DC Office of Planning Looking at Reduced Parking
The DC Office of Planning’s proposed new rules governing parking structures in high density areas strike me as extremely promising. Parking tends not to get discussed all that much in the national policy conversation. But when you think about real life conversations about transportation modalities, parking often features very heavily as people are disinclined to drive to places where it’s going to be difficult or expensive to park.
There are basically two philosophical approaches government can take to that phenomenon. One, which has predominated in the United States, has been to use a lot of regulatory levers to ensure that everything that’s built includes vast swathes of parking. That ensures that parking is kept cheap, since regulations mandate that it be heavily supplied.
A different, better, approach would be to recognize that in crowded urban areas space is a valuable commodity. Residential rents are high in crowded urban spaces. Commercial rents are high in crowded urban spaces. Retail rents are high in crowded urban spaces. They’re crowded. And often centers of high-value activity. Under the circumstances, it doesn’t really make sense to mandate that there be large set-asides for space to be used for the purposes of low-cost parking. It might make sense if parking spaces had environmental benefits. Or public health benefits. Or aesthetic benefits. But despite the similar letters in the words, a parking lot is not a kind of park. It doesn’t have any of those benefits. Under the circumstances, policy should be mildly discouraging parking as a use of valuable space, not actively encouraging it as we currently do. The OP plan would make the correct switch to a world of somewhat fewer, and somewhat more expensive, parking spaces.
You wouldn’t want to see the federal government making decisions about local parking zoning rules. But I feel like there could be a very constructive role for DOT and HUD to play in promulgating some kind of “best practices” and advise to local community. I know that the federal government did a lot of work to informally shape localities’ response to the dawn of the automobile age in the 1920s, much more through persuasion than through mandates.
20 Responses to “DC Office of Planning Looking at Reduced Parking”
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May 8th, 2009 at 10:27 am
I have been a member of a condominium home owners’ association board and the assistant to the director of support services at a major academic medical center. Please be assured that at real life levels not seen by most weblog writers, newspaper columnists, or academic public policy theorists parking is just about the number one subject of discussion there is.
May 8th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Matthew, why do you keep violating the constitutional rights of cars?
May 8th, 2009 at 10:51 am
A parking garage could double as a park if you put a green roof on it!
May 8th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Just disallow parking on streets in high density areas. That would instantly force a parking shortage anywhere it would be beneficial. It would also reduce the amount of oil/anti-freeze pollution which gets into surface water runoff. It also gives you two more lanes on every street for bus/HOV traffic.
Governments shouldn’t subsidize private parking, it makes car ownership and use much cheaper than the alternatives.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:02 am
I remember reading one of those apartment ratings Web sites and checking out this one really well located place in DC right next to Dupont Circle, and its page was full of people whining that they moved in there and there wasn’t ample parking for them to park their cars in every day. I was floored that even in a place like that people think in terms of cars, cars, cars.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:03 am
One thing the U.S. government could do to help D.C. is to stop providing free parking to federal employees. I was pretty disgusted to realize how much free parking is given out. They should charge money for the spaces they do have to discourage more employees from driving.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:11 am
On the plus side, govt employees tend to get pretty generous public transit allowances too. I’ve seen lots of DC federal employees who live out in the Maryland ‘burbs making heavy use of MARC and the MTA commuter buses instead of everyone driving into the District in individual vehicles and thus clogging up New York Avenue even more in front of Matt’s building.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:12 am
^^^ by “commuter buses” I should note that I mean the ones managed by the Maryland MTA that use motorcoach-style buses and tend to have just a couple of stops between downtown DC and one of the exurban transit centers in places like Columbia or Waldorf.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:22 am
You wouldn’t want to see the federal government making decisions about local parking zoning rules. But I feel like there could be a very constructive role for DOT and HUD to play in promulgating some kind of “best practices” and advise to local community. I know that the federal government did a lot of work to informally shape localities’ response to the dawn of the automobile age in the 1920s, much more through persuasion than through mandates.
Except that the US DOT has very little authority (legal or moral) to give heft to these practices. The vast majority of guidance for the daily in-and-outs of auto-centric transportation planning comes from state DOTs in the abstract, and local planning agencies in the immediate. States have the authority to dole out funding as they wish, and state DOTs are largely populated by engineers. This is a by-product of the formation of the US DOT (and other related agencies) in the 1920’s. In most cities lacking a progressive vision for the relationship between land use and transportation planning, the Public Works or Engineering departments are given as much–if not more–deference to topics like parking than the Planning department.
In short: the only way you’re going to get the change you’re advocating is if the original enabling legislation passed by states to delegate the task of planning to local communities is re-written, in most cases dramatically so.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:24 am
I have always been in favor of using the tax law in ways that efectively change the way we do things.
I think that downtown parking should have a tax on all spaces including corporate parking and condo parking.
This would have the effect of pushing people in the direction of having buildings somewhat closer to mass transit or closer to their customers.
It wouldn’t solve all the problems but it would help.
New York City should have a tax on ALL cars in midtown and downtown; whether they are parked or not. The tax could be used to reduce property taxes or income taxes or sales taxes in the affected area.
Houston, DC, San Francisco, Chicago, Philly, Boston, Baltimore are another city where the downtown would benefit from lower taxes and higher parking rates.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:34 am
I was floored that even in a place like that people think in terms of cars, cars, cars.
DC isn’t that big of a city, and a lot of jobs in the DC metro area exist in suburbs that you can’t take public transit to…. even if you really want to live in Dupont, you might be stuck having to be concerned about the parking situation.
There simply aren’t enough well-paying DC-area jobs to support an economy based on people who live downtown and don’t drive: you’re still going to depend on having a lot of people who depend on their cars to get to work.
May 8th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
And the Yglesias war on the private automobile continues.
May 8th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Tyro,
You could actually do a reverse park-and-ride, with commuters taking mass transit to the nearest stop, then hopping into shared cars (ala Zipcar) for final transport to their place of work.
May 8th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
And the SLC tailpipe-fucking fetish continues.
May 8th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Re This Machine Kills Fascists
Gee, is Mr. Machine prejudiced against private automobiles too. How about bicycles?
May 8th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
On the plus side, govt employees tend to get pretty generous public transit allowances too.
I work for the City of L.A., and we get a $50 transit subsidy, which makes a monthly Metro pass just 12 bucks. Parking downtown is scarce and expensive. As a result, a great number of City Hall workers take public transit. I have no idea what the statistics are, but within my section of 9 people, 6 regularly take public transit, 2 take cars, and 1 walks.
May 8th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
SLC believes that private automobiles deserve the best real estate locations in town. He’s clearly thinking about his metallic mistress, whose tailpipe receives a visit from Little SLC every Tuesday night.
May 8th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
If lack of parking discourages commerce, then why are places like SF, NYC, urban Boston, central Portland, etc doing well?
Oh, its because you have to offer free parking to get people to go to the boring places. If malls charged for parking, they’d be empty. What does that tell you?
May 8th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
It’s also worth pointing out that people are disinclined to walk to/in places where it’s going to be difficult or uncomfortable to walk.
Large amounts of surface parking produces big, hot seas of asphalt, glare, and increased distances between buildings, reducing the desirability of the area for pedestrians.
May 8th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
It’s worth pointing out this the above whine, about waging war, is motivated by a proposal to STOP forcing property owners and developers who don’t wish to provide so much parking to provide more than they want.
That’s right, to SLC, it is an act of war against the private automobile to let people decide how much parking to build.