Paved Paradise - How Parking Explains the World

This discussion on parking was sponsored by Lexington's League of Women Voters. Author Henry Grabar talks about his book Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World, followed by a panel discussion.

Event information: https://www.lexingtonma.gov/Calendar.aspx?EID=2922

Henry Grabar

Mr. Grabar says that "good parking" has traditionally been thought of as having three attributes: it's convenient, it's available, and it's free. However, it's not possible to do all three of these things without destroying the place you're going to.

Almost every city code has parking minimums. These make housing more expensive, they destroy walkability, and they damage the environment by directing runoff to rivers and streams and preventing ground water recharge. Our preoccupation with parking has also destroyed people's ability to deal with the topic. Instead of having rationale discussions, parking seems to activate the lizard section of people's brains, bringing about a fight or flight response.

At the end of World War II, people were convinced that parking was a national crisis, which led communities to increase parking requirements. Collectively, this was a decision to force the private sector to address the issue. Often parking minimums are set without regard to surrounding urban context; they're commonly taken from the ITE parking generation manual, which broadly averages parking demand across suburban environments.

LA County has 19 million parking spaces, or approximately five per household. We devote more land to storing cars than we do to housing.

Forcing the private sector to solve parking has come with numerous side effects, such as automobile dependency.

Parking has helped to encourage the building of larger homes, and made it more difficult to build smaller duplexes, triplexes, and townhouses. Our architecture has also evolved with parking requirements.

Parking can make it difficult to renovate historic buildings. A significant renovation might require the building to brought up to code; in some municipalities, that includes meeting minimum parking requirements.

More parking encourages more automobile use, which in turn leads to more traffic. It reduces our ability to work, and makes it harder to have functioning transit systems.

Around 2020, the pandemic started to convince businesses that parking spaces weren't as necessary as they thought. For example, restaurants started offering outdoor dining in order to remain open, and curbside parking spaces were converted to seating.

Seattle removed parking minimums. Developers still built parking, but less of it. Over five years, they produced 17,000 fewer parking spaces than would have been required with the old minimums.

Parking meters were invented during the early 20th century. Their purpose was to better organize the use of curb space. Meters encourage spaces to turn over -- in front of businesses for example. Turnover helps to improve the availability of short-term spaces.

Mr. Grabar recommends three reforms to our parking policies:

1. allow shared parking in complementary uses (e.g., a business that requires parking spaces during the day can share them with a business that requires spaces in the evening).
2. create patches of public space, bike lanes, bus lanes, and daylight intersections.
3. Repair the environment. Depave and plant.

The general strategy to reduce traffic: build things closer together, with less parking. The promise of parking reform isn't to punish drivers -- it's to liberate them.

Panel Discussion

(Adi Nochur, Metropolitan Area Planning Council) Mr. Nochur talks about MAPC's perfect-fit parking initiative, https://perfectfitparking.mapc.org/. Better parking policies can reduce housing costs, encourage more sustainable transportation, and alleviate congestion.

The perfect fit study looked at 246 multifamily dwellings in 26 municipalities. Across the board, the parking required for (and provided by) these apartment buildings outstripped demand.

What drives parking demand? It's parking supply. Getting a handle on parking supply is key to getting a handle on parking demand. Mr. Nochur suggests strategies like turning parking minimums into parking maximums, unbundling the cost of parking from the cost of housing, using shared parking, and transportation demand management.

MAPC is working on another perfect fit study, in conjunction with the Boston MPO. This one will focus on parking utilization at lab facilities.

(Anton Watson, AARP) Mr. Watson says the AARP is committed to looking at livable communities, because they're good for both people and businesses. Mr. Watson says that pedestrians and cyclists tend to spend more money at local businesses than drivers do. Walkability makes communities more livable.

See https://aarp.org/livable for the AARP's livable communities initiative.

(Kristin Guichard, Planning Director, Acton) Ms. Guichard says that Acton is a town of 23,000 people and 13,000 acres of land. They have a commuter rail station, but cars are still the primary mode of transportation, due to past land use patterns. Her department has been looking at South Acton Village as an area for their MBTA Communities district. They did a parking analysis, and found that peak utilization was less than 70%, and no lots maintained more than 60% utilization throughout the day. Private lots had less than 50% occupancy, and there was little in the way of wayfinding signage directing people to parking.

Ms. Guichard says that parking maximums have to be carefully considered in suburban settings. Acton requires two parking spaces for each residential dwelling. Most of their 40B projects asked for parking waivers, which was a strong hint that the minimums were too high.

Acton residents were interested in eliminating parking minimums, and replacing them with maximums, so that's what they're recommending for the town's MBTA-C district: eliminating minimums for commercial, reducing minimums for residential, and adding maximums where the minimums are today.

Acton is proposing two MBTA districts. The small scale district will have a maximum of 1.5 spaces/dwelling if they're outdoors, and two spaces/dwelling if at least one of them is indoors. The larger scale district will have no minimums, and maximums of two spaces/dwelling.

(JP Caccaglia, Economic Development Manager, Needham) Mr. Caccaglia says that Needham did a parking study, and found that many lots had only 50--60% utilization. So, they're looking for ways to have new development utilize space at existing underutilized lots. They're also using demand management to turn over spaces and prevent double parking in business districts.

Mr. Caccaglia suggests that city officials listen to what developers are telling them about parking, because developers tend to know the market better than cities and towns. For some projects, Needham has used the idea of banked parking: allowing a parking reduction, but requiring sections of open space that could be converted to parking in the need to do so arises in the future.

Mr. Caccaglia says that parking is not free, period. You will pay for it somewhere. For example, a business will have to pay for it in rent, and they'll pass that cost on to consumers.

In metro Boston, people spend an average of 53 hours/year looking for parking.

Mr. Caccaglia says that banning overnight parking in municipal lots can encourage drunk driving. People will move their cars to avoid getting tickets, rather than getting a ride home.

(Zeke Mermell (Transportation Planner, Watertown) Mr. Mermell says there's value to right-sized parking -- it frees up land for other uses. He goes through a list of apartment buildings that were permitted in Watertown during recent years.

The Gables was permitted before Watertown updated the city's parking requirements. The building has 296 units, 519 parking spaces, and 76% parking utilization.

Elon Union Market has 282 units, 351 spaces, and 81% parking utilization.

101 North Beacon Street has 28 units and 39 parking spaces. That apartment building unbundles the cost of parking, so tenants that don't need it aren't forced to pay for it.

166 Main Street has 34 units, and 32 parking spaces. Parking at this building is also unbundled.

Watertown worked with Stantec to develop a parking management plan. They've found many vacant spaces at peak hours.

Watertown's MBTA-C district will require a minimum of 0.5 spaces/dwelling, with a maximum of 1 space/dwelling.

Mr. Mermell lists a set of tools for parking reform: turning minimums into maximums, design guidelines, shared parking, allowing parking reductions, and shadow parking (green space that can become parking if the need arises).

Mr. Mermell wants his city to be Watertown, and not "parking lot town".