They get to build more units and let Seattle deal with the additional parking pressure. It’s car hostile, which fine, but then you need to provide alternatives to the car. If a developer wants to build without appropriate parking, they should have to pay Seattle a big chunk of that savings to fund better public transit. Instead it’s just a bunch of money in the developer’s pocket and people driving around for 20 minutes trying to find a spot to park. Adjacent neighborhoods pay the price.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  Agreed, it's not enough to just be car-hostile. Pain and inconvenience do not automatically lead to increased public transit utilization.
  - dpark 5y ago
    Especially not when public transit is extremely inconvenient and painful.
- dml2135 5y ago
  I don’t understand why this is the developer’s responsibility. People choosing this apartment building will be aware of their parking options and can plan accordingly.
  - dpark 5y ago
    I know, right? They should just plan to park 4 blocks away every day, because that’s what they will do no matter where they rent, because all of the buildings are built this way. It’s the developer’s responsibility for the same reason anything else is: because the law says so (or should). If developers could get away with it, they wouldn’t put in fire alarms or sprinklers and they’d skip out on insulation, and they would probably cut all sorts of corners on plumbing and electric. We establish codes so they can’t do that. Nor can they build unreasonably small bathrooms or excessively low ceilings in finished spaces. I think it’s reasonable that builders be required to include parking spaces, just as builders are required to have sufficient water supply and sewer capacity for their residents. It’s unfair to the residents and it’s unfair to the rest of the city that developers should be able to externalize their costs onto the public.
initplus 5y ago
Removing off street parking transitions from an "everyone pays" model to a "user pays" model. Under a user pays model, parking will be allocated to those who need it the most. Those whose need for parking is not as strong will make more use of alternatives. But when everybody pays there is no incentive to reduce individual consumption, as you will not personally be better off. If you have office workers why must you allocate parking? Why can't some of those office workers choose to take the bus or a train, or cycle or walk? When the cost of driving is subsidised by everyone, there is no incentive to consider or develop these alternatives.
suyjuris 5y ago
> Given the mix-use urban buildings I've encountered recently [...] I don't see how removing off-street parking requirements would address anything. It would allow the developer to choose the appropriate amount of parking spaces for their building, instead of being forced to follow the requirements resulting from central planning by the city administrators. They cannot simply rely on on-street parking instead, since (per the second bullet point) the prices would for those parking spaces would increase dramatically, providing the developer with a competitive disadvantage. I could see this working out perfectly fine for businesses who compete for customers, as those will likely be very sensitive to the cost of a parking space. However, for buildings where people do not have a choice of whether to travel there, this seems more problematic. Imagine e.g. a courthouse – missing parking spaces would just impose a negative externality on the unfortunate “customers”. I guess the question is in which category office buildings and residential areas fall into, arguments could be made either way.
Symbiote 5y ago
> The Tysons development in Northern Virginia is an example of this hell That's insane, and even more that when I searched for it it's being marketed as "liveable". Google Maps shows business names, but flip to Open Street Map [1] and two things stand out: motorways and car parks. > also near a metro ... most everyone else who visits must have [a car] Um... the metro? But you're clearly right. To get from Tysons Corner metro into the mall you must climb stairs, cross an 8+-lane highway in a tube, then another road, then cross a plaza. They didn't think of connecting that tube straight into the mall building, or connecting it to the opposite end of the platforms. Outside North America, the parking garages for a mall like this would be below (sometimes above) the shops and the mall would be oriented to have a very short, covered walkway connection to the metro, and if possible the station would be in the middle of the mall. There would not be 21 road lanes to the east, 10 to the north, 9 to the west and 4 to the south. > dystopian future Looking on Wikipedia, I'm amazed at how recently much of this was constructed. https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/38.9224/-77.2233 https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/38.9224/-77.2233 (shows railways better).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dpark 5y ago

> I don't see how removing off-street parking requirements would address anything. It doesn’t. It allows developers to dump the problem on public streets. Seattle does this stuff now. 42 unit buildings with 5 parking spots. This is great for developers. They get to build more units and let Seattle deal with the additional parking pressure. It’s car hostile, which fine, but then you need to provide alternatives to the car. If a developer wants to build without appropriate parking, they should have to pay Seattle a big chunk of that savings to fund better public transit. Instead it’s just a bunch of money in the developer’s pocket and people driving around for 20 minutes trying to find a spot to park. Adjacent neighborhoods pay the price.

BitwiseFool 5y ago
Agreed, it's not enough to just be car-hostile. Pain and inconvenience do not automatically lead to increased public transit utilization.
- dpark 5y ago
  Especially not when public transit is extremely inconvenient and painful.
dml2135 5y ago
I don’t understand why this is the developer’s responsibility. People choosing this apartment building will be aware of their parking options and can plan accordingly.
- dpark 5y ago
  I know, right? They should just plan to park 4 blocks away every day, because that’s what they will do no matter where they rent, because all of the buildings are built this way. It’s the developer’s responsibility for the same reason anything else is: because the law says so (or should). If developers could get away with it, they wouldn’t put in fire alarms or sprinklers and they’d skip out on insulation, and they would probably cut all sorts of corners on plumbing and electric. We establish codes so they can’t do that. Nor can they build unreasonably small bathrooms or excessively low ceilings in finished spaces. I think it’s reasonable that builders be required to include parking spaces, just as builders are required to have sufficient water supply and sewer capacity for their residents. It’s unfair to the residents and it’s unfair to the rest of the city that developers should be able to externalize their costs onto the public.

initplus 5y ago

Removing off street parking transitions from an "everyone pays" model to a "user pays" model. Under a user pays model, parking will be allocated to those who need it the most. Those whose need for parking is not as strong will make more use of alternatives. But when everybody pays there is no incentive to reduce individual consumption, as you will not personally be better off. If you have office workers why must you allocate parking? Why can't some of those office workers choose to take the bus or a train, or cycle or walk? When the cost of driving is subsidised by everyone, there is no incentive to consider or develop these alternatives.

suyjuris 5y ago

> Given the mix-use urban buildings I've encountered recently [...] I don't see how removing off-street parking requirements would address anything. It would allow the developer to choose the appropriate amount of parking spaces for their building, instead of being forced to follow the requirements resulting from central planning by the city administrators. They cannot simply rely on on-street parking instead, since (per the second bullet point) the prices would for those parking spaces would increase dramatically, providing the developer with a competitive disadvantage. I could see this working out perfectly fine for businesses who compete for customers, as those will likely be very sensitive to the cost of a parking space. However, for buildings where people do not have a choice of whether to travel there, this seems more problematic. Imagine e.g. a courthouse – missing parking spaces would just impose a negative externality on the unfortunate “customers”. I guess the question is in which category office buildings and residential areas fall into, arguments could be made either way.

Symbiote 5y ago

> The Tysons development in Northern Virginia is an example of this hell That's insane, and even more that when I searched for it it's being marketed as "liveable". Google Maps shows business names, but flip to Open Street Map [1] and two things stand out: motorways and car parks. > also near a metro ... most everyone else who visits must have [a car] Um... the metro? But you're clearly right. To get from Tysons Corner metro into the mall you must climb stairs, cross an 8+-lane highway in a tube, then another road, then cross a plaza. They didn't think of connecting that tube straight into the mall building, or connecting it to the opposite end of the platforms. Outside North America, the parking garages for a mall like this would be below (sometimes above) the shops and the mall would be oriented to have a very short, covered walkway connection to the metro, and if possible the station would be in the middle of the mall. There would not be 21 road lanes to the east, 10 to the north, 9 to the west and 4 to the south. > dystopian future Looking on Wikipedia, I'm amazed at how recently much of this was constructed. https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/38.9224/-77.2233 https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/38.9224/-77.2233 (shows railways better).