Tulsa World: Cities rethink wisdom of 50s-era parking policies

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Cities rethink wisdom of 50s-era parking policies

By The Associated Press
Published: 9/21/2008 2:41 PM
Last Modified: 9/21/2008 2:41 PM

WASHINGTON -- Alice and Jeff Speck didn't have a car and didn't want one. But District of Columbia zoning regulations required them to carve out a place to park one at the house they were building.

It would have eaten up precious space on their odd-shaped lot and marred the aesthetics of their neighborhood, dominated by historic row houses. The Specks succeeded in getting a waiver, even though it took nine months.

Like nearly all U.S. cities, D.C. has requirements for off-street parking. Whenever anything new is built — be it a single-family home, an apartment building, a store or a doctor's office — a minimum number of parking spaces must be included. The spots at the curb don't count: These must be in a garage, a surface lot or a driveway.

D.C. is now considering scrapping those requirements — part of a growing national trend. Officials hope that offering the freedom to forgo parking will lead to denser, more walkable, transit-friendly development.

Opponents say making parking more scarce will only make the city less hospitable. Commuters like Randy Michael of Catharpin, Va., complain they are already forced to circle for hours in some neighborhoods.

"Today I had an 11:30 meeting and I had to plan an extra hour just to park" said Michael, 49. It ended up taking him 40 minutes to find a metered spot.

Advocates counter that parking is about more than drivers' convenience; it can profoundly affect the look and feel of a city.

"Do you want to look like San Francisco or Los

Angeles?" asked Donald Shoup, an urban planning professor at UCLA and author of "The High Cost of Free Parking." ''New York or Phoenix?" (Shoup prefers San Francisco and New York — hard to park in but highly walkable.)

Parking requirements — known to planners as "parking minimums" — have been around since the 1950s. The theory is that if buildings don't provide their own parking, too many drivers will try to park on neighborhood streets.

In practice, critics say, the requirements create an excess supply of parking, making it artificially cheap. That, the argument goes, encourages unnecessary driving and makes congestion worse. The standards also encourage people to build unsightly surface lots and garages instead of inviting storefronts and residential facades, they say. Walkers must dodge cars pulling in and out of driveways, and curb cuts eat up space that could otherwise be used for trees.

"Half the great buildings in America's great cities would not be legal to build today under current land use codes," said Jeff Speck, a planning consultant. "Every house on my block is illegal by current standards, particularly parking standards."

Opponents also say the standards force developers to devote valuable land to parking, making housing more expensive.

Milwaukee, one of a small group of cities that has eased minimum parking requirements, did so because they were impeding redevelopment of struggling neighborhoods, said John Norquist, the city's mayor from 1988 to 2004.

Norquist, who today heads the Chicago-based Congress for the New Urbanism, described a lot that sat vacant for decades after a historic building burned down. The required parking made it unfeasible to build anything new there, he said. After officials relaxed the parking requirement, a thriving restaurant sprang up.

Some cities have switched directions altogether, replacing the minimum requirement with a cap on the maximum allowable number of parking spaces. London and San Francisco began making the shift decades ago. San Francisco is currently considering extending the new approach to more neighborhoods.

Activists say too much parking is required even in New York City, particularly outside Manhattan. In August, a coalition of environmental groups said existing parking minimums would boost traffic and cancel out much of the expected improvements from the city's green initiatives.

The D.C. proposal would eliminate minimum parking requirements with some exceptions. Caps on parking would also be established.

In old D.C. neighborhoods like Capitol Hill and Georgetown, where parking is scarce, opponents of the change fear that if new homes don't provide off-street spots, competition for on-street parking will worsen.

Ken Jarboe, a neighborhood leader from Capitol Hill, said the way to reduce traffic is to continue improving the transit system and to create incentives for people not to drive.

"Simply saying, 'Let's make it more painful to park — it doesn't get you where you want to be," Jarboe said.

But Harriet Tregoning, director of the D.C. Planning Department, said the city is already easy to navigate without a car. Nine out of 10 residents live within a quarter-mile of transit, and, according to census data, 12 percent of Washingtonians walk to work, Tregoning noted. More than a third of D.C. households don't have a car.

The Specks say they haven't regretted their decision to go car-free even after the birth of their son, Milo, in June. They walk to shops and parks in their neighborhood, and the baby's pediatrician is a short bus ride away. When needed, they can rent vehicles from Zipcar, a car-sharing service.

Adding a garage and a driveway to their house would have forced them to sacrifice the equivalent of a bedroom and their garden. They decided it was worth spending the time to get a variance, especially since they were applying for several other zoning waivers at the same time.

For a developer, however, seeking a variance may not be an option.

"If you're working off borrowed money, you're not going to wait nine months," Jeff Speck said.

As a result, developers of some recent D.C. projects have ended up with more parking than actually gets used, Tregoning said.

"We're forcing people to invest in spaces for automobiles rather than in spaces for people," she said. "There's no way to recover that use." By The Associated Press

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	Report Comment Lawrence, Tulsa (9/21/2008 3:54:33 PM) ummm....so we're going to try to force people to stop driving by forcing builders to not build parking spaces? Wow, have we ever heard of freedom in this country? The constitution just keeps getting ignored, by the right and the left.
	Report Comment Rex Brinley junior, (9/21/2008 4:08:14 PM) I can only speak for me in saying that in my current situation, I cannot exist effectively without a vehicle. In fact my employer hired me with the condition I had a reliable vehicle. But I can look forward time where I own an ORV just for fun and mainly drive something like a smart car or cycle. As for living in the city without a car it would highly depend on where you live. I could see a person living near E. 71st and Memorial not needing one. Or in OKC on N. Memorial and Kilpatrick Turnpike. If what you need doesn't exist in a square mile, it probably doesn't exist. I did know this person who worked at a rental car call center. He drove a rust bucket but rented a huge discounts when he wanted some style. The biggest benefit he got was $5 per day collision damage waiver. That is a $30 per day benefit! We did a road trip to Dallas in a rented Camry. We picked it up at 4pm on Friday and turned it in at 4pm on a Monday. His bill for the weekend with tax was $64. The thing averaged 32 mpg.
	Report Comment Lana, (9/21/2008 4:34:19 PM) "I could see a person living near E. 71st and Memorial not needing one. Or in OKC on N. Memorial and Kilpatrick Turnpike. If what you need doesn't exist in a square mile, it probably doesn't exist." Suppose they work downtown or 31st and Garnet or BA or Bixby? What if they want to go to the zoo or space museum or to a concert at the arena or to OKC to see the OKC Thunder? What if they want to visit a relative in Muskogee? This is amazing. Are we now trying to force people to stop driving by eliminating their ability to park.
	Report Comment Team Ramrod, (9/21/2008 4:52:58 PM) There is a way to recover that use...let the owners lease the parking spots to other individuals. I have lived in both NYC and D.C. and both times have paid more for parking spots that most people pay for rent/mortgage in Oklahoma. Having a car in either place is a luxury and having a "reserved" parking spot makes life infinitly easier when you don't have to drive around in cirlces looking for a spot.
	Report Comment Lana, (9/21/2008 5:05:14 PM) Since when is Tulsa like NYC or DC?
	Report Comment OkieGrump, Okmulgee (9/21/2008 5:58:39 PM) Perhaps someday when our front doors are the equivalent of a Star Trek Transporter and we can dial in our destination and step through to it. I read a story about this once about a little boy who discovered that he could bypass the Door and actually find something called Outside.
	Report Comment Candy, Tulsa (9/21/2008 6:30:31 PM) Maybe this will be how the 10 N. (or is that South) Yale property will get by with no parking for its residents???
	Report Comment WilliamTheArtist, (9/21/2008 10:48:22 PM) Lawrence, from what I can tell, right now your "forced" to build parking. How does that fit into your idea of freedom and contstitution being ignored, notions? What they are asking for is the ability to NOT HAVE to put in parking, or even as much parking. Also, lots of people would rather not be forced to have to buy and have a car in order to just get around. Plus, enabling traditional "main street" type developments to be legal again would allow more people to walk, bike, scooter, take mass transit, rent a zipcar for short trips or vacations, etc. Its not even legal in most places in Tulsa to be able to build mixed use buildings. You know, those types of developments like our Founding Fathers were used to,,, and who also werent forced to have minimum parking requirements lol.

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