Stephanie Pollack: Smarter Parking, Better Communities

Dukakis Center For Urban and Regional Policy
Northeastern University
School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs
www.northeastern.edu/dukakiscenter A “Think and Do” Tank
Smarter Parking, Better Communities
Sparking New Ideas Conference
8 April 2014

Dukakis Center for Urban & Regional Policy  www.northeastern.edu/dukakiscenter
How can we convince cities and towns
to adopt smarter parking policies?
• Most people don’t think
much about parking most
of the time
• And if they do they tend to
think favorably of it
– Those with cars like to
have convenient, free
places to park
• So how can we go back to
our cities and towns and
convince our neighbors to
rethink parking policy?

Talking about parking:
The economics case for policy change
Minimum-parking requirements
are a second wrong that doesn’t
make a right. The original wrong
is that we’ve never charged
automobiles properly for using
city streets, either for driving or
parking. If you give a valuable
resource away for free, the
inevitable result is overuse and
crowding. . . . In modern
Massachusetts, on-street parking
is available at low or no cost, and
therefore drivers can’t find a
parking spot. Low parking costs
also ensure there are more
drivers congesting the roads.
Edward L. Glaeser Source: Boston Globe, July 13, 2013

The economic case for policy change

The fairness case for policy change
4,733,936
71%
1,230,590
19%
681,618
10%
Drivers Underage population Age-eligible non-drivers
Drivers per 1,000 driving age population
897
921
914 908 907 903
913
904
891
868 866
875 874
820
840
860
880
900
920
940
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Massachusetts
Parking serves the
needs of the subset of
the population that
owns and drives cars.
What about everyone
else?

Not everyone owns a car

Why do we require parking for cars
people don’t own?

Why do we require parking for cars
people don’t own?
Source:
MAPC

The language of physics
No two
objects can
occupy the
same space
at the same
time.

The choice: Parking or office
space?
Source: graphingparking.com

The choice: Parking or high
school study space?

The choice: Parking or more
homes?

The fundamental problem:
Parking uses up too much space
• The United States has somewhere
between 10 million and 2 billion parking
spaces
• In his 2012 book Eran Ben-Joseph notes
that if the correct figure is 500 million
parking spaces, they occupy 3,590
square miles, an area larger than
Delaware and Rhode Island combined
• If the correct number is 2 billion, the
area grows to the size of Connecticut
and Vermont combined
• Ben-Joseph writes that “in some U.S.
cities, parking lots cover more than a
third of the land area”
Sources:
Michael Kimmelman, New
York Times, 6 Jan. 2012
Eran Ben-Joseph,
Re-Thinking A Lot (2012)

Non-parking reasons communities might
adopt smarter parking
Desirable Outcomes for the Community
Quality of Life Revenue Economic Activity
More Space for the Community to Use For
Complete Streets Public Space Development
Reduced Land Devoted to Parking
On-Street Parking Off-Street Parking

Better communities through smarter
parking

Smarter parking policies can create
better communities by
• Increasing economic activity and tax
revenue
• Making room for more public space
• Enabling Complete Streets
• Revitalizing neighborhood shopping
districts
• Making housing more affordable

Parking, economic activity and tax
revenue
Source: Studies by Christopher MaCahill (now at State Smart Transportation
Institute) and Norman Garrick (University of Connecticut)

revenue

revenue
 Cities forego tax money with every parking spot they
require
 In Hartford, for example, the city forfeits $1,200 per
year per parking space, which amounts to a subsidy
of more than $50 million per year for all the parking in
downtown Hartford (where total municipal tax revenue
totals only $75 million)
 In contrast, the subsidy for
parking in downtown
Cambridge, Mass., amounts
to just over $1 million per year
on municipal revenues of $50 million

Parking into public space:
Mission Hill parklet
• A parklet is a small, semi-permanent public
space created from on-street parking spaces
• The parklet in Mission Hill, the first of four
planned for the City of Boston, debuted in
September 2013
• The parklet took the place of two parking
spaces adjacent to
“parklet partners” Mike’s
Donuts and Lilly’s
Gourmet Pasta Express

“Our Happy Block”
• 4,300 square feet of a parking
lot at Southeast Portland’s
Calvary Lutheran Church was
“depaved” by a Portland,
Oregon non-profit
• Neighbors had become
concerned that the excessively
large surface parking lot was
being used by drug dealers
and would-be hot-rodders to
test their driving skills.
• The asphalt was replaced by
four rain gardens and nearly
1,300 native plants
• The project also helped divert
379,000 gallons of rainwater
from storm drains annually

Philadelphia’s “The Porch”
• The Porch at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia
opened in November 2011, replacing 34
parking spaces and a bland, barren sidewalk
• The Porch includes abundant seating, seasonal
plantings, programming such as performances
and fitness classes and special events such as
The Porch Beer Garden and mini-golf
• The project was designed and implemented
using The Project for Public Space’s LQC
approach – Lighter Quicker Cheaper – which
involves building pubic spaces by taking small,
iterative, and experimental steps to determine
what works best, rather than starting with large
capital expenses
• An extensive post-occupancy study confirmed
that The Porch has created a well-used public
space and catalyzed new economic activity

“The Porch”: The results

The economic benefits

Complete Streets and parking:
Polk Street in San Francisco

Complete Streets and Parking:
Creating protected bike lanes

Complete Streets and parking:
The economic case

Neighborhood business districts:
Parking/Business Improvement Districts
• In the 1980s Old Pasadena was a
disinvested area filled with pawn shops and
vacant buildings
• Before 1993, Old Pasadena had no parking
meters and because parking was free store
employees used the on-street parking and
customers had difficulty finding places to
park
• Today 1,200 parking meters generate $1.5
million in revenue
–The city reinvests a portion of the parking
meter revenue into infrastructure improvements
–The rest goes to pay the city’s share of the cost
of a business improvement district which uses its
funds to care for and market the area
• Today the area has 150 retailers and an
average of 30,000 people visit Old Pasadena
each weekend
– And in an area with 600 residential units,
another 2,000 are under construction

Housing affordability and parking
• Requiring large amounts of
parking in housing
developments makes the
housing more expensive,
irrespective of resident
demand, because the cost of
parking is built into the cost of
each unit
• Parking requirements for new
developments may also reduce
the total number of units built,
because if the requirements
make some projects
unprofitable some residential
developments that might have
been built are never built
“When parking requirements
are removed, developers
provide more housing and less
parking, and also that
developers provide different
types of housing: housing in
older buildings, in previously
disinvested areas, and housing
marketed toward non-drivers.
This latter category of housing
tends to sell for less than
housing with parking spaces.“
Research paper by
UCLA Institute of Transportation
Studies

Parking and housing affordability
Based on typical
affordable housing
development costs,
one parking space
per unit increases
costs by about
12.5% and two
parking spaces
increase costs by
about 25%
Source: Todd Litman, Parking Requirements Impacts on Housing Affordability
(VTPI 2013)

Parking and housing affordability:
Right sizing parking for multifamily housing

So when you talk about parking
make sure to start by talking about
• Economic development
• Tax and other revenues
• Open space
• Complete Streets
• Affordable housing
• Neighborhood retail
And all of the ways that smarter parking
helps create better communities

Stephanie Pollack: Smarter Parking, Better Communities

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Stephanie Pollack: Smarter Parking, Better Communities