Many local governments want to ensure that there is plenty of parking for everyone, but we should take a moment to consider the costs involved in that decision
The strongest argument for parking requirements is the preservation of on-street parking.
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No.
Parking minimums exist to mitigate externalities. Otherwise you have situations like in my neighborhood where people park in the bike lane at the vegan place that has no off-street parking. Or they park in the lot across the street from the donut place. That shifts the cost of parking from those that benefit from the driver to either other businesses or the public.
That’s right, parking mins are a proxy for drivers to pay for their parking.
Let’s not be so foolish as to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
First, thank you for reading and engaging with my writing. I really appreciate your time here.
I want to start by suggesting an adjustment to one of your statements, "parking mins are a proxy for drivers to pay for their parking". While I agree with you that there is no such thing as "free parking", the assumption in your statement is that everyone is a driver. I don't think that is necessarily true and so a more accurate statement is that "parking mins are a proxy for socializing the cost of parking". I'd like to point out that this socialized cost increases the price of development upfront, and the return on this required amenity is on a delay. Which does make development harder.
Now for the meat of your comment you suggest that the primary argument in favor of this requirement is to mitigate undesirable parking scenarios. I can absolutely see your point here, that in the absence of adequate parking people would choose to park in ways that create negative impacts on other spaces.
My suggestion that the impact would be contained to public parking supplies is perhaps too limited, and indeed it could affect other areas. With that said, removing parking minimums does not remove parking itself, just the mandate to provide a specific amount. So, I still believe that allowing each development to decide for themselves how much parking is valuable is the better choice here, rather than pushing a number that can only ever be a "best guess".
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The strongest argument for parking requirements is the preservation of on-street parking.
“
No.
Parking minimums exist to mitigate externalities. Otherwise you have situations like in my neighborhood where people park in the bike lane at the vegan place that has no off-street parking. Or they park in the lot across the street from the donut place. That shifts the cost of parking from those that benefit from the driver to either other businesses or the public.
That’s right, parking mins are a proxy for drivers to pay for their parking.
Let’s not be so foolish as to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
First, thank you for reading and engaging with my writing. I really appreciate your time here.
I want to start by suggesting an adjustment to one of your statements, "parking mins are a proxy for drivers to pay for their parking". While I agree with you that there is no such thing as "free parking", the assumption in your statement is that everyone is a driver. I don't think that is necessarily true and so a more accurate statement is that "parking mins are a proxy for socializing the cost of parking". I'd like to point out that this socialized cost increases the price of development upfront, and the return on this required amenity is on a delay. Which does make development harder.
Now for the meat of your comment you suggest that the primary argument in favor of this requirement is to mitigate undesirable parking scenarios. I can absolutely see your point here, that in the absence of adequate parking people would choose to park in ways that create negative impacts on other spaces.
My suggestion that the impact would be contained to public parking supplies is perhaps too limited, and indeed it could affect other areas. With that said, removing parking minimums does not remove parking itself, just the mandate to provide a specific amount. So, I still believe that allowing each development to decide for themselves how much parking is valuable is the better choice here, rather than pushing a number that can only ever be a "best guess".
We should no more allow developers to decide how.much parking they should have than we should allow them to choose how many bathrooms , if any.