Portlanders for Parking Reform

Better Parking Policy For The City of Roses

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Changes coming to NW Portland Parking

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A few changes are coming to NW Portland parking. PBOT is hosting an online open house and an in-real-life Open House on Tuesday, May 7.

People wait for a bus at night.
Zone M Parking in NW Portland

For the last 7 years, the NW Parking Stakeholder Advisory Committee (SAC) has been trying to manage 5,264 of the most desired parking spots in the city for the greatest good. But, despite their efforts, 7,600 permits were sold in 2018 for those 5,264 spaces, a 614 permit increase over 2017.

The permit program is still one of the most advanced in the nation. The permits, while still 1/10 the cost of off-street parking, are sold for $180 a year. Progressive pricing of permits (the second, per driver, costs more than the first) keeps Jay Leno from parking 100s of cars on the street. Revenue from the permit surcharge funds the innovative Transportation Wallet program, bike parking, and more.

Prices might go up, a little bit

The NW Parking SAC decided against increasing the surcharge for permits (the base charge in 2018 was $60 + $120 surcharge) but the city has upped the base fee to $75. It’s unclear if permit rates will go up $15 to $195/year to cover the increase.

In contrast, the Central Eastside Industrial District has raised permit fees every year and Zone G residential permits are now $370 per year. Committing to a schedule for several years of performance-based increases would be a good next step for the NW Parking SAC.

Accounting for off-street parking

One of two proposed changes for 2019-2020 is that buildings/households with available off-street parking will lose permit availability proportional to that off-street supply. In an example given by PBOT, if a household has two vehicles registered and one off-street parking space, then the household can purchase only one permit.

Restricting business permits

Another proposed change is to limit the amount of permits available to businesses. There are 6 employers in NW Portland with more than 50 permits allocated to their employees. The proposed changes would limit the allowable permits to any business to 50. PBOT is considering making more subsidized transportation wallets available to employers to mitigate the impact of this change.

Expanded Transportation Wallets

One change that is already here is an expanded Transportation Wallet for 2019. The wallet now includes:

  • $150 in TriMet credit
  • An annual BIKETOWN membership
  • An annual Portland Streetcar pass
  • $25 in Car2Go credit.

All for just $99 dollars! This is a great program, the city should expand subsidies so that low-income residents who do not purchase permits get Transportation Wallets for free.

Let PBOT know you support good parking policy!

The NW Parking SAC is taking a thoughtful approach to parking management since they cannot require structured parking in new buildings. Take a minute to explore the on-line open house. Fill out their survey.

If you are a NW resident or worker, try to show up at the Open House on May 7th from 5pm – 7pm at the Eleanor Event Space (1605 NW Everett St) and share your input on permit changes coming to Zone M this September!

You’ve got a rare opportunity to tell the IRS to tax parking fairly, seize it.

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Opportunities to influence parking reforms on a national level are very, very rare, but one such window is open until 11:59PM EST on February 22nd and a bunch of smart comments could have a big impact.

As reported by Michael Andersen from Sightline Institute, Trump put a huge tax on parking lots, maybe by mistake, and the IRS is seeking guidance on the extremely important details of a seemingly esoteric change to the way our tax law subsidizes commuter parking benefits. Basically, corporations will now have to pay taxes on “commuting benefits” as if they were corporate profits.

It’s a weird law. But if it falls equally on parking and transit benefits, it could be a huge incentive for employers to replace universal free employee parking with a more equitable benefit.

Previously an employer paying $250 a month for an employee’s parking space (or bus pass) could deduct that cost from their income, but now that $250 will actually be taxed as if it were money made and kept by the company.

To put it another way, as Jason Pavluchuk with the Coalition for Smarter Transportation said: “the days of free and unaccounted-for employee parking are coming to an end.”

The IRS is in the process of writing rules about how this actually goes into effect, and they are considering effectively exempting employers with their own employee parking lots (like Nike), as well as large big-box retailers with huge surface lots (like Walmart) from the parking tax. Even worse, the tax would still apply fully to transit benefits from those same employers.

This would be a step in the very wrong direction. Ideally, employers would have to pay taxes on parking and not on transit. Barring that, Congress could ditch commuter fringe benefits and employers could voluntarily give a cash allowance for employees to get to work.

36 Hours To Make A Difference

So you have about 36 hours from when this article is published to submit a comment to the IRS asking for them to tax parking fairly.

You can COMMENT NOW via a form on Regulations.gov, here is a sample letter (with a placemarker for a personal note). Remember, this comment period ends at midnight EST Friday night. Just take 5 minutes right now and do it! This is a very rare opportunity to make a major national impact on parking.

After you send that letter, we also encourage you to visit the Coalition for Smarter Transportation’s campaign to urge your Congressional representativeto join Rep. Earl Blumenauer in asking the IRS to tax parking fairly.

Democracy and Parking: High Hurdles for Permits in Portland

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Last month a majority of voters in a Northeast Portland neighborhood supported a new parking permit zone, but because of ridiculous rules from 1981, the City of Portland says the proposal failed. 

The permit election, in the Eliot Neighborhood, had a 53% turnout. For comparison, the 2018 primary, in which voters renewed the Children’s Levy and re-elected Commissioner Nick Fish, had a turnout of roughly 30%.

If City Commissioners and the Mayor had to meet the same electoral thresholds as a new parking permit zone, council might have a different makeup.

Of the ballots returned in Eliot, 54% were in favor of the permit proposal, a simple majority that would be sufficient in almost any other election. In total, 28.9% of all eligible ballots were mailed in (postage not included) to support on-street car parking management, but since city code requires a 60% supermajority for a parking permit, a minimum of 30% of all eligible households must vote yes to charge less than $7 a month for parking. Mayor Ted Wheeler was elected in 2016 with yes votes from only 27.9% of registered Portland voters.

Petitioning For Relief

New Portland parking permit districts can be initiated in two ways. In the first way, the neighborhood or business association can request that PBOT look into parking occupancy in an impacted area. The neighborhood associations in Portland are generally run by volunteers elected to the board by a minuscule percentage of eligible residents (it’s not uncommon for 20 people in a neighborhood of 7000+ to be the only voters). 

In the second method, neighbors must circulate a petition and collect signatures from 50% of addresses in their proposed boundaries. Brad Baker, an Eliot neighborhood resident who helped organize six canvasses “in groups ranging from 4-6 people,” and reports they “were told to not include large buildings that you can’t access the addresses from the street [in the proposed permit area] because if you can’t get in the building, you can’t get them to sign on to your petition.”

Baker says this petition requirement “makes it practically infeasible to include large buildings, so the areas that would probably benefit most from managing parking are not included.”  Furthermore, Baker suspects the process insures “only those wealthy enough to be in single family homes can benefit from an improved parking management.” Indeed, in some neighborhoods, permit boundaries have been drawn to exclude larger multi-family buildings, thereby excluding tenants of those buildings from access to cheap on-street parking that homeowners enjoy.

Commissioner Amanda Fritz, who was most recently re-elected with 31.7% of the registered vote, worried at the 12/15/2016 council session that allowing tenants of apartments to participate in neighborhood parking politics might dilute the power of single-family homeowners. If apartment dwellers get a vote and “the multi-family building has a lot of people in it, then it could be really lopsided as to who wants the parking permit system and who doesn’t.” 

A Hurdle Too High

When all was said and done and the ballots were counted, only a simple majority of voters had agreed to on-street parking management. More canvassing may have helped; however, due to the supermajority requirement, organizers would have to turn out 3 pro-permit votes out of every 5 to tread water.

Similar turnout and results for the permit vote and most recent mayoral election.

In 2014, a large Stakeholder Advisory Committee (more than 20 members) was convened and met 10 times. The Centers + Corridors Parking Study SAC developed, and unanimously endorsed, a parking management toolkit and a new residential parking permit program. Although among the suggested improvements was a reduction of the required majority to a more commonly accepted 50%+1 threshold for a ballot success, the minimum turnout requirement remained in the proposal. 

When Portland City Council considered the new permit policy on December 15, 2016, Commissioner Amanda Fritz felt that common democratic practices wouldn’t suffice for parking permits. “I’m concerned,” Fritz comments at 34:13 into the hearing video, “about only 50% of the residents and only 51% can vote for it so 26% of the area residents and including if the multi-family building has a lot of people in it, then it could be really lopsided as to who wants the parking permit system and who doesn’t.”

The policy never even got a vote.

Pass The Policy On The Shelf

Portland has had a well developed and progressive parking policy on the shelf for 4 years. Even today, the permit districts allowed under that recommendation would, likely, be the most advanced and effective residential parking permits in the country.

City Council should hear that policy again and pass it, which would be a major step in using smart transportation policy to combat climate change, traffic violence, and housing access inequity. 

The primary innovation of that proposed parking policy was to remove parking decisions from the political tug-of-war engaged in at City Council. On-street parking is one of the most valuable city assets and management of that asset is one of the most effective transportation demand levers. Portland has hired many smart professionals to work for PBOT who should be empowered to make simple, data-driven decisions about parking, so long as they adhere to city goals and equity policies. 

Will future generations look back and wonder why Portland City Council maintained a higher democratic bar to protect access to free parking for homeowners than the commissioners themselves had to clear to be elected? The clock is ticking on climate action. How many more years will we waste attempting to conduct pilots to convince City Council that their own transportation professionals are competent and educated enough to do the jobs they were hired for?

Weaponized parking requirements

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When neighbors want to stop a project or close a business, parking is a convenient complaint.

Catapult with parking logo
(Catapult photo by Flickr:shankaronline)

Neighbors of a long-standing “community healing center” in Northeast Portland may succeed in forcing the business to shut its doors due to a lack of dedicated parking. Occupancy studies indicate the impact from The Everett House on neighborhood streets doesn’t justify a parking lot, but a reliance on ill-fitting parking generation and demand ratios provides cover for regulators to side with complaining residents.

The Everett House is actually a complex of several large homes in a neighborhood bordered by restaurants and shops on NE 29th to the west, more restaurants and shops (and a bus line) on NE Glisan to the north, and more commerce (and a 24 hour bus line) on E Burnside to the south.

For the last 36 years, the business has operated under a conditional use permit that allows the commercial activity in the residentially zoned neighborhood. That agreement, negotiated in June of 1982, requires the facility to provide 30 off-street car parking stalls within 300 feet of the spa for patrons. In the past, the business has contracted with nearby owners of parking to meet the requirements, but recently the lot they leased was closed to be redeveloped into 118 apartments with no on-site parking, and as a result a new conditional use permit, without parking requirements, was sought.

These requirements themselves “lacked evidentiary and legal reasoning” according to the Hearings Officer in the current case. In fact, a previous conditional use from 1981 required only 20 car parking stalls and 10 bicycle parking stalls.

More evidence that many existing parking requirements are completely arbitrary.

Nearby residents of the complex have, apparently, considered the business a nuisance for decades. A comment, purportedly from neighbor Fred King, on the Willamette Week’s coverage of the story, says “the real problem was that management has constantly tried to expand the business … the opposite of what the conditional use permit required.”

Ultimately, it is the expansion of services, specifically a desire to host up to 12 events per year at the facility attracting approximately 95 patrons, that the Hearings Officer felt did not meet the conditions of approval. Estimated peak occupancy of 65 members at the facility was shown by occupancy studies to not unduly congest parking. An additional 30 visitors two dozen nights a year, and particularly the cars they might drive to the neighborhood for those events, was enough to sink the petition to continue operations without off-site parking.

Parking is an unfortunate proxy for “livability”

A business operating in a residential neighborhood under a conditional use may be a bad neighbor. Neighbors of Everett House have cited noise, unauthorized structures, and other problems with the business. But parking is a proverbial “ace in the hole” when it comes to concerns about livability in a neighborhood. Because parking concerns are nearly always taken seriously and met with sympathy from other people who drive (including nearly every elected official), raising concerns about car parking is an excellent strategy for slowing down or killing a project (or business) that one doesn’t like.

This case highlights the general problem with parking requirements and a reliance on parking generation and parking demand worksheets. The transportation study provided in the application justified the removal of the parking requirement via several lines of argument and evidence. Transit access to the facility and strategies to implement better transportation demand management were mentioned, but the crux of the report depended on parking generation and demand calculations combined with observed parking occupancy.

Peak hour occupancy near the facility was shown to max out at 81%, less than the 85% the city considers congested. The engineer makes the very valid point that if the facility is operating and peak occupancy is below 85%, then the area is clearly able to absorb the demand from the spa.

But because the general assumption is that parking demand should be accommodated with off-street parking, the business is required to prove that special events will not cause parking congestion when calculated demand from those events is added to the current conditions observed at the site. Current conditions likely include “hide-and-ride” commuters who park and take transit, rarely used second or third vehicles owned by residents, and employees of nearby businesses (including the Everett House) who are, rationally, taking advantage of free and convenient parking.

A better approach would be to put the onus on the city to manage the public parking supply with demand based permits, metering, time stays, and other restrictions. A neighborhood permit system could allow much more efficient use of the public resource, potentially raising revenue that could be used to subsidize the transit costs for low-income residents and make capital improvements for pedestrians and cyclists.

Such a system could allow patrons to buy virtual permits for their visit to the spa. Residents of the upcoming 118 unit apartment building would have an opportunity to pay market rates for parking, if they need it, just like anyone else in the neighborhood. All may park, all must pay (with proceeds going to subsidize transportation for the poor).

Time for a complete shift in thinking

Car culture brought with it an expectation of cheap and ample parking in our cities. As society faces threats from climate change, traffic carnage, and wealth inequality, this expectation stands in the way of progressive policy. As long as parking complaints are assumed to be legitimate livability concerns, cities will continue to implement backwards policies. In the worst cases cities will maintain parking requirements, but even in cities without parking requirements, pandering to parking demand will hinder effective action.

Car parking is not a community benefit. It leads to traffic that pollutes the air and endangers pedestrians. Car parking takes up space that could be used for housing, transit, parks, and more. Developers who want to build parking should be the ones defending themselves to Hearing Officers for conditional uses. Developers who provide parking should be the ones providing transportation demand management, planting trees, and providing additional affordable homes.

We’ve had things backwards for a long time, it’s time to deweaponize parking and get on with the serious business of solving our problems.

Preposterous Portland: Development agency wants to build a parking garage on top of a parking garage in the middle of a transit center

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UPDATE 1/16 9:30pm: NextPortland blogger Iain MacKenzie posted on twitter that the Prosper Portland Board has decided to go forward with the office building addition, but without the added parking. This is a good decision by the board, let’s hope it sticks.

Prosper Portland is betting 32 million dollars on 442 stall car parking garage next to a light rail station and transit center, but that’s not enough exposure to the risky parking market for the agency. Plans recently surfaced to build more than 100 additional car parking stalls on top of the existing garage, ostensibly to support a 10 story office topper.

Prosper Portland keeps dumping money into parking structures in the Rose Quarter

The agency, with a mission to “create economic growth and opportunity for Portland,” initially predicted the 442 stall garage under construction would net $500,000 a year in profits, but has since backed off those claims. Indeed, as car rental revenues at airports plummet, it seems less and less likely that visitors to Portland will choose to rent a car and pay high valet parking rates at the convention center hotel when they can take the MAX for $2.50 or take a ride-hailing service for 1/3 the cost of a day’s parking.

The project underway was a lynchpin to the complicated deal to build the 600 room Hyatt Regency hotel at the Oregon Convention Center. The financial risk of that garage was, apparently, worth the economic benefits to the region of the long-desired hotel project. It would seem that the hotel operator doesn’t consider the garage to be good investment, or they would have decided to build and manage the garage themselves.

The soon-to-be parking garage is designed to accommodate a structure like the proposed office tower on top, which is a defensible investment. But doubling down on more parking (at ~$60,000 a stall) is a massive unforced error by the agency that seems to consider car parking the solution to all it’s woes, even though it’s clear that more parking supply undermines the cities climate and transportation goals.

A peculiar location for more parking

Literally steps from the parking garage is the Rose Quarter Transit Center, which hosts four MAX light rail lines, two frequent service bus lines, CTRAN connections to Vancouver, five other Trimet lines, and it’s a short walk from the Portland Streetcar (and more frequent service buses). The city owns two massive parking garages, containing more than 1000 stalls, just about a quarter mile from the new garage. These garages are currently under contract with Rip City Management, and remain largely vacant when the Blazers (or Elton John) aren’t playing at the Moda Center.

This area of town is very well served by transit and massive residential developments nearby at the Lloyd Center position the region to be a bustling and lively center for entertainment and commerce, easily enjoyable without a personal automobile.

Investment that should serve the city

Ultimately, this proposal should be an opportunity to debate the direction Prosper Portland is headed and whether the organization is focusing on the future of the city or it’s own cash flow.

If Portlanders were asked how $6,000,000 could be invested for “job creation, innovation and economic opportunity throughout Portland to create one of the world’s healthiest, most desirable and equitable cities” how many people would suggest a parking garage built on top of a parking garage in the middle of a transit center?

Prosper Portland has been linked to efforts to build commuter parking garages in the Central Eastside Industrial District and in Old Town/Chinatown. In fact, the agency reportedly is managing a $57 million dollar “Investment and Parking” fund for the latter. If the agency was truly interested in innovative investments in transporting workers and customers to Old Town/Chinatown then that money could fund almost all of the ambitious Central City In Motion multimodal project.

How can you get involved

Prosper Portland is a quasi-governmental agency, their board and budget require city approval. The agency is in Mayor Ted Wheeler’s portfolio; concerned citizens can contact his office at MayorWheeler@portlandoregon.gov.

Prosper Portland meets monthly at 222 SW 5th Ave in Portland. The next board meeting is on February 13th at 6pm. Public comment is available by a signup sheet.