TDM

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in NW Portland was defeated; and, at the end of the year, minimum parking requirements from 2013 were effectively repealed.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.

Parking Minimums Effectively Repealed In Portland – What’s Next?

December 11, 2016 By TonyJ 19 Comments

It took almost four years, but Portland’s growing Shoupista movement succeeded in effectively repealing off-street parking requirements imposed in 2013. This victory demonstrates that parking policy is a viable target for reformers looking to change city policies to encourage more affordable housing, increase use of alternative transportation modes, and take action on climate change.

On November 22nd, the Portland City Council voted to waive minimum parking requirements in new developments near frequent transit if those developments contain affordable housing units. The Comprehensive Plan containing the new rules should go into effect in January 2018, but the parking requirements will most likely fade away much sooner, in February 2017. On December 13, 2016, council is poised to approve an inclusionary housing package that includes the same waiver for parking requirements in exchange for affordable housing. The inclusionary housing rules require affordable homes in any building with 20 or more units. Since parking requirements aren’t triggered until 31 units are built, parking requirements will be waived for (nearly) all new buildings starting in February 2017.

Mayor Charlie Hales casts vote to repeal parking minimums. — For the second time this year, Mayor Hales gives a shoutout to Portlanders for Parking Reform.

The hearing, which you can watch here, was intriguing. The passage of amendment 34 was in serious doubt up to the day of the vote. Commissioner Dan Saltzman had gone on record as opposing removal of the requirements (he wanted to maintain them as a bargaining chit for the inclusionary housing bill) and Commissioner Nick Fish was keeping his cards close to his chest on this one. Commissioner Fish, who has a reputation for being a consensus builder, ended up crafting a compromise amendment which tied the waiver to affordable housing, this brought Saltzman into the fold and ended up winning support for a 4-1 vote in which Commissioner Steve Novick cast a protest vote. Commissioner Amanda Fritz’s support for the amendment (in fact she brought the amendment to the table) was so surprising that it seemed there had to be some catch, a poison pill perhaps, in the amendment. As it turns out, Commissioner Fritz was confused about what she was voting for and has asked council to hold another vote. We expect that Commissioner Novick will switch his vote as well if they re-vote, maintaining a 4-1 majority for this amendment.

Commissioner Amanda Fritz is so committed to car culture that she wants to make sure her record doesn’t reflect a vote against more parking for cars.

We Did It And We’ll Do It Again

Portland Shoupistas has grown, in just one short year, into Portlanders for Parking Reform, a group with credibility and a number of significant wins under our belt. Progressive parking policy is a critical component to providing more affordable housing and encouraging people to drive less, but there have been few, if any, examples of grassroots movements committed to demanding parking reform.

Thank you and congratulations to the hundreds of people who have participated in our actions, amplified our message, and gotten informed about the high costs of our current parking policies. We have a lot more work to do, in Portland and elsewhere, and we plan to keep at it.

What Is Next?

This next week there are two important votes at Portland City Council that are related to parking minimums.

Inclusionary Housing

On Tuesday, December 13th, council will hold a hearing a vote on the Inclusionary Housing package mentioned above. Portland’s Shoupistas are encouraged to support this package as it is the action which will effectively repeal parking minimums. There is a change we would like to see in this package: developers who pay in-lieu fees rather than building affordable units are still required to build parking; these developers should be offered an in-lieu option for parking as well. Those additional fees could go directly to affordable housing funds or towards affordable transit subsidies for low income residents. You can send an email to cctestimony@portlandoregon.gov and to dan@portlandoregon.gov with the subject “Inclusionary Housing.” Include your name and address.

Residential Parking Permits

On Thursday, December 15th, council will hold a hearing and vote on a new overnight Residential Parking Permit program for Portland neighborhoods. This program, which is very close to what we described in our post in January 2016, is a critical step towards managing on-street parking in Portland. The proposal is fairly flexible and we expect that over the next few years a very strong permit program will take shape.

There are two important parts to this proposal that Shoupistas should support. First, update purpose of Portland’s permit program to clarify that it is a “tool to achieve the City’s mode split goals by promoting the use of mass transit, car pooling, bicycling, and walking.” Secondly, the resolution will grant administrative rule-making power, including base permit prices, for the program to the Director of the Portland Bureau of Transportation. This is very important as it will allow the management of the public resource of on-street parking to be implemented with much less political interference.

You can send an email encouraging council to pass this package to cctestimony@portlandoregon.gov with the subject “Residential Permit Program.” Include your name and address.

Providence Portland Opposes Parking and Transportation Demand Management Reform

October 17, 2016 By Shoupista Leave a Comment

council-hearing-providence — (City Council Hearing on October 13, 2016)

It is ironic that hospitals are sometimes the most vocal opponents against policies that encourage healthy transportation choices and improve community health. At the public hearing on October 13, Theron Park and Michael Robinson, representing Providence Portland Medical Center, expressed their opposition to the proposed new Transportation Demand Management (TDM) program (title 33.266.410 in the draft zone code amendments), citing that “the requirement of pay-to-park could affect and will affect the lowest wage caregivers” and “the lack of administrative rules” as reasons to not adopt this TDM requirement.

Their claims are at best unsupported by evidence, if not disingenuous. Rather than actually advocating for low-wage workers or being a good public steward for the City, Providence wants to see a good policy fail because it does not want to charge its employees for parking and encourage them to use healthier modes of transportation.

The “Poor” Excuse

Opponents of pricing parking often use concern for poor workers as their number one reason to keep parking free. As I have discussed in a previous article, there are many things that poor people need more than parking, such as housing, food, and health care, but somehow free parking gets a “free pass”.

Providence claims that “pay-to-park could affect and will affect our lowest wage caregivers”. But this concern can be easily be addressed by (1) surveying all employees at the Providence hospital to understand how workers actually get to work; and (2) offering parking discounts or commute subsidies to low-income workers who are car-dependent.

It is possible that Providence has no idea how their low-wage workers are getting to work because there is currently no TDM policy that requires medical institutions to track how their employees are getting to work. In addition, cities like Austin and Sacramento have adopted low-income employee parking permits to ease the financial burden of priced parking. The City of Portland has also adopted a similar program to accommodate low-wage workers when City Council raised downtown meter rates to $2 an hour.

So how many “lowest wage caregivers” are there at Providence? Using the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics mapping tool, I estimate that approximately 7.5% or 350 of all Providence employees earn less than $15,000 a year. Since car-ownership is a huge financial burden, a it is probable that significant portion of Providence’s low-income worker use non-driving modes of transportation to get to work (the Hollywood Transit Center and 3 bus lines are within ¾ of a mile). So saying that you don’t want to charge for parking because it may burden the 7.5% of your employees who are already unlikely drive sounds a lot like a disingenuous excuse to continue to give free parking to wealthier employees.

Success in Seattle: Lesson for Portland

At the start of the public hearing, Mr. Park touted that Providence has already “reduced single-occupancy vehicle rate from 88% to 68% in the past two years”. To be fair, that is a pretty good reduction. However, compare to Seattle Children’s Hospital, Providence certainly has a lot of room for improvement. Seattle Children’s Hospital has a 38% drive-alone commute rate in 2006 and it has set an ambitious TDM target to reduce the share of drive-alone commuters to 30% by 2028.

The general rule for reducing driving is to make it more attractive to take alternative modes of transportation and less attractive to drive, and Seattle Children’s Hospital has a “multi-faceted strategy” to achieve just that.

The hospital offers a variety of incentives to not drive:

free transit passes;
free bicycles for employees who pledge to bike at least two days a week;
Guaranteed Ride Home to those who carpool, walk, bike, or take transit – a free taxi ride home in the case of an emergency;
$4 a day added to your paycheck for those who do not drive;
free shuttle service from transit hubs to the hospital.

At the same time, the hospital’s parking policy creates disincentives for driving:

charging for parking on a daily-basis;
daily parking pricing ranges from $2.25 to $10;
requires some employees to park off-site and take the shuttle to work.

sch-pic-1 — (Seattle Children’s Hospital offers double financial incentive for workers to not drive to work.)

Buying a monthly parking permit is an investment that encourages you to drive and park as much as you can since it is already paid through the month. A daily-pricing structure provides more flexibility to allow commuters to decide which mode they want to use each day.

Providence seems to be very concerned that City Council will adopt a TDM policy without knowing how to implement it. However, the example of Seattle Children’s Hospital shows that it is not very difficult to implement multiple TDM strategies at once and medical institutions can reap many benefits from offering a diverse set of commute benefits and having healthier and productive employees.

We have a rare opportunity on the table to adopt a TDM policy that will help meeting our transportation and climate goals and give people more mobility options and the choice to be healthy. Providence and other health-care institutions should get out of the free parking business and stop holding back Portland from adopting sustainable and healthy transportation practices.