Perhaps no other local land use issue can be as important — and detrimental — to quality of life, convenience, and the environment as parking. High local parking requirements for new development drive up home prices and rents, induce more traffic, and waste space. And poor parking management of existing spaces leads to more air pollution and congestion.
Yet too often failed parking policies soldier on, based on zombie regulations from outdated planning guidelines and the fear of making destinations inconvenient to access by private cars. It’s particularly a waste in transit-oriented, infill neighborhoods where convenient alternatives to driving exist.
With that in mind, I was pleased to co-author an op-ed in today’s Los Angeles Times with Mott Smith, director of the nonprofit Council of Infill Builders. The organization just released a new report Wasted Spaces: Options to Reform Parking Policy in Los Angeles at Los Angeles City Hall a few weeks ago, and the op-ed contains recommendations based on that publication.
The issue of parking policy reform is particularly acute in Los Angeles, where 14% of the county — over 200 square miles — is now dedicated to parking. After over a half-century accommodating the automobile at all costs, the region now has 18.6 million spaces for 3.5 million housing units, or 3.3 spaces per vehicle.
To bring reform, Mott and I argue in the piece that:
Local leaders should prioritize urgent reform of L.A.’s parking policies, particularly in transit-oriented neighborhoods, with the following measures:
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Eliminate or reduce parking requirements for any new development projects.
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Ensure that revenue from parking benefits the local community.
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Rather than mandate new parking requirements in the zoning code, promote shared parking and alternative transportation options.
Local leaders should start these reforms now, or risk continuing the failed legacy that has been so stifling for mobility, affordability, and air quality in the region.
If there’s one local land use policy most to blame for constricting transit-oriented development, killing the walkability of neighborhoods, adding to traffic, and encouraging sprawl, it’s excessive parking requirements.
How so? High parking requirements add tremendous costs to new developments, which get passed on to renters and home buyers. The extra parking stalls simultaneously limit how big a building most developers can build, which limits the number of units and therefore the available supply to stabilize prices.
High parking requirements also encourage driving, which hurts walkability and adds to the traffic. And they represent a waste of space, dedicating more land to asphalt than houses, stores, and offices, which encourages more development out in sprawl zones.
So why do local governments require so much of it? Simply put: ignorance and fear. Ignorance of how much parking is actually needed (most parking requirements come from boilerplate planning texts with no relationship to actual demand), and fear that there won’t be enough parking if government doesn’t require it.
My dislike for parking requirements is why I’m happy to help promote an upcoming conference at Los Angeles City Hall on parking policy reform options, on Tuesday May 16th. The event is being organized by the nonprofit Council of Infill Builders and Los Angeles City Councilmember Jose Huizar.
Seleta Reynolds, general manager of the L.A. Department of Transportation, will provide the keynote, and a panel of experts will discuss parking reform options for the various cities and county of Los Angeles. Finally, the event will feature the release of the new report “Wasted Spaces” from the Council of Infill Builders with policy recommendations for L.A.
You can see the conference agenda for more details. Register to attend soon, as space is limited in the room atop City Hall.
Last week I noted the curious case of a pro-infill group pushing an anti-infill bill. AB 779 seeks to delay or roll back reform to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which greatly benefits infill by removing the requirement for a traffic study for most infill projects.
Now today another pro-infill group, the Council of Infill Builders, weighs in against the bill [PDF]:
As we discussed in an op-ed published in the San Francisco Chronicle (“’Driving Miles’ is Best Measure of New Development,” November 19, 2014), the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) unduly penalizes urban-oriented infill projects over outlying, auto-centric projects when it comes to evaluating impacts on traffic — an analysis that too often provides project opponents with leverage to defeat projects or scale back their environmentally friendly elements. As a result, we strongly supported SB 743 (Steinberg, 2013) and its requirement that “level of service” traffic studies be replaced with a metric like vehicle miles traveled.
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The members of the Council of Infill Builders are committed to building a better California through well-planned, beautiful, and convenient infill projects. We were gratified that the state recognized the undue burdens placed on infill through CEQA’s transportation analysis process and sought to instead reward them through a much more sensible VMT metric. Any effort to delay or rollback this badly needed reform will only serve to benefit the status quo, with its inherent bias in favor of business-as-usual development patterns that have greatly harmed California’s environment, economy and quality of life. California should move forward to encourage infill options for its residents. AB 779 will serve only to halt that progress.
The Assembly Natural Resources Committee will have a hearing on the bill at 1:30pm. I’ll stay tuned in case fireworks fly.
UPDATE: The Committee passed it 7-0, so I’ll continue to track this story.
The San Francisco Chronicle is running a joint op-ed today from the Council of Infill Builders and Greenbelt Alliance that supports Gov. Brown’s efforts on SB 743. As you may recall, the controversial implementation of this law will allow transit-friendly infill projects to escape the need for litigation-enabling traffic studies, while requiring sprawl projects to reduce their overall impact on regional traffic and driving miles.
The op-ed seems to be a response to a misguided outcry from state business leaders who claim to want more infill but see this reform as simply creating more “uncertainty” for infill projects. Their claims are basically meritless, and the real aim seems to be a larger campaign to unravel the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). After all, slowly fixing the seriously deficient parts of the law, like with this traffic analysis, undermines their case for wholesale change.
As the piece describes of the transportation impacts analysis:
This perverse result has to change, and the Brown administration is taking action. Following a 2013 state law, the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research has developed an alternative way to address traffic effects. Project developers must now look at how a project will affect the overall driving miles as measured throughout the metropolitan region. So downtown-oriented projects, where most people can walk, take transit or bike (modes of transport that are good for the environment and relieve traffic regionwide), would not trigger lengthy CEQA review on this particular issue. Outlying projects, however, must account for the regional traffic they generate and mitigate where feasible. Mitigation could include anything from free transit passes for residents to adding more jobs and retail opportunities on-site so residents don’t have to drive long distances to access them.
I hope Governor Brown follows the advice here and stays the course. CEQA was long overdue for this modernization. Final comments to OPR are due on Friday.
