6 ms·

Parking minimums are required by cities because underparked development projects dump their parking problems on the surrounding neighborhoods. These types of ex

by travoc 3y ago

Parking minimums are required by cities because underparked development projects dump their parking problems on the surrounding neighborhoods. These types of externalities shouldn't just be hand-waved away in the name of "urbanization." The lack of parking creates real problems for residents, police and businesses in growing cities every day.

xnx 3y ago
The market is better at solving this problem than central planning.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  Not when it comes to ADA requirements...
  - yardie 3y ago
    Oddly enough, the ADA laws were written in a way to use the free market. The government can't force you to be ADA compliant. Instead, it relies on lawyers and their disabled clients to sue you into compliance. An entire cottage industry of law firms who specialize in ADA compliance have sprung up since the law's inception.
  - epistasis 3y ago
    ADA requirements are outside of the planning sphere though. In fact, that ADA requirements came from laws from the federal government rather than from urban planning is pretty good evidence that the market (ie democratic legislation) is better at this than centralized planners of urban areas.
  - davidw 3y ago
    Having a few ADA parking spots is fine and a drop in the bucket compared to the wasted space from all that mandated parking. Also, people with disabilities tend to drive less than those without them.
_dain_ 3y ago
This is the stated justification but it doesn't really correspond with reality. The specific values chosen for parking requirements are based on nothing at all, literally just copypasted from other cities or made up out of thin air. They are overestimates in almost all cases. Besides, even if you mandate parking, it's an absurdity to mandate free parking.
Comma2976 3y ago
I doubt that.
an_ko 3y ago
Major European cities with no such minimum parking requirements do fine. They have public transport and bike infrastructure, so many people in dense urban areas don't need cars.
- whydoyoucare 3y ago
  I bet no one in major European cities requires to bike like ten miles each way. The point is the size of American cities is vastly different to European ones, so what works that side of Atlantic rarely translates "as-is" here. (I am disappointed about this oft thrown around comparison, since my city reduced one lane on several major roads and created bike paths. Sadly, we now have major traffic jams and hardly any utilization of the bike path. Turns out someone on the city council wanted to turn it into Denmark)
  - nerdbert 3y ago
    > I bet no one in major European cities requires to bike like ten miles each way. I am in Amsterdam, and lots of people bike 15km each way, including many students at the high schools my children attend.
    - ses1984 3y ago
      Part of the problem is in america if you want to bike that far, you probably have to take some route designed for cars. It’s very stressful and in many cases very risky. Local climate is a problem, too. It’s not fun to bike to work some days when it’s very hot and humid, and then in the other half of the year, deal with freezing rain.
      - shiroiuma 3y ago
        This is a valid comment. Many times, when the US makes "cycling infrastructure" (scare-quotes intended), it's just awful: painted lines on a busy, dangerous road, or at best a path immediately parallel to such a monstrosity. Little wonder people don't want to ride a bike next to a bunch of giant SUVs speeding at 75mph. And it is true the weather in many US cities tends to be less mild than in Amsterdam, but that can be worked around with proper clothing.
J_Shelby_J 3y ago
You're talking about city owned and maintained on-street parking. I think we can agree that the sane thing to do is charge for it and let the market set the price. If home owners or developers want to build their own on-site parking, they're welcome to. Personally, I'm sick of having four parking spots in my garage tacked to my rent despite being a one car household. Or did I misunderstand, and you feel on-street free parking should be paid for by tax payers? I have to disagree. I pay for my own parking. And people like me generate more tax revenue for the city because it costs less to service density, so I'm also funding on-street parking. I don't think that's fair. We should not be subsidizing car dependency. If you want to drive, pay for it yourself.
- bagels 3y ago
  If your neighborhood or development is the one with no parking and you are not in a walk-able city, you are trading dollars for the stressful situation of trying to figure out where to park, getting in to conflicts with neighbors over parking, and getting your car crashed in to or vandalized. I tried it, I didn't like it.
  - coldpie 3y ago
    So how do you get from a non-walkable city to a walkable city? We can't remove parking minimums because everyone needs a car because it's not walkable. But we can't take out the parking lots, because no one walks, because there's too many parking lots between the places people want to go. And we can't put in dedicated bus lanes, because that would reduce parking, which we need because buses are too slow. How do we break the cycle?
    - teejays 3y ago
      Pretty much sums up the problem imho.
    - shiroiuma 3y ago
      For me, it was pretty simple: I packed up and moved to a walkable city (which meant leaving the US). The only way you're going to get a walkable city out of a non-walkable US city is to completely change the zoning laws, eliminate the free parking and making driving horribly inconvenient and expensive, then go through a cycle of death and rebirth as the city largely dies out and then gets revitalized a couple decades later. I don't want to wait for this process, and I don't even see any serious action this way anywhere yet; I'll be dead of old age before there's a decent number of walkable cities in the US.
Steltek 3y ago
Vastly outweighed by the problems of parking minimums: * Increased housing costs * Decreased housing supply * Increased air pollution * Increased traffic * Increased noise pollution * Increased water pollution, stormwater usage * Decrease in community and neighborhood cohesion If a person feels they need parking, they can pay for it. They don't need society to force parking to be made available to everyone, whether they want it or not.
apendleton 3y ago
This is solvable with parking permit programs. Make street parking in those surrounding neighborhoods resident-only. And then people considering living in the "underparked" neighborhood who need parking will have no alternative but to select units that include parking, or live in another neighborhood (and if enough people opt not to live there, developers will include more parking to satisfy demand). This is a problem regular markets can fix: governments don't need to require developers to meet (or often, exceed!) what people actually want.
- nradov 3y ago
  Where do guests park when they come to visit?
  - alexanderchr 3y ago
    Where I’ve lived it’s usually been solved by letting anyone park there for a higher fee. Residents get to park at a big discount or for free. Or you can hand out guest passes to residents.
    - nradov 3y ago
      So then the city has to issue parking passes plus guest passes, and then actually enforce them. Seems totally impractical for all but the densest cities.
      - alexanderchr 3y ago
        Sure there's some administration but it can be mostly handled digitally nowadays. I've seen it work in many cities that are not particularly dense by European standards. The enforcement are handled by the same people that do normal parking enforcement. They scan the plates, see if there's a valid permit/ticket and write a ticket otherwise.
        nradov 3y ago
        Which "people" do normal parking enforcement? Most cities do zero parking enforcement in residential neighborhoods unless someone specifically complains.
jimberlage 3y ago
I’ve lived in areas with this parking problem in multiple cities for over a decade now. I can confidently say, I don’t care about this problem at all. Parking further up the street from my house is a small, small, small price to pay for the benefits of being walking distance from interesting things.
- jmward01 3y ago
  Exactly. Pretty much every argument I see against removing parking boils down to 'The city gets denser with more nice things to the point I can't drive my SUV there any more!' A lack of parking is a symptom of a thriving location, not a problem. A real solution is more transit and more transit oriented development. Removing parking is a start through.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    > A lack of parking is a symptom of a thriving location, not a problem. This is false. I've seen many downtowns that are not thriving and lack parking. They do okay for the midday luck crowd, but they are empty by 6pm as everyone has gone to the suburbs. Lack of parking is a feature of thriving locations as well, but it isn't an indicator.

by travoc 3y ago

xnx 3y ago

The market is better at solving this problem than central planning.

candiddevmike 3y ago
Not when it comes to ADA requirements...
- yardie 3y ago
  Oddly enough, the ADA laws were written in a way to use the free market. The government can't force you to be ADA compliant. Instead, it relies on lawyers and their disabled clients to sue you into compliance. An entire cottage industry of law firms who specialize in ADA compliance have sprung up since the law's inception.
- epistasis 3y ago
  ADA requirements are outside of the planning sphere though. In fact, that ADA requirements came from laws from the federal government rather than from urban planning is pretty good evidence that the market (ie democratic legislation) is better at this than centralized planners of urban areas.
- davidw 3y ago
  Having a few ADA parking spots is fine and a drop in the bucket compared to the wasted space from all that mandated parking. Also, people with disabilities tend to drive less than those without them.

_dain_ 3y ago

This is the stated justification but it doesn't really correspond with reality. The specific values chosen for parking requirements are based on nothing at all, literally just copypasted from other cities or made up out of thin air. They are overestimates in almost all cases. Besides, even if you mandate parking, it's an absurdity to mandate free parking.

Comma2976 3y ago

I doubt that.

an_ko 3y ago

Major European cities with no such minimum parking requirements do fine. They have public transport and bike infrastructure, so many people in dense urban areas don't need cars.

whydoyoucare 3y ago
I bet no one in major European cities requires to bike like ten miles each way. The point is the size of American cities is vastly different to European ones, so what works that side of Atlantic rarely translates "as-is" here. (I am disappointed about this oft thrown around comparison, since my city reduced one lane on several major roads and created bike paths. Sadly, we now have major traffic jams and hardly any utilization of the bike path. Turns out someone on the city council wanted to turn it into Denmark)
- nerdbert 3y ago
  > I bet no one in major European cities requires to bike like ten miles each way. I am in Amsterdam, and lots of people bike 15km each way, including many students at the high schools my children attend.
  - ses1984 3y ago
    Part of the problem is in america if you want to bike that far, you probably have to take some route designed for cars. It’s very stressful and in many cases very risky. Local climate is a problem, too. It’s not fun to bike to work some days when it’s very hot and humid, and then in the other half of the year, deal with freezing rain.
    - shiroiuma 3y ago
      This is a valid comment. Many times, when the US makes "cycling infrastructure" (scare-quotes intended), it's just awful: painted lines on a busy, dangerous road, or at best a path immediately parallel to such a monstrosity. Little wonder people don't want to ride a bike next to a bunch of giant SUVs speeding at 75mph. And it is true the weather in many US cities tends to be less mild than in Amsterdam, but that can be worked around with proper clothing.

J_Shelby_J 3y ago

You're talking about city owned and maintained on-street parking. I think we can agree that the sane thing to do is charge for it and let the market set the price. If home owners or developers want to build their own on-site parking, they're welcome to. Personally, I'm sick of having four parking spots in my garage tacked to my rent despite being a one car household. Or did I misunderstand, and you feel on-street free parking should be paid for by tax payers? I have to disagree. I pay for my own parking. And people like me generate more tax revenue for the city because it costs less to service density, so I'm also funding on-street parking. I don't think that's fair. We should not be subsidizing car dependency. If you want to drive, pay for it yourself.

bagels 3y ago
If your neighborhood or development is the one with no parking and you are not in a walk-able city, you are trading dollars for the stressful situation of trying to figure out where to park, getting in to conflicts with neighbors over parking, and getting your car crashed in to or vandalized. I tried it, I didn't like it.
- coldpie 3y ago
  So how do you get from a non-walkable city to a walkable city? We can't remove parking minimums because everyone needs a car because it's not walkable. But we can't take out the parking lots, because no one walks, because there's too many parking lots between the places people want to go. And we can't put in dedicated bus lanes, because that would reduce parking, which we need because buses are too slow. How do we break the cycle?
  - teejays 3y ago
    Pretty much sums up the problem imho.
  - shiroiuma 3y ago
    For me, it was pretty simple: I packed up and moved to a walkable city (which meant leaving the US). The only way you're going to get a walkable city out of a non-walkable US city is to completely change the zoning laws, eliminate the free parking and making driving horribly inconvenient and expensive, then go through a cycle of death and rebirth as the city largely dies out and then gets revitalized a couple decades later. I don't want to wait for this process, and I don't even see any serious action this way anywhere yet; I'll be dead of old age before there's a decent number of walkable cities in the US.

Steltek 3y ago

Vastly outweighed by the problems of parking minimums: * Increased housing costs * Decreased housing supply * Increased air pollution * Increased traffic * Increased noise pollution * Increased water pollution, stormwater usage * Decrease in community and neighborhood cohesion If a person feels they need parking, they can pay for it. They don't need society to force parking to be made available to everyone, whether they want it or not.

apendleton 3y ago

This is solvable with parking permit programs. Make street parking in those surrounding neighborhoods resident-only. And then people considering living in the "underparked" neighborhood who need parking will have no alternative but to select units that include parking, or live in another neighborhood (and if enough people opt not to live there, developers will include more parking to satisfy demand). This is a problem regular markets can fix: governments don't need to require developers to meet (or often, exceed!) what people actually want.

nradov 3y ago
Where do guests park when they come to visit?
- alexanderchr 3y ago
  Where I’ve lived it’s usually been solved by letting anyone park there for a higher fee. Residents get to park at a big discount or for free. Or you can hand out guest passes to residents.
  - nradov 3y ago
    So then the city has to issue parking passes plus guest passes, and then actually enforce them. Seems totally impractical for all but the densest cities.
    - alexanderchr 3y ago
      Sure there's some administration but it can be mostly handled digitally nowadays. I've seen it work in many cities that are not particularly dense by European standards. The enforcement are handled by the same people that do normal parking enforcement. They scan the plates, see if there's a valid permit/ticket and write a ticket otherwise.
      - nradov 3y ago
        Which "people" do normal parking enforcement? Most cities do zero parking enforcement in residential neighborhoods unless someone specifically complains.

jimberlage 3y ago

I’ve lived in areas with this parking problem in multiple cities for over a decade now. I can confidently say, I don’t care about this problem at all. Parking further up the street from my house is a small, small, small price to pay for the benefits of being walking distance from interesting things.

jmward01 3y ago
Exactly. Pretty much every argument I see against removing parking boils down to 'The city gets denser with more nice things to the point I can't drive my SUV there any more!' A lack of parking is a symptom of a thriving location, not a problem. A real solution is more transit and more transit oriented development. Removing parking is a start through.
- bluGill 3y ago
  > A lack of parking is a symptom of a thriving location, not a problem. This is false. I've seen many downtowns that are not thriving and lack parking. They do okay for the midday luck crowd, but they are empty by 6pm as everyone has gone to the suburbs. Lack of parking is a feature of thriving locations as well, but it isn't an indicator.