Portlanders for Parking Reform
Better Parking Policy For The City of Roses
Hey, parking and transportation advocates and wonks!
I don’t know about you, but parking and beer are two of my favorite things in the world. Join Portland Shoupistas on Wednesday, July 27 at 6pm at Migration Brewing to celebrate our victory at opposing new parking minimums in NW Portland and learn about upcoming city parking policy and programs!
Portland is getting a new bike share service starting on July 19th and the city is installing 100 bright orange bike corrals all over town to support the system. Despite a process for bike share that has taken years and a public outreach and comment period that has spanned several months, some residents were surprised (and unhappy) to see the bike racks installed where they usually park their cars.
But perhaps the most interesting part of this story, so far, is a quote from the landlord who owns the duplex directly behind the new racks. Mike Papas, who runs a blog called “LandLordZen” claims that the loss of on-street parking will force him to reduce the rent he is charging to his tenants.
Papas’ duplex doesn’t have dedicated parking for his tenants so, assuming they have cars, they park on the street. Although the building is on a duplex, SE Cesar E. Chavez is a busy street with no parking. Papas’ tenants will have to park at least 50 feet from their home from now on. Although the street usually has available spaces on the block face (Note: the author commutes by bike on this street every day) the inconvenience and loss of parking in front of the residence is apparently valued by Mr. Papas at $125 per month.
Access to that amenity is reflected in the rent Mr. Papas, whose tenants say is an extremely honest and ethical landlord, is charging them. This is no surprise. One common argument against reducing or removing minimum parking requirements is that allowing developers to build less parking doesn’t lower rents. Opponents to parking reform have gobs of tables showing rents for comparable studios in buildings with and without parking which reflect little to no discount (and surely not the $200+/month the parking is likely adding to the cost burden).
The problem with that argument is that given ample free or underpriced on-street parking, there is no major difference in the amenities offered by the building with parking and the building without parking. Often, when developers do build parking, they charge for it and if the off-street is cheap the lot will be mostly vacant.
If cities permit parking, charge market rates, and only sell as many permits as there are parking spaces, then we expect to see developers build the amount of parking they need. If a developer chooses not to build parking in such an environment, the expectation is that the rent for the building will be cheaper and fewer residents will own cars.
In all likelihood, Mr. Papas will not be lowering his rents by $125 a month. Parking on this block is not extremely congested and even if it were, the market rate for off-street parking in this neighborhood is likely closer to $50/month rather than $125. The area doesn’t have permitted parking, yet, and in the event neighbors ask for permits, the monthly cost of on-street parking is unlikely to be above $10/month.
Nevertheless, if Papas does lower his rent because the BIKETOWN station was put in front of his property, one can imaging tenants all over Portland begging for a station to be put in front of their home next.
2016 may be the most exciting year for parking reform in Portland. In February, the City raised downtown meter rate to $2 per hour – first rate increase since 2009 – in hope to increase parking turnover in downtown. Three months ago, Portland City Council passed a resolution directing the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) to develop a performance-based parking pricing system to increase parking availability and manage on-street parking more efficiently. It is also worth mentioning that City Council decided to hold off on new minimum parking requirements in NW Portland after listening to testimonies from housing and transportation advocates and concerned residents at the public hearing on July 6. There will be more updates on parking minimums, but for now, let’s talk about performance-based parking pricing.
Performance-based pricing, also known as demand-based or market-rate pricing, is a parking management tool that sets meter rates based on demand to achieve a target occupancy rate. Parking experts typically recommend 10 to 20 percent vacancy rate or 1 to 2 available spaces on any block to ensure drivers can always find a place to park near their destinations.
This video by the City of Seattle explains performance-based pricing. It is important to know that the primary purpose of performance-based pricing is managing parking availability and making finding parking easier, not raising new revenue.
One question shared by people on both sides of performance-based pricing is “is charging previously free on-street parking based on demand an equitable policy?”
Commissioner Saltzman and Commissioner Fritz have publicly expressed concerns for such policy’s impact on low-income people. The concern for equity is what this article will explore.
Before we get deep into numbers and data, let’s first think about all the other costs people need to pay to own and operate a car. Most people do not think it is unfair to pay for gasoline, insurance, repairs, and the vehicle itself. Should we advocate for free gasoline for everyone so the cost of fuel does not burden poor people? What about food and housing? They are much more important to low-income households than free parking, but we don’t hear elected officials say we need to cap the prices of food so poor people can afford to eat. If people of all income levels have to pay rent for housing, why shouldn’t drivers pay rent for car storage?
To understand whether charging on-street parking is equitable, especially for low-income people, we need to compare it with the current status quo. For decades, cities have given away curb parking for free and required development to over-supply off-street parking to ensure free on-street parking availability. However, off-street parking is very expensive to build. According to a report by the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, on-site residential parking can cost as high as $55,000 per space to build. Therefore, parking requirements increase the cost of any development because it is difficult to recuperate the costs of building and operating off-street parking by charging market-rate prices when people can park at the curb for free.
Consequently, the costs of providing off-street parking are hidden in the goods and services we consume. Low-income households without cars now pay for the cost of parking indirectly in the form of higher rent, higher grocery costs, and higher prices for everything else. If a low-income household decides to save money by using transit or bicycling to get around, they shouldn’t have to pay for other people’s parking costs. In contrast, demand-based pricing is more equitable because it only charges drivers the cost of parking.
There are other factors other than price that affect choices about where to park, such as parking duration, the number of people in the car, and the value drivers place on saving time for any given trip. When curb parking is underpriced or free, parking is rationed on a first-come, first-serve basis, regardless of trip purpose, duration of stay, and willingness to pay. Conversely, demand-based pricing gives drivers the ability to decide where to park, how much time to save, and how much they are willing to pay based on trip-specific preferences and conditions. Performance-based pricing will make parking readily available to everyone; even poor people can choose to park in the best parking spaces on occasions when saving time is very important.
For older adults and people with disability, having the ability to park close to their destination would significantly reduce travel barriers and improve their access. When on-street parking is free or under-priced, older adults and people with disability must circle the blocks like everyone else and may have to park far away to find a parking space, even though they have greater needs to park as close to their destination as possible. Performance-based pricing gives people with greater needs the choice to pay to park at the best parking spaces to accommodate their needs and therefore is more fair than the current status quo.
Performance-based pricing is also more fair than charging a flat rate that does not vary based on demand or time of day. Why should you pay the same flat rate to park on blocks with lower usage as others who get to park on blocks that have high demand? Performance-based pricing offers drivers the option to save money by parking during times and areas of lower demand whereas the current flat rate pricing unfairly charges every driver the same price even when there are abundant on-street parking spaces.
Portland’s on-street parking rate is most expensive in downtown; currently at $2.00 per hour but free after 7 p.m. Any attempt to expand meter hours and/or price meters based on demand beyond 7 p.m. will likely cause concerns for low-income workers who work night-shifts in downtown. But how many downtown commuters are low-income?
In fact, very few low-income commuters actually drive to downtown. According to U.S. Census data reported by Bike Portland, only 5 percent of downtown commuters who drive to work earn below $30,000 annually while 83 percent are commuters who earn above $50,000 a year. Is our current parking policy equitable when it subsidizes car storage for commuters who are mostly not low-income?
As a direct response to stakeholder concerns about the impact of new downtown on-street parking rates on lower-income workers, PBOT provides a reduced-rate permit program for low-income workers to parking inside SmartPark garages between 3 p.m. and 7 a.m. for $35 a month. This program is much more effective and equitable in serving low-income workers’ transportation needs than free on-street parking.
Owning and operating a car is by far the costliest mode of transportation. In 2015, the average annual cost of owning and operating a car is about $8,700 according to AAA. That is a huge price tag for poor people! If elected officials are truly concerned about equity in transportation, they ought to give low-income people more access to more affordable transportation options, such as transit, biking, walking, and car share /ride share, and not continue to encourage driving by offering cheap parking.
In fact, performance-based pricing can improve transportation equity by shifting public subsidy from parking to affordable transportation options that poor people already use. Instead of going into the city’s general fund, new revenues from on-street parking can subsidize transit passes, bike-share / car-share / ride-share fees, expand transit services, and enhance sidewalks to ADA standards. By establishing parking benefit districts, the City of Portland can invest parking revenue right back into the area where it is collected to enhance low-income people’s mobility options so they do not have to be burdened by the high cost of automobility.
Parking is a political issue more than an economic one. Concerns for economic equity come from a good place and should be acknowledged. Evidence shows pricing parking based on demand is more equitable than the present parking policy. Free or under-priced parking forces everyone to pay for off-street parking indirectly, regardless if they drive, and rations on-street parking space based on luck, not an individual’s needs or preferences. On the other hand, performance-based pricing only charges drivers and gives people of all income-range the ability to choose the most desirable parking space based on trip-specific circumstances. Most importantly, it can reduce low-income people’s transportation costs by improving access to more affordable travel options such as walking, biking, transit, and car-share / ride-share.
#NONEWPARKING “If cities want more people to use modes other than the automobile they should stop building new parking”
Stop boosting supply! The first of six parking reforms for adaptive parking policy
From parking space to community space. SDOT offers grants for communities to convert parking into parks and extends PARKing Day to PARKing Day Plus
In a suburb of Melbourne, sidewalk makes way for on-street parking
Variable pricing based on demand, way-finding signs, and better management are recommended to address parking problem in Salt Lake City.
City of Napa exempts six new development from parking minimum at the edge of its downtown core to maximize buildable space and asks developers to pay a parking fee in lieu.
In a somewhat unexpected turn of events, two hours of testimony, mostly from Shoupistas and affordable housing advocates, convinced a majority of Portland’s City Council to hold off on extending minimum parking requirements into NW Portland.
In the days leading up to the hearing it seemed that members of the NW Parking Stakeholder Advisory Committee had convinced a majority of City Council that a “tourniquet” was needed to stop new buildings with no on-site parking from being built in the
very walkable NW Portland neighborhood. A seeming majority of the 10 Portlanders who requested minimum parking requirements from City Council recognized that the policy they were asking for was flawed and needed reform, but they felt it was better to take action now and fix the citywide policy later.
For most of the 19 people who spoke out against an expansion of the current policy, however, the potential for harm to our already critical housing crisis was too great to take such a chance. Chris Smith, a member of the Portland Planning Commission, pointed out that there were roughly 25 parking management strategies identified by the Centers + Corridors Stakeholder Advisory Committee and nearly all of them should be tried before minimum parking requirements.
The hearing was notable for the breadth and quality of discussion around parking policy. Commissioners Nick Fish, Steve Novick, and Dan Saltzman were genuinely engaged and participating in what at times seemed to be an ad-hoc brainstorming session on parking management strategies.
The biggest impact of the hearing might be the shot-in-the-arm it gave to the on-going process to develop an overnight Residential Parking Permit program. Steve Novick, the transportation commissioner, was asked several times about the status of the recommendations from the Centers+Corridors SAC, a process that has seemed to stall out in recent months. There was a general consensus that the residents of NW Portland needed more tools, sooner rather than later, to deal with on-street parking congestion, and more effective parking permits are a likely solution.
One of the bigger obstacles to implementing an effective residential permit program has been the expected resistance of City Council to higher permit prices. Currently, the annual cost of most residential permits is $60, with the exception being the Central Eastside Industrial District where employee/residential permits now cost $140 annually. But the prospects for market-rate permits may be changing. Mayor Charlie Hales commented that “five bucks a month [for parking permits] is crazy low” and Commissioner Dan Saltzman said that he now agrees that “on-street permits are woefully underpriced.” We’re unlikely to see the price of on-street parking approach the $150+ a month it costs to rent a dedicated space in NW Portland, but $25+ a month for residential permits now seems like far less of a stretch than it did a week before the hearing.
So what is next for Portland’s minimum parking requirements? While an outright repeal seems unlikely, council members seemed ready to revisit the 2013 thresholds, ratios, and exemptions. Most notably, Commissioner Nick Fish was concerned that the 30 housing unit threshold he authored in 2013 was having unintended consequences on the housing market, as previously reported.
There appears to be an opportunity for a reform of the 2013 requirements to mitigate the impact on the housing market. Exempting affordable housing from the requirements (such that a 40 unit building with 10 affordable apartments would have no parking requirement) was mentioned as one strategy. In-lieu fees are another possibility, which could be particularly potent if the proceeds went to affordable housing and/or affordable transit subsidies.
We surely haven’t seen the last of this issue. The next few months will be critical to watch and participate in any efforts to change the current regulations and, likely, expand them into NW Portland.