Parking Garages

PDC’s Parking Problem Restricts Ability To Deliver On Strategic Goals

February 18, 2017 By TonyJ 4 Comments

The Portland Development Commission has a parking problem.

The agency has committed to spending $32 million in taxpayer provided urban renewal funds to build an obsolete-on-arrival valet-only hotel parking garage which is steps away from a MAX station. That project’s price tag has increased by $6 million dollars before construction has even started, casting doubt on PDC’s already shaky projections that the garage would generate a $500,000/year profit.

A parking garage right next to a light rail station. — Drawing of PDC’s Hotel Parking Garage

An additional $5 million in PDC money is earmarked to upgrade another parking garage, the 10th and Yamhill SmartPark Garage, in a project that will likely lead to the displacement of several existing businesses in the city core. Another $3 million dollars is budgeted to secure resources to build district parking garages in the Central Eastside Industrial District, building the parking itself will surely cost many more millions.

The fact that these projects are at odds with the city’s climate action and transportation goals should be enough reason for Mayor Ted Wheeler to initiate a change in strategy, but a report PDC delivered to the Planning and Sustainability Commission reveals more problems.

PDC’s parking obsession hinders it’s ability to deliver on it’s strategic goals to advance social and economic equity and support a vibrant central city. PDC commissioned a policy impact calculator from ECONorthwest to “help PDC and its partners understand potential financial impacts to PDC’s development activities and to help PDC respond to the new policy environment” which includes: inclusionary zoning (IZ), new green building requirements, system development charges for parks, and a construction excise tax. The calculator was used to conduct pro forma analysis on 5 prototype projects.

Included in these prototype developments is a potential affordable housing project and parking garage in Old Town. This prototype project would contain 3 floors of residential space made up of 79 multi-family units. This, much needed, affordable housing would be built above 3 floors of podium parking. The report notes that a density bonus for more housing would be allowed for this project, but wouldn’t be used because the extra height required for the building would trigger more expensive building materials or significantly more expensive underground parking. Notably, the parking in this building isn’t required or even targeted for the residents of the building, it would, instead, induce more commuter and visitor traffic to downtown.

This report is only exploring options for PDC and it points out that the density bonus for affordable housing isn’t a true financial incentive due to the fact that other costs scale with the development. Nevertheless, the inclusion of a parking garage in the project instead of more housing is further evidence that PDC is pursuing short sighted goals to encourage driving when it should be focusing on building affordable housing in areas of economic opportunity.

Mayor Ted Wheeler and his fellow Commissioners should ask PDC to calculate what a 6 story building with 5 floors of affordable housing for humans and no shelter for cars would look like. It may not pencil out, but it would be a project far more worthy of public subsidy than a parking garage disguised as affordable housing.

6 Parking Policy Priorities For Portland In 2017

January 12, 2017 By TonyJ 3 Comments

In 2016, Portland parking advocates scored a number of important victories: in February, downtown meter rates increased; in April, City Council ordered development of performance parking policy; in July, a proposal to require parking in NW Portland was defeated; and, at the end of the year, minimum parking requirements from 2013 were effectively repealed. Still, on the ground, the state of parking policy in Portland is in the roughly same place as it was 15 years ago.

In the coming year, Portland’s City Council and the Portland Bureau of Transportation must move forward and make real progress on parking policy. Our ability as a city to take action on climate change and meet our citywide housing and transportation goals depends on the political will of City Council and PBOT to develop and approve effective parking management tools, with the help of Portland’s growing number of Shoupistas.

Stay tuned for more in-depth articles on these parking policy priorities.

1. Pass The Residential Permit Program and Parking Toolkit

Portland needs a new residential permit program, and fast. One has been in the works for years but it recently got shelved. With residential infill and more apartments with little to no parking on the way, Portland needs to get serious about on-street parking management.

2. Create In-Lieu Of Fee Options For Remaining Parking Requirements

Starting in February, developers of new housing projects with 20 or more units will be required to rent a percentage of those units at a rate “affordable” to people making 80% of the median family income. As part of the incentive package, those apartments won’t have required on-site parking. State law mandates that developers be allowed to pay in-lieu fees instead of building affordable homes, but if they do, they still have to build parking. Arbitrary parking mandates don’t make sense. Let developers pay additional fees in-lieu of parking stalls and use the money to build more homes!

3. Use Downtown Parking Meter Money To Fund Night Owl Transit

Last year, Portland increased the hourly cost of downtown meters by $0.40/hour, raising an additional $4 million a year in revenue. Opponents to parking management often oppose reforms on the grounds that late night workers don’t have transit options. Managing on-street parking and using the revenue to extend transit hours is a win-win.

4. Demand That PDC Build Housing Instead Of Parking Garages

The Portland Development Commission is spending at least $32 million in urban renewal funds on a hotel parking garage just steps away from the MAX Red Line and they have plans to build more garages. In 10 years will visitors to Portland really choose to rent a car and drive themselves to the Lloyd District? Long term goals for the city require investing less in cars and building more close-in affordable housing, PDC should support those goals.

5. Require Parking Cash-Outs And Tax Downtown Private Parking

A graph showing that in one study, parking cash out led to 13% reduction in drive alone share. — (Image from ACCESS Magazine)

Federal tax laws allow employers to pay hundreds of dollars a month, tax free, for employee parking, but don’t require equal benefits for employees who use other modes. California requires employers who pay for parking to provide employees with an equivalent cash option. This has been shown to be very effective at producing desirable mode shifts. Portland can do this and would, likely, reap major benefits.

6. Develop, Adopt, and Implement a Comprehensive City-Wide Parking Management Strategy

At the current rate, passing parking reforms and upgrading PBOT’s technology to effectively manage parking may take several more years. Portland needs a comprehensive plan to modernize our parking management policy to ensure we are using the curb lane efficiently and for the highest social good. Big changes are on the way and time is running out to reap the rewards of progressive parking policy.

Portland’s Parking Policy Puts Car Storage Before Housing Affordability

November 15, 2016 By Shoupista 1 Comment

A brand new apartment building with 268 units on N. Williams Ave. opened last month. This apartment is within a 10-minute walk from four TriMet bus routes (#4, #6, #24, & #44), a New Seasons grocery store, and served by the Vancouver-Williams bike lanes and two Biketown stations. The location is excellent for carless Portlanders. Since owning and operating an automobile can cost about $9,000 a year, savings from living without a car means that you have more budget for necessities like housing, health-care, or food. By this logic, the City should encourage more housing development in neighborhoods with abundant transportation options to enhance affordability.

However, housing in transit-rich neighborhoods is becoming increasingly unaffordable. In this new building, a one-bedroom unit costs as much as $1,870 a month. In addition, despite being very accessible by walking, biking, transit, and bike-share, this development includes 237 underground parking stalls (185 residential and 52 commercial), a luxurious amenity that does not benefit people without cars.

I was told by the leasing office that they are running a special offering 9-months of free parking to new tenants. So if you are a car residing in Portland, you will never be homeless because free parking is available almost everywhere. But if you are a renter looking to live in a walkable and transit-accessible neighborhood, you may be out of luck.

Portland’s Perverse Priority: Shelter for Cars, Not Housing for People

In 2013, pressured by residents anxious about growth, City Council adopted a tiered system of minimum parking requirements for new development with more than 30 units. Many housing and transportation advocates believe that this arbitrary mandate have suppressed housing supply and increased the costs of housing.

In September, the White House released a policy document stating that “[p]arking requirements generally impose an undue burden on housing development, particularly for transit-oriented or affordable housing.” As housing gets more and more unaffordable in Portland, our city policy continues to prioritize provision of free park over affordable housing units. Moreover, minimum parking requirements act like a fertility drug for cars. Portland’s 2013 parking mandate has undermined its own climate and transportation goals by inducing more driving, air pollution, and carbon output.

Parking Requirements Raise Income Requirements

Free parking isn’t free. Underground parking costs about $55,000 per space to build according to the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. In this apartment building’s case, that is $1.3 million added to the development cost, and it is very likely that every unit is now marketed at a higher rate in order to recoup the high costs of free parking. In other words, parking requirements may have ended up raising the income requirements for living in transit-accessible neighborhoods.

To afford paying $1,870 a month on rent, you would need to earn about $68,000 a year. The units in this apartment building may have been more affordable if the development had cost $1.3 million less. Affordable rental units in Portland’s transit accessible neighborhoods are diminishing and parking requirements exacerbates this issue by escalating new housing development costs.

Excessive Parking Supply Won’t Fix Neighborhood On-Street Parking

If a underground parking stall costs $55,000 to build, why would the building management offer 9-months of free parking? Because while the City can require new development to provide on-site parking, it cannot require tenants to park in them. As long as on-street parking remains free, tenants will be incentivized to use curb parking instead of paying to park on-site.

Parking requirements force developers to over-supply parking, which they then give away for free because demand for paid parking is too low to fill the stalls. But the high costs of free parking need to be recovered somehow. As a result, carless tenants end up subsidizing other people’s free parking with their rent.

When buildings offer free parking, they are providing a strong incentive for new tenants to bring their cars with them. In this case, after the 9-month free parking period is over, tenants who brought their cars with them will be inclined to park on the residential streets for free instead of starting to pay for off-street parking. Neighbors who support minimum parking requirements hoping it would prevent parking spillover may soon find their plan backfiring.

As one resident states in her public testimony, Portland’s parking policy is absurd:

“I live in a building with garage parking that is not even full. I do not own a car, but my rent subsidizes the cost of these spots which were “free” at the time I signed my lease because the apartment company was unable to fill them with paying car owners. When I toured apartments on SE Division, THE LEASING AGENTS suggested that if I had a car it was better to park on the street because that was free but the building was charging for garage space. This is all so absurd! Street parking demands should be managed via a residential permitting system. Parking minimums will not help.” – Ellie H

We Can Fix It: Support Housing for People, Not Shelter For Cars

Mayor Hales has proposed to repeal the 2013 parking mandate with Amendment 34 to the Comprehensive Plan. This amendment will effectively eliminate parking minimums for sites near frequent transit service.

This a critical opportunity to set housing for people as priority over shelter for cars, but it won’t happen without your help. City Council needs to hear from you. You can take action in one of the following ways:

Write today to City Council telling them why you support eliminating parking requirements. Write to cputestimony@portlandoregon.gov with subject line “Comprehensive Plan Implementation” Please cc: or bcc: pdxshoupistas@gmail.com. Tell them in your own words that housing is more important than car parking and they should pass Amendments 34 to the Comprehensive plan to eliminate minimum parking requirements in mixed use zones.

If you are available to testify in-person on Thursday, November 17th (or if you can help sign others up at lunch) please RSVP here: https://goo.gl/forms/8ICMdizpy8nIUsZQ2

The Portland Independent Chamber of Commerce (http://picoc.org) is sending an open letter supporting this policy change. If you are a business owner, please sign-on. If you are not a business owner, ask your favorite small businesses (food carts, retailers, etc) to endorse this letter

More information about testifying can be found on this article

Portland Is Building Parking For Cars That Won’t Ever Park

August 31, 2016 By TonyJ 3 Comments

Within a matter of days, Ford has announced plans to mass produce fully-autonomous vehicles by 2021, Uber said it would be debuting (semi) self-driving taxis in Pittsburgh, and folks in Singapore started taking rides in robot taxi cabs. Simultaneously, Portland plans to renovate a public parking garage for $25 million and build a 425 stall parking garage next to a Rose Quarter light rail station.

Autonomous vehicles are coming. The technology is here, the industry players are lining up, and given their track records with disruptive technology (see: Uber, AirBnB, Tesla Autopilot) our cities are unlikely to stop driverless cars from operating on our streets. But rather than crafting regulations to ensure that this technology is applied to solve transportation and planning problems, Portland is planning to spend millions of dollars to build more garages for conventional automobiles.

The threat of robot cars making things worse is real. It won’t do much good for us to trade privately owned single occupancy vehicles (SOV) that sit idle in parking stalls 98% of the time for privately owned SOV that sit idle in traffic 98% of the time. There are people making great arguments about what we should do to prevent a worst-case-scenario and Portland is lucky to have a planning commissioner, Chris Smith, who is pushing for policy about self-driving cars to be included in the upcoming Transportation System Plan.

The End of Parking?

While the virtues of autonomous cars and the timelines for their arrival are still open for debate, it is increasingly acknowledged that self-driving vehicles will greatly diminish demand for on-site parking in most areas with even a moderate amount of commercial or residential density. Wasting valuable land and money on parking stalls (already a bad idea) will be completely impractical once cars can park themselves in the hinterlands or, more likely, spend the entire day moving people and goods.

The possibilities for repurposing on-street and surface lot parking are exciting. Surface lots can be re-developed into new buildings. On street parking can be removed and replaced with bike lanes, parklets, bus rapid transit (BRT), or even additional lanes for car traffic. The curb lane is a massive public asset, worth billions of dollars in a mid-size city and how we’ll use it in a post-parking world is an exciting thought exercise.

Like a banana slicer or a butter cutter, a parking structure is, generally, only good for one thing.

Parking garages, however, are single-purpose structures. Like a banana slicer or a butter cutter, a parking structure is, generally, only good for one thing. Standalone parking garages can be torn down and housing or offices can take its place, but the parking built beneath or within a building is single-use space we will be stuck with for generations.

We can see the end of parking demand as we know it and it’s time to stop building parking for future generations; they won’t be needing it.

There’s Money For Parking But Not For Housing

In the past month Portland officials have committed over $40 million dollars to publicly financed parking garage projects and the Portland Development Commission (PDC) is just getting started. These projects are simultaneously in opposition to the city’s own mode split and climate action goals and foolhardy investments.

But why must we ask voters to pay for housing while we pay for parking garages with available funds?

As we have covered, the PDC is committing $18 million dollars to build a 425 stall parking garage as part of the convention center hotel project which PDC claims will be profitable for decades to come. Will visitors to Portland in 2025 rent cars and personally drive them to a hotel which is immediately adjacent to the MAX line? Only in the most dystopian of futures.

Parking garage at SW 10th and Yamhill — SW 10th and Yamhill Garage

Perhaps even more foolish is a plan to renovate the SmartPark garage on SW 10th and SW Yamhill. This project, which will cost $25 million dollars is said to be necessary because the building is old and the ground floor retail is lacking in modern amenities. It is irresponsible to spend this much on a parking garage, which will last many decades, in the heart of downtown Portland just as we begin a transition into a very different era of transportation. At the very least, if the city must rebuild this garage, then housing or office space should be built on top of it. A city that is moving forward in 2016 doesn’t just replace an old parking garage with a new one. It’s shameful.

Our city council is asking us to commit $250 million dollars in new property taxes to build affordable housing. This is a critical need and a worthy ask. But why must we ask voters to pay for housing while we pay for parking garages with available funds? Isn’t this backwards?

Voters should be asked if they want to raise taxes to rebuild a parking garage and city council should use those dollars to build affordable housing. City Council should direct PDC to abandon its bizarre parking garage strategy and, instead, to look to affordable housing as a long term investment.

Pedalpalooza Ride: PDX Parking Past and Future

June 22, 2016 By TonyJ 1 Comment

Bikes in Parking Lot — Photo By https://www.flickr.com/photos/tahini/

Are you a Shoupista who celebrates Pedalpalooza? If so then you won’t want to miss the PDX Parking: Past and Future Ride!

Join us on Monday, June 27th at 6:30PM for a tour of notable parking lots and an update on the ongoing parking policy reform process in Portland.

We will meet at the Umbrella Man statue in Pioneer Courthouse Square. The ride will be an easy pace and will mostly remain in Downtown and the Lloyd District.

We will live-tweet the ride from our @pdxshoupistas account so follow along or meet up if you can’t make the start!

Want to follow along? Here’s the map and here are the notes!