From the ITE President - Rethinking Parking Minimums

[JNA]

https://community.ite.org/blogs/mr-bruce-belmore-peng-ptoe-avs/2019/02/12/rethinking-parking-minimums

Does your fair community's Zoning Ordinance have parking minimums or maximums ?

 

[Dan]

The FBC I'm writing has no parking minimums or maximums. However, all parking would have to comply with standards for solid impervious or hard permeable surfacing, parking space and aisle dimensions, landscaping, curb cut number and location, and point of access -- all things that are lacking from our ancient conventional zoning code.

The hybrid code I wrote at my previous job had a parking range for suburban context development. The maximums were a bit less than the minimums I saw in most other North American codes. The minimums were usually half of the maximum.

 

[Suburb Repairman]

I'm hoping more cities develop the political will to do this. My last city wasn't quite ready, but we did reduce the minimum parking ratios to the point that they really aren't a driving factor, and projects get credit for on-street/public parking that is touched by a 50' buffer from the property line (effectively makes downtown exempt).

More cities need to do what you're doing, Dan. Ditch the minimums, and just go with specs to ensure what parking is built is functional with appropriate circulation.

 

[Streck]

Do businesses know better than codes how many spaces they need?

What are your thoughts on "shared parking?"

 

[Faust_Motel]

Trying to kill minimums, drop maximums, and require share with what's already built. We'll see how if goes. Our current standard is that min and max are the same number and you can go up/down from there based on factors including share analysis, proximity to transit, adding EV charge spaces, etc.

 

[DVD]

The whole parking thing for the most part should be left to the retailer. McDonalds knows it doesn't need as many spaces as In-N-Out. We always get way to much parking for Wal-Mart. I do think there should be some really low standard though. I've dealt with a few low end developers that would happily cram 20 apartments on an acre with no parking if we allowed it.

 

[Faust_Motel]

The whole parking thing for the most part should be left to the retailer. McDonalds knows it doesn't need as many spaces as In-N-Out. We always get way to much parking for Wal-Mart. I do think there should be some really low standard though. I've dealt with a few low end developers that would happily cram 20 apartments on an acre with no parking if we allowed it.

In my experience, the challenge with this is some multinational shopping centers "need" more spaces to market their centers to tenants, but the amount of parking generated by that isn't what is really needed to serve the cars parked on the site. That's an expensive marketing ploy that lasts pretty much the life of the site, eats up room for walkability and green space, and makes stormwater every time it rains for no good reason.

We do want to add flexibility so retailers with multiple locations can base some waiver requests on actual, studied parking demand in comparable places.

 

[hipp5]

The whole parking thing for the most part should be left to the retailer. McDonalds knows it doesn't need as many spaces as In-N-Out. We always get way to much parking for Wal-Mart. I do think there should be some really low standard though. I've dealt with a few low end developers that would happily cram 20 apartments on an acre with no parking if we allowed it.

This is generally my approach when writing Land Use Bylaws. Developers generally know how much parking they need, so I'm content to leave it to them, with some very low minimums to mitigate the bad apples.