Equity

Will City Council Finally Approve Performance Parking Management?

July 22, 2018 By TonyJ Leave a Comment

CALL TO ACTION: City Council needs to hear from YOU about your support for Performance-based Parking Management. Send an email to cctestimony@portlandoregon.gov before Wednesday July 25 (put Performance-based Parking Management in the subject). Tell City Council why you think it’s time to get politics out of parking prices by using a data-driven approach to parking management.

Should a prime, convenient, and coveted parking spot, right in front of a busy storefront cost the same rate as a, relatively, crummy spot near I-405?

That is the question that Portland City Council will grapple with on Wednesday, July 25th when they consider the Performance-based Parking Management Manual and new Parking Pricing and Event District Policy for approval.

A month ago, on June 13, council heard a presentation and testimony on this policy, but concerns from various commissioners led to a delaying a second hearing. Some commissioners were, reportedly, worried that adjusting prices based on demand would make downtown Portland less accessible to people with lower incomes.

But a look at preliminary data from the city shows that there are many areas of downtown and the central city which would likely see rates decrease under the new policy. Furthermore, many of the blocks likely to see increases are near city-owned Smart Park garages, a lower-cost and longer-stay alternative to prime street parking.

A map showing areas of downtown and the Central Eastside which have previously been observed to have parking occupancy that would warrant an increase or decrease in parking rates. Much of the core of downtown would potentially see increases. — Most areas likely to see increases are near Smart Park garages, many areas will likely see decreases. Image courtesy of Sightline Institute.

PBOT has returned with a new resolution and ordinance that should, hopefully, clear up some other concerns that commissioners had about the proposal in June.

Concerns about the impact of a policy like this on low-income people are valid and important, but too often those worries manifest in policy that provides a subsidy to all car-drivers, the majority of whom are not low income. Meanwhile, transit dependent people are stuck paying ever-increasing rates to sit in buses, idling in traffic caused by single-occupancy commuters. Performance-based Parking Management is just one of many strategic policies the city can use to reduce traffic, save people time, and encourage other modes. The most promising option for a sustainable and equitable solution to Portland’s transportation problems is to prioritize transit above other modes via enhanced transit corridors and bus/freight only lanes.

After years of work, seemingly countless committee meetings, and several false starts, Portland seems ready to join San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Seattle, and many other cities and apply simple market economics to on-street parking. Will City Council finally take that step?

CALL TO ACTION: City Council needs to hear from YOU about your support for Performance-based Parking Management. Send an email to cctestimony@portlandoregon.gov before Wednesday July 25(put Performance-based Parking Management in the subject). Tell City Council why you think it’s time to get politics out of parking prices by using a data-driven approach to parking management.

Parking Permit Pilots Must Avoid NW Portland Permit Pitfalls

January 25, 2018 By TonyJ 7 Comments

Portland’s city government is finally taking steps to manage on-street parking, but new permit programs will likely have to be more fair to renters if they’re going to get approval from City Council.

On January 24th, Portland City Council voted to approve a Parking Management Toolkit and directed the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) to seek out willing neighborhood partners to develop residential parking permit pilots. Once neighborhoods are identified, City Council will need to authorize the parameters of the new permit programs and comments from the commissioners exposed concerns about equity with the city’s current pilot program in NW Portland.

While most residents in NW Portland are currently guaranteed access to permits for as many cars as they own, people living in buildings with 30 or more units may not be able to buy a permit. Only 60% of units in existing buildings can get a permit under the policy and new buildings will be limited to 40% of units. A lawyer for MultifamilyNW (the landlord lobby) argued, earlier this month, that the rationing was discriminatory and potentially unconstitutional.

MultifamilyNW Has A Point

Consider the case of former Tonight Show host Jay Leno. Mr. Leno, currently star of Jay Leno’s Garage owns, by at least one estimate, 169 cars. If Leno purchased a home on NW 22nd Avenue with off-street parking for two vehicles, PBOT would be compelled to sell him permits for the remaining 167 cars for the, relatively low total cost of $2505 per month. With some diligence, Leno could park his cars on 22nd Ave and take up, literally, every on-street parking space between W Burnside and NW Northrup on the avenue.

Graphic showing that Jay Leno's 167 cars could take up all parking between W Burnside and NW Northrup on NW 22nd ave — If Leno moved to NW PDX, he could get permits for all 169 of his cars & park them all on NW 22nd.

But if Jay Leno moved into an apartment building with 30 units on NW 22nd Avenue he would have to compete for the 18 permits available for his building. The rest of his cars would have to be garaged at his expense, which in NW Portland would probably cost $100 or more a month.

We Can Do Better

Fortunately, there are lots of good ideas of how to manage on-street parking fairly and equitably, and perhaps City Council will have the courage to let PBOT and it’s volunteer neighborhoods try them out.

The NW Portland permit program, and future permit programs, should limit the number of permits available per household and/or use progressive pricing to discourage permit hoarding. Households seeking a second (or third) permit, or households with off-street parking, would pay a higher price for each additional permit up to the limit.

The city should not pick winners and losers for access to public parking. All residents should have equal access to permits in the neighborhood they live in, regardless of whether they live in an apartment, a commercial zone, or a single family home. The best, and fairest, way to allocate permits (assuming the demand exceeds supply) is to use an auction to distribute permits, specifically a uniform price auction. A uniform price auction asks participants to bid the maximum amount they would be willing to pay for a permit, but all permits are sold at the lowest price which clears the market. Most winning bidders will pay less than their maximum bid. Low income residents can be provided with cash subsidies from the proceeds, which they can use to bid on a permit or use as they otherwise see fit.

An Ounce Of Prevention…

Regardless of the methods chosen for rationing and distribution, it is critical that PBOT and City Council move quickly to develop a program and offer it to the rest of the city’s neighborhoods. Few, if any, other neighborhoods in Portland have parking as congested as NW Portland. Other neighborhoods are unlikely to need to claw back thousands of permits from existing residents. The key is to begin managing parking before it becomes a crisis.

Portland took a step in the right direction this week and it’s important to keep moving.

Bundled Parking Adds a 17% Premium or $1,700 a Year to Your Rent

July 18, 2017 By Shoupista 6 Comments

The housing affordability crisis has reached record levels in American cities. According to the Joint Center for Housing Studies, about half of the renters in the U.S. are cost-burdened (paying over 30% of their income for housing) and one in four are severely cost-burdened (paying over 50% of their income for housing) in 2014.

Part of the problem is that local government requires housing development to over-build off-street parking. As a result, most Americans pay for parking as part of their rent regardless if they need a parking space. Policy experts and housing/transportation advocates have argued that parking requirements should be eliminated or reduced as this arbitrary regulation has made housing more unaffordable by (1) imposing substantial development costs that get passed onto tenants; and (2) reducing overall housing supply by limiting density.

The Hidden Cost of Bundled Parking

To answer the question: What are the effects of on-site garage parking on housing costs in American cities? A recent study by Gregory Pierce and C.J. Gabbe found that renters living in metropolitan areas pay approximately $1,700 per year or 17% of a unit’s rent for the bundling of a garage space with housing. Moreover, the authors estimate that there are about 708,000 urban carless renter households with a garage parking space. Altogether, these households pay $440 million a year for bundled garage parking; that is $36 million more than the amount of federal money the State of Oregon spends on rental assistance in 2016.

Using data from the American Housing Survey, Pierce and Gabbe concluded that 71% of carless renters live in a housing unit with bundled garage parking and they pay an average of $621 a year or a 13 percent premium on their rent for parking they do not use. This raises a serious equity issue since carless and renter households are much more likely to be lower-income than their counterparts (households with car- and/or home-ownership). Indeed, the study finds that the average income for carless households with a garage space is about $24,000 compared to $44,000 for other households. Because bundled parking forces poor carless renters to pay for a luxury they do not need, it inevitably makes it more difficult to save money to meet other basic needs such as education, healthcare, or better living conditions.

The study argues that when developers are required to provide parking on-site, they have little or no incentive to unbundle parking costs from rent because there would be an oversupply of parking spaces. Thus, the authors recommend that cities reform parking regulations to either eliminate or reduce parking requirements for housing development and enable developers to charge parking separately from rent.

Parking Stalls Housing Affordability in Portland

The study explores parking’s effects on rents at the national level but the policy implications are very relevant to Portland. According to the Portland Housing Bureau, more than half of Portland renters are cost-burdened, spending more than 30% of their income on rent. At the same time, only 59% of renters drive to work. But parking minimums have not only raised rents but also stopped affordable units from being built since 2013, and efforts to increase affordability are currently stalled by parking in Southeast Portland.

In February 2017, the new Inclusionary Housing rules went into effect in Portland, allowing housing projects near frequent transit to apply for a waiver for parking requirements. The Urban Development Group (UDG) filed an early assistance request for three proposed residential projects in Sellwood. The proposal, if approved, would provide 40 affordable housing units and 170 market rate units in exchange for waiving a total of 46 parking spaces that the projects are required to provide.

Despite the need for more affordable housing units in walkable and transit-friendly neighborhoods, the Bureau of Development Services (BDS) thinks that one of the projects provide on-site parking spaces as required by the City’s Development Standards because it is not located within 500 feet from a transit street with 20-minute peak hour service. If BDS refuses to ~~interpret the Code and transit service standards more favorably~~ grant a variance (which can be appealed by the neighborhood slows/kills the project), Sellwood will lose the opportunity to gain 40 affordable units and get 46 private parking spaces instead. It will also set an unwise precedent that will discourage future development proposals from trading parking stalls for affordable housing units.

But the impact is more than the lost opportunities to build affordable units. “By driving up the cost of development, parking requirements not only make the cost of developments that do get built more expensive (developers have to pay for the land and construction for parking, and pass these costs on in rent), but parking requirements also have the effect of reducing the amount of housing that gets built and because fewer units are built, there’s less supply, and that serves to drive up the rents on all the units in the marketplace,” said Joe Cortright, a Portland urban economist and contributor at City Observatory.

While the Inclusionary Housing ordinance was a positive step forward in parking policy reform, it did not go far enough. Allowing affordable housing projects near transit to apply for a waiver for parking requirements is good but eliminating parking requirements entirely is much more effective in supporting housing affordability. In May, Mayor Wheeler publicly said that “the debate: ‘Parking vs Housing?’ It’s really over“. But as long as Portland City Council continues to allow stealth parking subsidies in the form of parking requirements, the majority of renters will continue to be burdened by the hidden cost of parking.

In Sellwood, the key to Portland’s new affordable housing program turns out to be … no parking

February 28, 2017 By Michael Andersen 3 Comments

A proposed 89-unit building at SE 17th Avenue and Tenino, one block off Tacoma in Sellwood. Rendering: Myhre Group Architects via Portland Bureau of Development Services.

This is a guest post from the blog of Portland for Everyone, which covers housing abundance, diversity and affordability in Portland.

Which is more important to the future of Portland:

homes that are affordable to lower-income people, or
storage for upper-income people’s cars?

The question doesn’t get much starker than with two new buildings proposed last week in Sellwood and nearby Moreland, close to the Willamette River in southeast Portland.

If they move forward as proposed, the two apartment buildings — one with 89 homes, the other with 54 — seem to be the first fruits of the inclusionary housing ordinance approved by the city council in December.

Depending on how the design works, the buildings could add as many as 29 new apartments that would rent for as little as older apartments east of 136th Avenue do today.

The new homes would be in the walkable, relatively transit-rich Sellwood-Moreland area, less than half a mile from the new Orange MAX Line and the Springwater Corridor bike path into downtown. Their affordability would be guaranteed for 99 years.

Here’s the tradeoff: in order to afford the lower-rent units, the buildings would have to be built with no on-site parking.

Every underground parking space costs $550 per month in additional rent

Parking garages are expensive, especially underground garages like the ones UDG had previously proposed for the Sellwood area. As of 2013, each underground parking space added $55,000 to the cost of a building, which translates to about $550 per month that comes ultimately from rent payments in the new building.

The city council’s decision last November to waive parking requirements for apartment buildings that participate in the inclusionary housing program was one of the crucial offsets intended to prevent the program from halting new development.

If the two new “early assistance” requests filed last Tuesday by Urban Development Group is any indication, that plan is working.

UDG already owns the land on both sites. The building at 17th and Tenino would go onto the site of a drive-in restaurant:

A new building here would have 89 apartments if it sets aside some homes for lower-income Portlanders, or 79 apartments if it includes on-site parking instead.

The building at Milwaukie and Yukon would be on the site of this house:

A new building here would have 54 apartments if it sets aside some homes for lower-income Portlanders, or 47 apartments if it includes on-site parking instead.

Here’s are the notes from city staff summarizing the request from the would-be developer, spotted Monday by Iain MacKenzie of NextPortland.com:

In other words, the developer doesn’t have to include units affordable to lower-income people in his buildings, because both projects were green-lighted before the city’s new inclusionary housing rule took effect. But if including low-rent units means he doesn’t have to include on-site parking, then including the low-rent units could actually make the building more valuable.

Which is to say: because of the city’s new rules, a developer is now asking to build homes for lower-income people instead of storage for higher-income people’s cars.

A good tradeoff for tenants and the environment, housing advocates say

Vivian Satterfield, standing at right, at a 2016 workshop in support of inclusionary housing.

Vivian Satterfield, deputy director of OPAL Environmental Justice Oregonand a leading advocate for the city’s inclusionary housing requirement, welcomed the proposals in an interview Monday.

“Having access to public transportation, being in walkable communities, actually benefits us all, including those of us who have multiple vehicles,” said in an interview Monday. “These are things that should be afforded to lower-income folks.”

If that means that parking a car in central Sellwood gets a little more annoying, she suggested, so be it.

“There are tradeoffs,” Satterfield said, adding that as she spoke she was looking across a “sea of parking lots” along 82nd Avenue.

Tony Jordan of Portlanders for Parking Reform agreed.

“This request is a win-win for affordability and our environment,” Jordan said in a text message. “We hope that other developers will choose the same route.”

David Mullens, a project manager for Urban Development Group who is managing the proposals, declined a request to discuss the projects.

This is only a request for advice from the city’s permitting staff; it’s entirely possible that UDG will decide to pursue its other plan instead. Whatever happens, we’ll be watching this example closely. It could be the first sign of big things for Portland.

Portland for Everyone blogs about how to get abundant, diverse, affordable housing. You can follow it on Twitter and Facebook or get new posts by email a few times each month.

Diversifying Portland’s Parking Toolkit with Unbundling Parking and Parking Cash Out

August 15, 2016 By Shoupista Leave a Comment

8715267346_57f4c2d72f_z — (Commuter traffic coming off the Broadway Bridge. Photo source: BikePortland.org)

Two weeks ago, Portlanders for Parking Reform wrote about the proposed Central City 2035 (CC2035) Plan may create more parking by increasing existing parking maximums in some of the Downtown parking sectors. While “parking is a fertility drug for cars”, to change travel behavior, parking policy cannot only target the supply side of this issue. If the City of Portland wants meaningful parking policies to help meet its mode-share targets–85% non-single occupancy vehicle (SOV) trips–and climate goals, such policies must address both supply and demand. Not only may the CC2035 Plan take a step backward on curbing parking supply, it also does not mention any parking demand management policy.

The good news is that there are viable parking policy options that can be applied to Portland’s downtown and neighborhoods to reduce the demand for parking. The Planning and Sustainability Commission and City Council ought to consider adopting unbundling parking and parking cash out for Portland’s Central City and gradually expand these policies into other neighborhoods.

Bundled Parking: Paying for Desserts That You Don’t Eat

Building and operating parking has high costs. Unbundling parking means separating the costs of parking and charging the users of parking directly. To illustrate how parking is currently bundled with the prices of housing, goods, and services that we consume and the need to unbundle it, let us think about the following scenario:

Imagine that the City of Portland requires restaurants to provide free dessert with every meal ordered by customers. The price for meals would increase to cover the cost of “free” desserts. While this may be good news to people who love desserts, such requirement has negative consequences. First, all diners now have to pay more for each meal whether or not they want to eat dessert. Second, some people would eat desserts they would not have ordered if they had to pay for them separately. Bundling desserts with food induces people to over-consume desserts, which leads to more obesity, diabetes, and heart diseases.

The City of Portland does not require free desserts with every meal but it does have parking minimum requirements for new development. Although the Central City district is exempt from such requirements, there are no guidelines on unbundling the costs of parking from development. Just as unbundled desserts would give diners more control over what they eat, unbundled parking will give travelers more choices by allowing people to decide how much parking they need and want to pay for.

When cities require developers to build off-site parking spaces, the cost of parking usually doesn’t get separated from the other costs of the development, making unbundling parking difficult. The good news is Portland’s Central City has no parking minimum requirement, which makes implementing unbundling policy more feasible. Parking can be unbundled from housing by offering residents the option to lease apartments and parking spaces separately, thereby reducing the cost of housing for those who do not own cars. Parking can also be unbundled from office and retail leases, allowing businesses to only purchase the number parking spaces they deem necessary for their employees and customers. Alternatively, parking costs can be listed as a separate line item in commercial lease agreements to show tenants how much parking costs and allow businesses to recover such cost by charging parkers directly.

Unbundling: Tried and Tested

Many cities in the U.S. has adopted unbundling parking policies. For example, San Francisco’s zoning code requires off-street parking spaces for residential buildings with 10 or more dwelling units to be sold or leased separately from the rental or sale of dwelling units. Berkeley also adopted a similar ordinance that requires unbundling parking. In central Seattle, approximately 50% of all multifamily units have unbundled parking from rent.

Lastly, Los Angeles’s Adaptive Reuse Ordinance (ARO) has permitted developers to unbundle parking to encourage converting and redeveloping old buildings. A recent research study shows that ARO apartment units with bundled parking cost about an additional $200 per month, proving that housing does become more affordable when it gets separated from parking.

Unbundling parking may be difficult to apply retroactively to all existing buildings, but it is not impossible. The City should at least explore the option of unbundling parking for current affordable housing units. This will offer existing low-income residents the same benefits of not paying for parking they do not use, freeing up more budget for housing. Portlanders for Parking Reform urge the Planning and Sustainability Commission and the City Council to consider adopting unbundling in CC2035 first for new development and then apply the same policy to existing affordable housing units.

Parking Cash Out: A Second Paycheck

According to the Parking Cash Out Report, “free parking is the most common fringe benefit offered to workers in the U.S., and 95 percent of American automobile commuters park free at work.” Most employers in Portland either provide parking for free or partially-subsidized employee parking. Even though many workplaces provide additional commuter benefits such as transit passes, the financial subsidy for parking often exceeds the subsidy for transit or other modes. Therefore, free or partially-subsidized parking is an invitation to drive alone to work.

Another policy to effectively reduce demand for parking is to offer workers the option to “cash out” their employer-paid parking subsidy. Parking cash out provides commuters the option of cashing out their employer-paid parking subsidy, and use it on other transportation modes or to keep it as a second paycheck. In addition, parking cash out would reward commuters who do not use parking by giving them financial incentives to use healthier and greener modes of transportation, such as walking, biking, and public transit, thereby changing travel behaviors and contributing to the City’s mode share targets and climate goals.

California passed a state law in 1992 that requires many employers to provide cash out options to their workers. A 1997 study in Los Angeles County estimated that mandatory cash out reduced the number of daily vehicle trips to work by 11 percent and commuter parking demand by 13 percent, or 0.4 spaces per 1,000 square feet of office space. If Portland wants to meet its mode-share targets for Downtown (85% non-SOV trips), it would need to set parking maximums at 0.25. That is an ambitious number that will undoubtedly cause a lot of political push back. However, parking cash out is an appealing policy option to help meeting that goal because it brings modest and incremental change and does not require employers and commuters to suddenly change behaviors.

Good for Employers

According to the U.S. EPA, “employers provide an estimated 85 million free parking spaces for commuters—spaces with a net worth of nearly $31.5 billion”. The same U.S. EPA report estimates that annual per space costs vary between $360 and $2,000. In the High Cost of Free Parking, Donald Shoup shows that employers save $40 a year per $1 annual cost for doing parking cash out, with the assumption that the capital cost per parking space is $10,000 (this number is likely far below the average cost of an office parking space in downtown Portland).

Subsidizing parking costs employers a lot of money. Coupled with unbundling parking, parking cash out can significantly reduce demand for parking and offer savings to businesses. There are several benefits to employers associated with decreasing commuter parking demand:

(1) Employers can reduce costs associated with leasing or owning and maintaining parking spaces.
(2) Lower parking demand allows businesses to convert employee parking to customer parking, which may attract more customers.
(3) Businesses can also convert parking spaces into profit-generating activities.
(4) Reduced commuter parking demand will eliminate the need for new parking construction.
(5) Recruit and retain workers by offering parking cash out as a valuable fringe benefit.

Good for Employees

Not only does parking cash out create benefits for employers, it also does for employees. For starters, it increases equity among all commuters. Employer-paid parking does not benefit commuters who ride public transit, walk, or bike to work. However, cash out allows commuters receive the same benefit regardless of how they travel. Secondly, cash out benefits non-auto commuters without disadvantages for auto-commuters. Workers who want to park for free can continue to do so, but they will be able to receive the same amount of benefits if they decide not to drive.

Research in transportation planning has repeatedly demonstrated that higher-income individuals are more likely to drive to work alone, while lower-income individuals are more likely to carpool, ride public transit, bike, or walk. As a matter of fact, using the best available data from the Census Transportation Planning Products, BikePortland reported that only about 5% of all downtown Portland workers who drive alone to work are low-income.*

5% of all drive-alone downtown commuter earn less than $30,000 a year — Image source: BikePortland

The same general trend is also applied for homeowners versus renters (Portland renters are 6 times more likely to not own a car). Thus, without parking cash out, many employers regressively provide subsidies to help wealthy commuters save money on transportation but excludes poor commuters from the same benefit. In addition, just as unbundling parking would lower housing costs, cash out would provide financial benefits to car-less low-income households and renters who are increasingly getting priced out of Portland’s housing market.

Basically, parking cash out is a win, win, win.

Moving Forward

On July 26th, Portlanders for Parking Reform asked the Planning and Sustainability Commission to amend the proposed CC2035 draft, incorporate unbundling parking and parking cash out as recommended policies, and direct city staff to study how these policies will be implemented and administered. Portland has set ambitious transportation and climate goals for the next twenty years, but our currently proposed policies, namely parking ratios, only focus on managing parking supply and lack demand-based approaches.

Unbundling parking and parking cash out are the other side of the parking equation that have proven to be effective, low-cost, and more politically favorable. These policy ideas are not only important to Portland’s long range plan but will also influence the results of the City’s current parking projects, such as the residential permit program, performance-based pricing, and shared parking. Unbundling and cash out will diversify our current parking toolkit but most importantly, they will also contribute to other community goals such as housing affordability and access to more travel options.

Update: *The author added a sentence and a chart to highlight percentage of drive-alone downtown commuters who are low-income