TonyJ

Prosper Portland Breaks Ground On Money Pit

August 8, 2017 By TonyJ 2 Comments

Dump Truck Dumping Money Bags On Convention Center Garage — Prosper Portland is dumping money into a parking garage venture that may lose money and hurt climate goals.

Prosper Portland, the organization formerly known as the Portland Development Commission, celebrated the groundbreaking for the Convention Center Hotel and adjacent combination $26,000,000 parking garage and transit police station/jail.

Prosper Portland is looking to replace expiring tax-increment financing cash-flow with parking revenues from this garage and commuter garages in Old Town/Chinatown and the Central Eastside Industrial District. The organization’s consultants say the projects will pencil out in the long run, but for that to be true, the city would have to fail to meet its own commuter mode-share goals and disruptive technologies, like ride-share and autonomous vehicles, will have to vastly underperform expectations.

Prosper Portland is mortgaging its own future for a short-term revenue stream. It might be too late to stop construction on this garage, but Mayor Wheeler and city council can tell Prosper Portland to stop undermining climate action policy and find other investments, like affordable housing, that the city actually needs and are more fiscally responsible.

If Paul Allen wants an NBA All-Star Game that badly, maybe he should finance the garage?

Do you want Prosper Portland to stop building new garages? Email Mayor Wheeler and tell him to put a stop to Prosper Portland’s self-destructive plans.

Coming To Grips With The High Cost Of Free Parking

July 25, 2017 By TonyJ Leave a Comment

According to this article in The Register Guard the city of Eugene, Oregon is considering adding parking meters back in their central shopping district, meters they removed in 2010 to stimulate business during the recession.

Businesses and elected officials are concerned that too much parking is being taken up, all day, by employees of downtown businesses, causing customers inconvenience and wasted time as they circle for parking.

Business associations are often reluctant to support parking management policy. The claim is that customers will happily drive miles out of their way to avoid paying relatively modest rates in exchange for easy access to the destinations they want to visit. But there is evidence that making it easier for patrons to find parking can boost business.

Customer traffic is the lifeblood of storefront retailers, restaurants, and other small businesses. Business leaders who think that accommodating more drivers is the key to success should consider how many eyeballs (and wallets) can be brought to their business by various modes.

Image showing the space it takes to transport 60 people but bike, bus, and car. Cars take up far more space. — How much space does it take to transport 60 people? (https://www.cyclingpromotion.org/)

Local businesses are facing a major challenge from online retailers like Amazon. Car centric shopping malls are failing all over the country. Free parking is a great way to attract cheap patrons to your store so they can window shop and then buy what they want for a cheaper price online when they get back to the car.

Report from YIMBYtown 2017

July 16, 2017 By TonyJ Leave a Comment

I spent the last few days in Oakland, CA attending the second annual YIMBYtown conference. The conference was “a three-day gathering for grassroots community organizers, political leaders, educators, housing developers, and everyday people to identify problems, create solutions, share resources on the issues that impact housing on local, state, and national levels.”

I gave a presentation on parking reform which I hope will encourage other groups to advocate for reduced parking minimums and other smart policy changes.

Here are a few quick parking related takeaways:

Parking comes up ALL the time. It is often the primary complaint about new development.
Parking policy is a pretty wonky topic even at a conference full of wonks.
Los Angeles has zones which only allow parking!!
Folks in other cities would benefit from a parking reform “playbook”

I attended a great session by David Bragdon and Steven Higashide from the Transit Center in which they proposed a YIMBY transportation agenda that I really liked, for obvious reasons!

Parking vs Housing: Mayor Wheeler Calls Debate ‘Over’

May 4, 2017 By TonyJ 5 Comments

Convenient parking is a problem in parts of Portland, Mayor Ted Wheeler conceded last week. But it’s a smaller problem than housing — and Wheeler says that when the two come in conflict, housing must be the priority.

“I want to put a marker down. The debate: ‘Parking vs. Housing?’ It’s really over.” – Ted Wheeler

The mayor’s words came at a Rose City Park Neighborhood meeting April 25th. Wheeler was asked by RCPNA board member Deborah Field what his plan was to “require developers to put in ample parking spaces” with new housing projects.

The mayor’s response was definitive:

But I want to put a marker down. The debate: Parking vs. Housing? It’s really over. That piece of the conversation is over. When younger families or younger people say they want to locate here, the first thing they’re saying isn’t ‘Boy I wish I had another parking space, or had access to a parking space.” What they’re saying is, “I can’t afford to live in this city.” And, so, the city, meaning the debate that happened over the last three years actually made a choice, and the choice was affordability and housing over access to parking. I just want you to be aware that that is a real dynamic and is a real choice and it was made with full community involvement.

The mayor told the crowd that “parking adds significantly to the cost of affordable housing.”

(This is true for both market-rate and publicly backed homes, for the simple reason that urban space costs money. You can read more about the effect of excessive parking on housing prices here.)

He suggested that neighborhoods, like Rose City Park, which want to manage their parking supply should form parking districts similar to those in Northwest Portland and the Central Eastside Industrial District.

The Portland Bureau of Transportation has spent years working to develop a framework for neighborhoods to create parking permit zones and parking benefit districts, but the policy has yet to be voted on by Portland City Council. Wheeler said he wouldn’t suggest simply taking the plan from NW Portland and moving it to Rose City Park, seemingly a contradiction to Commissioner Saltzman’s position that NW Portland is conducting a pilot for other neighborhoods to follow.

The mayor’s comments can be read here or viewed below (starting at 35:30).

20170425-RCPNA-Wheeler from portland politic on Vimeo.

Thank you to Catie Gould and E.J. Finneran for tipping us off to this news. Thank you to Michael Anderson for edits!

Innovative Permit Changes Proposed In NW Portland

May 1, 2017 By TonyJ 2 Comments

When Portland City Council decided not to extend minimum parking requirements into Northwest Portland in July 2016 the Northwest Portland Parking Stakeholder Advisory Committee (NW Parking SAC) began looking at other options to manage parking. The district had recently installed parking meters in the most congested parts of the zone and had a permit program which allowed for an unlimited number of annual on-street permits to residents and businesses for $60/year. According to a 2016 survey, there are 5,264 metered or permit on-street stalls in the parking district and 8,558 annual permits (employee, resident, and guest combined).

New Parking Rules Coming to Zone M This August - The goal of these changes is better parking management. We want to make it easier for residents, visitors, and employees to find parking. — Snippet from PBOT ad in NW Examiner

At a meeting on April 19th, the NW Parking SAC, which is made up of neighborhood and business representatives, recommended changes to their permit program which would increase the price of permits, limit availability through attrition, and provide incentives for residents who choose not to renew their permits.

The cost of permits will increase from $5/month to $15/month ($60 to $180 annually). Verified low-income residents will keep paying the original rate (a $120 annual subsidy). Low-income residents currently without cars will receive no transportation subsidy.

The revenue from the increased fees ($10/month) will be spent locally on incentives for residents who don’t renew permits to take other modes of transportation, this is referred to as transportation demand management (TDM). Non-renewing residents will have a choice between a $100 TriMet HOP card, an annual BIKETOWN membership ($144 value), or a 50% discount on an annual TriMet pass ($550 value).

All current permit holders will be allowed to renew their permit, there will be no lottery or auction to reduce the number of permits sold. Residents of multi-family housing, however, will be subject to attrition. A new building with 100 apartments would receive 40 permits for distribution and an existing building with 100 apartments would be entitled to 60 permits. These limits will apply to all buildings with 30 or more units. Residents of condominiums, smaller apartments buildings, and single family homes, however, will not be subject to limits.

A wealthy homeowner with 4 cars will still be able to get 4 permits.

These programatic changes are a step in the right direction and the incentives for not renewing a permit are a great use of permit revenue.

Will it work? Time will tell, but given the high cost of off-street parking in the neighborhood these measures probably don’t go far enough. Future changes will have to find ways to encourage people with rarely used cars to either share them, sell them, or garage them off-street.

This is one of two programs in the city testing out progressive parking management. Unfortunately, NW Portland and the Central Eastside Industrial District are the only neighborhoods currently empowered to test these methods and try to solve their parking problems. Commissioner Dan Saltzman should work quickly to pass the parking permit program developed by the Centers + Corridors Stakeholder Advisory Committee in 2015 and allow PBOT to work with neighborhoods to discover the most effective and politically palatable solutions.