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A reminder to everyone that today is a very important day: the ZOAC is meeting to discuss PARKING! You can tune in here: http://bit.ly/ZOAC110520
A reminder of where we are in this great saga:
I read through today's case studies and I think they're examples of how parking requirements are holding back some specific projects. Here's one example where a building is being demolished to hit required parking (which is still reduced). This is known as BAD POLICY.
In other fun news, Calgary, Canada eliminated commercial parking requirements recently. It's a nice parallel for Dallas in terms of population and land area. https://twitter.com/ncoxbarrett/status/1323726559061118977?s=20
Of course, Calgary and Dallas are not the same in other ways. Calgary for example also has a big light rail system, but gets a lot more out of it.
One of the examples is the Katy Trail Ice House, which has a ridiculous 4 parking agreements (parking leased from others), valet parking, acquired an adjacent lot and had the City abandon a part of the ROW. So much parking.
Now the tragic N Beckley Ave Hotel. Required 33 parking spaces, but could only provide 11 spaces. Sadly, the 1923 build caught fire and burned down. Thanks parking requirements.
A contrasting example: an older shopping district with >500 parking spaces that has to prepare parking studies constantly to keep up with tenant turnover.
Ends with a map of the water absorption and heat island maps. Says this is tied to our policies which require and perpetuate these results.
Oooh, we have a bunch of department heads and other special guests. Pam Thompson is here to talk about how the parking requirements affect housing affordability.
First thing she points out is duplexes require 2 parking spaces per unit (4 total) vs 1 per bedroom for an apartment or just 1 space for the whole house in SF districts.
Whoa, Pam asks the ZOAC to only required 1 spaces per Dwelling Unit and to allow flexibility in "special parking" for housing which would allow remote parking arrangements.
Pam also points out how ridiculous it is to require 4 BR affordable housing units to have 4 parking spaces. Also says 2 parking spaces cost 25-50K for enclosed car storage.
I am pleasantly surprised that staff is really showing up today to put downward pressure on parking requirements.
Pam continues with the economic development impacts: talks about parking garages downtown that have a value of $12PSF compared to our residential/commercial buildings which are worth 10x or more than that. She's got a ton of examples, i'm really digging this.
She closes with a call for ZOAC to base requirements on actual research and consider these economic and housing impacts while making decisions.
Now we've got Planning Urban Design's Peer Chacko:
Says PUD's first concern is allowing parking reductions where there is no actual means given by a project to reduce parking. Disappointiong as parking requirements arepseudo-science in the first place and setting parking requirements CREATES non-walkable environments.
It's not all bad as he wants to add incentives for walkability goals and disincentives for over-parking.
He closes by saying parking reductions should be tied to actual reductions in parking demand. This is echoed by a PUD staff member who says reducing parking requirements doesn't magically create pedestrian amenities.
This is very disappointing from PUD. Reducing parking requirements DOES incentivize better pedestrian environments. Simply removing parking creates better visuals and frees developers to spend on things other than parking.
Susan Alvarez from environmental quality is here to talk about how parking is really bad for water quality/runoff and says parking is a big contributor to heat islands.
Apparently we're 2nd only to Phoenix for heat island effects. Don't like that. We're also biggest in line for impacts of climate disasters. Hmmm, sounds like parking requirements are maybe going to help kill us?
A little misleading to compare totals, places like NYC are way lower per capita.
Alvarez points out we have 97 action items in Dallas' CECAP action plan for climate.
I would like to point out that parking requirement eliminations are probably only free and or MONEY MAKERs in the climate action items.
I would like to point out that parking requirement eliminations are probably only free and or MONEY MAKERs in the climate action items.
This is looks not good.
Good presentation overall by Alvarez. She references basing parking requirements on actual utilization, the 3rd staff to do so.
While this is somewhat helpful, it is still under the flawed paradigm that parking demand is not driven by factors like parking supplied and the transport system which is itself influenced by the parking req'd by the City itself. Parking reqs signal the city we want.
Here's the Office of Economic Development's Kevin Spath. He's suggesting a central parking authority to manage parking. He also references equity considerations that parking requirements make things much harder for less resourced groups (TRUTH).
He also says the OED often gets requests for money to bridge parking gaps and would prefer to spend public dollars on something actually useful rather like jobs or housing or parks and not PARKING.
And now the most important department in this discussion: Transportation's Gus Khankarli.
DoT opens with "one size doesn't fit all" and says this discussion is important because it affects on-street parking and the ROW. He also says technology is important to discuss.
He also says they are updating the curb management plan (and thoroughfare and bike plans). Says they need to keep up to date on parking reqsbecause it affects their assumptions of how much spillover into the ROW there will be (paraphrasing here a lot, as it's hard to follow).
ZOAC Chair has opened it up to all staff to comment. Sarah May, Chief Planner, is speaking and says just dealing with plan reviews of parking requirements takes up a huge amount of staff time and is one of the chief frustrations of their customers. Hear hear!
Ugh, I missed a few staff comments, but now Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization's David Noguera says parking reqs negatively affect their ability to deliver affordability because funding gaps are increased by parking provisions.
