Cincinnati Joins the List of Cities Saying ‘No’ to Parking Minimums

https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/cincinnati-joins-the-list-of-cities-saying-no-to-parking-minimums

by jseliger • 8 years ago

156 176 8 years ago

luma3• 8 years ago

In private conversations with the local city mobility department (which covers public transport and parking), there is a lot of tension building up due to the expectation of autonomous vehicles coming online within a decade. Floating a 20 year bond to build new parking structures used to be a safe investment but there is now a widespread expectation that personal vehicles will not require parking facilities well before that bond could be paid off. It is forcing a re-evaluation of the traditional regulatory, zoning, and financial instruments historically employed by cities to address these problems, and nobody is certain of the answer.

mc32• 8 years ago

It's reasonable to be tentative given the uncertainty.

Is it possible to build a mixed use structure with parking at the lower levels that are designed with enough use flexibility that they could be converted into regular occupancy use if (when) parking demand is reduced?

ghaff4• 8 years ago

Those cars still need to go somewhere. Maybe there's more sharing from the outskirts? But if you assume that cars will just drop off and then drive out to some vaguely defined area outside of the city where parking is plentiful, you're going to massively increase congestion.

luma3• 8 years ago

That’s presuming individual private ownership of those vehicles. Detroit seems convinced that a fleet approach (think Uber without the driver) is the most likely outcome. In this case, the fleet moves around as needs require, generating revenue as riders are hailing then moving to an inexpensive staging area when demand decreases.

slavik813• 8 years ago

I've heard that a surprising percentage of trip time in the downtown core is spent looking for nearby parking. Having the car drop people off and drive away to park somewhere where parking is less scarce might not actually increase time on road.

You could also greatly increase parking density in parkcades if all vehicles had autonomous parking. For example, it would be no problem to box cars in if vehicles could move on their own to let them out. I bet you could easily double parking density.

joe_the_user4• 8 years ago

Self-driving cars technically wouldn't have to go anywhere besides the roads - except maybe periodically to charging and a repair station. Of course, by 3 am, it might be cheaper to have them parked. But there's a lot of parking currently available at 3 am.

Of course, these cars occupy space, which means the road they'd be on would be a good deal more occupied. But remember, parking and traffic aren't static per-car, it's all a matter of rates.

maym862• 8 years ago

You don't need atonomous vehicles to make this work. A good public transit system within the city, decent bike lanes and some park and ride options for getting in from the outskirts could be enough to make up for the reduced parking options.

luma3• 8 years ago

While I appreciate the wisdom of this approach, the concept of mass transit isn’t new, and for large parts of the US has never worked out for one reason or the other. There are obvious exceptions in high density urban centers, but your typical mid sized midwestern city has never seemed to make mass transit take hold. For better or worse (mostly worse), people by and large continue to prefer private automobiles as their primary (or only) mode of transportation.

joe_the_user4• 8 years ago

Good.

It would ironic if an expectation of autonomous vehicles actually forced cities to create public transit if they failed to appear.

finaliteration3• 8 years ago

I feel really mixed about things like this. I absolutely appreciate the need for additional housing in urban centers, especially if it makes housing more affordable. However, I’m also someone who lives relatively far from an urban center with no reliable public transportation for the sake of having housing that isn’t ridiculously expensive. This means I’m required to drive into the urban center for work where parking is already expensive and difficult to find. The lot where I usually park has months long waiting lists to get a monthly pass.

Again, I totally understand the rationale behind it. It’s just frustrating for those of us who have no better options in the near future.

secabeen• 8 years ago

Park-and-ride is the usual solution. Can you drive in from your home to a large lot where the reliable public transit begins, and then ride from there? That can work pretty well.

finaliteration3• 8 years ago

We have some of those available, but they would increase my commute time by 30 minutes both ways, and the busses can be unreliable, which means sometimes it can take an hour. It may work for some people, but unfortunately I’m not willing to give up an extra two hours of my day when I can drive in.

I used to take a train, but it took 50-60 minutes, and any delay meant I missed a connection or transfer which then added even more time. As much as I want to do it and support it’s just not feasible.

paulsutter3• 8 years ago

A parking minimum is good for you, because it creates excess spaces, making prices go below market rates.

Since I live downtown, I'd prefer severely limiting parking. Call it a "parking maximum", reducing congestion at commute times, as parking costs would shoot way above a market price.

The fair solution is to have neither parking minimums nor maximums. Then parking is developed in proportion to expected demand, competing for space against offices and homes, neither subsidized nor penalized. Yes it would cost more than you prefer, and less than I prefer, but probably a fairer situation.

finaliteration3• 8 years ago

I guess my ideal solution would be housing that’s more affordable downtown so that I and other commuters could live there. If I could eliminate my commute or make it much shorter then it would be one of the best changes in my life. Unfortunately even with my decent salary that’s not possible because housing is 3-4x more expensive than where I’m at now.

SpicyLemonZest2• 8 years ago

The naive free market analysis doesn't work here, because it's not typically possible for a real estate developer to purchase a random building and convert it to a parking structure if more parking is demanded. Even when it is possible, that kind of project ends up taking years and years to complete.

ghaff4• 8 years ago

You can strictly limit parking. That's got some congestion benefits. It also makes driving into the city, especially for work during the day (evening parking is usually not a scarce resource), less attractive. Which in turn makes many employees prefer employers located in industrial parks outside of cities.

Not everyone of course. The (often young) people would often prefer urban living. But your urban office building is going to be unattractive for anyone who needs to drive in.

chrisseaton3• 8 years ago

This means I’m required to drive into the urban center for work where parking is already expensive and difficult to find.

Do you mean you literally drive into a city centre at rush hour, park there, and go into an office?

It blows my mind that people are even able to do that. It actually says something perversely positive about US roads and cities that it's possible!

I would not attempt to drive into the centre of a city in the UK for any reason at any time of day ever. You would not make it to your office before the day ended and when you got there you'd simply find there was no parking anyway and you'd have to go home again!

rashkov• 8 years ago

US doesn't have nearly the public transport infrastructure that the UK does, unfortunately. I think the issue here may be that cities aren't necessarily building infrastructure to compensate for their reductions of car access.

buckminster• 8 years ago

I know lots of people who commute by car into the centre of Birmingham every day. My train commute is only 30 minutes door to door, but I'd be quicker driving. Do you live in London?

closeparen13• 8 years ago

That's basically everyone in all but the top ~5 cities. In a mid-sized metro area, there might be a bus system with hourly or worse frequency as a handout for the destitute. The working poor drive beaters.

Even in New York's non-Manhattan boroughs, 35-75% drive.

leoedin• 8 years ago

There's a bit of hyperbole in your answer. Plenty of people commute into UK cities by car, even in London. That's why there's a rush hour.

Commuting by car into central London would be foolish (I have a colleague that tried it once - it took him an hour and a half from the M25 to Kings Cross). However, there's a lot of cities in which it is feasible (if slow) and a lot of businesses close to the centre of cities which do have parking available (or you could just pay for private parking).

I sometimes drive through Central London in the evenings - it is slow, but it's not that slow. At certain times of day it's no slower than public transport (it really depends where you're going to and from).

isostatic2• 8 years ago

I used to work shifts in London, drove in. When I lived west it took 2 hours in the morning (10am arrival), took 30 minutes at night (10pm departure)

South east was worse, at night is drive through the mall and grafalger square on the way home, took an hour or so. Again 2 hours in morning.

Not everyone is based in the centre of London. Not everyone works 9-5.

rdtsc2• 8 years ago

I would not attempt to drive into the centre of a city in the UK for any reason at any time of day ever.

So are there any cars in the city and where do they park? Or is it mostly taxi cabs and city buses?

TulliusCicero7• 8 years ago

Yup, it sucks but is ultimately necessary. Having parking minimums is a big part of why there are no good alternatives much of the time, after all: why even build alternatives where abundant parking everywhere is legally mandated?

cayblood• 8 years ago

There is an easy solution to this that has been around for a long time. What most people do is park on the outskirts of town, where there tend to be lots of park and ride lots, then take public transit downtown.

So, in your case, you drive your car until you get to the outskirts of whatever large metropolitan area you are visiting, then take public transit.

When we lived in the UK, we frequently drove to a car park near the Hammersmith Station and then took the tube from there to central London.

benatkin2• 8 years ago

In the San Francisco Bay Area, there is a dearth of reserved parking at the BART Park n Rides. You can show up to the Park n Ride super early and pay the daily rate for a spot, and you can get on a long waiting list (sometimes more than a year long) to purchase monthly parking (still expensive, but not as bad as daily parking). There is also likelihood of getting stuck in traffic on the way to parking lots. There's no great option, just a choice between different last-mile options with pros and cons, including driving a car, driving a motorcycle, bicycles (electric and otherwise), electric scooters and skateboards, Uber/Lyft, and shuttles (I used Emery Go Round a fair bit). All have to deal with traffic to get to the park-n-rides. The cars and busses have to go single-file in their lanes, but others can go past them. Unlike most other states, California allows motorcycles to split lanes. http://lanesplittingislegal.com/

My favorites were taking the Emery-Go-Round while I was living in Emeryville, and walking two miles each way every single day while I was living in Redwood City while listening to podcasts/audiobooks.

pkulak2• 8 years ago

Just sounds to me like the price of parking is artificial low for some reason. That garage should never have a waiting list. Is it run by morons? Is ever other garage, or is there something else going on?

crwalker2• 8 years ago

I am optimistic that we are relearning how to build great cities in the US.

stevenwoo• 8 years ago

Where? Great by what measure?

crwalker2• 8 years ago

Apparently Cincinnati. Great by the measure of livability as demonstrated by many European cities (high density core and mixed land use make cities better suited to walking, biking, community).

village-idiot2• 8 years ago

Good. Let the price of parking float rather than artificially depressing the price via zoning.

vermooten• 8 years ago

What are 'parking minimums'?

MBCook8• 8 years ago

Requiring at least X parking spaces for every Y hundred square feet of floor space in a building. Or based on maximum occupancy or some other metric.

It’s why you see small niche businesses in strip malls with large and always empty parking lots. They’re REQUIRED to have lots that big if they don’t/can’t get a variance.

And it can be a lot of wasted space, and a deterrent to using public transit. After all, there is always easy parking.

TulliusCicero7• 8 years ago

And it can be a lot of wasted space, and a deterrent to using public transit. After all, there is always easy parking.

It's not just that it makes driving better. It makes everything else worse, too. Ever tried walking from a house to a strip mall to run errands? Now compare that to walking for errands in a European or Japanese city.

The difference is enormous; I've lived in several parts of the US, currently live in Germany and have traveled around a decent amount, most US cities are just terrible for anything other than driving.

TulliusCicero7• 8 years ago

Most US cities have land use regulations that mandate a minimum amount of car parking for any building type. Things like "at least 1.5 parking spaces per apartment unit" or "1200 sq ft of parking for each 1000 sq ft of retail space" (yes, sometimes they're really that high).

This guarantee subsidizes car parking at the expense of other modes of transportation, whose users are indirectly paying for the cost of that parking, and who suffer disproportionately from how spread out that extra parking makes everything in a city.

twic• 8 years ago

I'm always bemused by the idea. In London, we have parking maximums - expressed as the number of spaces per housing unit, for various sizes of housing unit (measured in habitable rooms per unit), and various levels of public transport accessibility:

https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/parking_standa...

At one extreme, a three-bedroom house in an area of the suburbs with poor public transport could have two parking spaces. At the other, a five-bedroom house in an urban area with excellent public transport could only have one parking space. Even then, "all developments in areas of good public transport accessibility (in all parts of London) should aim for significantly less than 1 space per unit".

alangpierce• 8 years ago

Sibling comments have good answers about the definition, but just to clarify the motivation a bit, the typical justification I've heard for mandatory parking spaces is to avoid a prisoner's dilemma between building owners, especially when there's street parking in the area.

Let's say you have 10 buildings in an area, all of which provide some parking, plus there's some street parking. Any one of those buildings could decide to convert its parking into more homes or stores or whatever would make them more money, and just tell their customers/residents to use the other parking nearby. If everyone did this, nobody would have anywhere to park (especially not visitors), and building owners would have relatively little incentive to provide their own parking (they don't want to be the sucker). By forcing everyone to provide some amount of parking, you're overriding the bad incentives and getting people to cooperate for the greater good. At least theoretically, it's a good example of the government stepping in and making things better for everyone.

I think that rationale holds up less well with dedicated parking, pay-to-park, and parking garages, but certainly there are areas where free parking is the norm.

That's the theory (I think), though it has plenty of downsides. I'm not interested in owning a car, so the last four places I've lived have provided a parking space that went unused, and have had absurdly high rents due to the Bay Area's housing shortage (which might be alleviated by replacing parking spaces with housing).

tomohawk• 8 years ago

So glad I live in the burbs where artificial scarcity induced by petty local politics isn't a thing.

There's petty politics everywhere, of course, but worrying about where to park my car? No really something I have time for.

0xB31B1B• 8 years ago

Which burbs, the burbs are usually the definition of artificial scarcity. Setbacks, minimum lot sizes, FAR restrictions are all a suburban concept for the most part.

opportune• 8 years ago

Yes, in parts of Seattle and SF for example, the "suburbs" would really be at least 4 floor multifamily residences (some a lot taller) if not for "artificial scarcity induced by petty local politics"

jonknee• 8 years ago

How is a parking minimum artificial scarcity? If anything it seems like it's an artificial excess.

closeparen13• 8 years ago

Requiring housing to be accompanied by parking yields more parking but also less housing, as the additional cost takes projects on the margin below profitability and the space occupied by parking can't be used for more units (without expensive underground garages).

Zarath• 8 years ago

The burbs are absolutely horrible. You literally can't do anything without getting into your car and driving.

icebraining• 8 years ago

I was liked this example by Andrés Duany: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1X5uVR5NxY

(The whole lecture is pretty good)

twblalock7• 8 years ago

Parking requirements are artificial surplus. Letting businesses decide how much parking they want to build is not artificial scarcity, but just the free market at work.

If the majority of people are like you, businesses will be incentivized by market forces build enough parking to accommodate them. So what are you worried about?

ChuckMcM• 8 years ago

And the strongtowns take: https://www.strongtowns.org/parking/

It seems to me it would put pressure on other issues (investing in public transit) which may not followed up on, thus leaving you with a dysfunctional urban infrastructure.

twblalock7• 8 years ago

If there hadn’t been minimum parking requirements in the past, cities would have been forced to develop better transit. These requirements were a direct subsidy to car owners, which most people were not conscious of.

This will be a painful transition for people who depend on the status quo. But you have to pull the band-aid off sometime, and waiting longer won’t make it any better.

GW1509142• 8 years ago

Considering that “cars owners” in America represent 88%, maybe it’s just an alignment of interests. Maybe alternatives are rejected not because of these subtle systemic issues, but rather because a supermajority of Americans own cars and don’t want the alternatives? Talking about “car owners” like that isn’t synonymous with “most Americans” is a very particular way to frame the issue that makes it seem like a top-down structure when it isn’t.

twblalock7• 8 years ago

The problem is, everyone driving and parking a car in dense urban areas is not sustainable past a certain level of density. This results in heavy traffic and a large amount of land dedicated to parking which could be better used as anything else.

This is a top-down structure that was intentionally designed by urban planners after WWII and it is reaching its scalability limit.

greglindahl4• 8 years ago

I own a car, a bike, shoes, and a transit card. Most people where I live have at least 3 of these. Saying that "car owners" are 88% is exactly the kind of superficial statistic that got us to where we are today. How about having an appropriate policy for each area according to local circumstances?

pkulak2• 8 years ago

I own two cars, have worked downtown in a major city for the last 7 years and have never driven myself to work in that time.

sandworm101• 8 years ago

>> "The Seattle bill required commercial and residential buildings to charge residents for parking only if they actually had a car."

They did this in my old hometown. (North Shore, Vancouver.) They allowed all sorts of condos to be built on the assumption that they would be rented by retired/rich people. Retired people don't drive. Rich people don't have jobs. So the buildings went ahead without associated infrastructure/transport improvements. Now the nurses coming to take care of the elderly residents have to part at the local mall (Park Royal) which is now debating payed parking. Visiting grandchildren (minivans) fight for street space. And the city is becoming grayer and grayer.

I've since moved out of vancouver, to a much younger and more vibrant city. I cannot remember the last time I paid for parking.

Zelphyr• 8 years ago

I saw this exact situation happen at a previous employer. Three large high-end apartment buildings were built in an area where a large percentage of the residential population are older wealthy people. The three buildings have minimal parking and are located right across the street from a mall. Within two years of the first building being completed, the mall implemented paid parking.

Fomite• 8 years ago

In the town I grew up in, this happened as well - and is now killing said mall.

thomastjeffery• 8 years ago

“Unbundling makes parking more transparent,” a researcher from Sightline told Next City at the time. “When people realize they’re paying $200 a month for parking they might opt out or get by with one car instead of two, then the market builds less of it which is what we want.”

What is "it" in this sentence? Parking? Why do you want less parking?

ImaCake2• 8 years ago

Maybe it's more a general complaint about cars. If the city has been requiring free parking spaces then it has been effectively paying for people to own cars.

In general I can see why certain leaderships would wish for less cars for broader reasons. Cars are wasteful and consume precious resources. They kill people, both directly, and indirectly. They discourage people from walking and cycling - both are good ways to increase livability and safety of a community. Finally, cars contribute to the damage we are doing to the planet. Some leaders care about the environment, or at least pretend to for votes.

smackfu• 8 years ago

I’ve noticed sometimes the parking minimum is essentially just used as a source of power for the zoning board. They don’t actually want places to build the required large amounts of parking, but they don’t want to have to rubber stamp developments that they don’t like. So they waive the parking requirements of people that make the changes that they want.

lewis500• 8 years ago

Parking minimums are based on a handbook full of pseudoscience. When city engineers crack open the ITE handbook, it’s the equivalent of a doctor cracking open some old medieval text about humours.

jstanley80• 8 years ago

This makes sense for Cincinnati's urban core, since it once had a population density similar to New York. The neighborhoods referenced in the article are incredibly walkable and the city has already invested in a streetcar system to move between neighborhoods. Overall, Cincinnati's neighborhoods within 10 miles of downtown are filled with dense, pre-war construction centered around public squares connected by public transit. The city is already laid out to function without cars (streetcars were abundant here in the 1800s).

qwerty456127• 8 years ago

That seems a really weird move for a place where almost everybody has a car. It would be reasonable if the public transport system was well-developed, growing rapidly and meant to be the main means for the people to travel the city but isn't the USA (with exception of a small number of places) primarily a car country?

Cincinnati Joins the List of Cities Saying ‘No’ to Parking Minimums

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