Let’s start out with a pair of excellent new resources on parking reform. Streetsmart has published a beta version of their website and it has a section on Parking Availability and Pricing. And Todd Litman has published a comprehensive post with advice on Responding to Criticisms of Road Tolls and Parking Fees.
Berkeley, CA City Council was scheduled to hear a parking reform measure last week, but it has been delayed until the December 15th meeting. As Patrick Siegman argues in this Op-Ed, the policy is long overdue.
Sacramento, CA was supposed to vote on their 2040 plan the same night, which would have eliminated parking requirements, but that was also delayed to January.
We have another great thread covering Dallas, TX Zoning Committee parking meetings from Nathaniel Barrett and the future looks very promising for some parking requirement reductions there.
Traverse City, MI is considering a plan to exempt smaller buildings from parking requirements. Similarly, Panama City, FL is moving forward on reduced commercial parking requirements.
Up north, several Canadian cities are implementing parking reforms and down under in Australia there’s a conversation happening about free parking in a post-COVID world. Also out of Australia comes an innovative proposal to let developers turn parking decks into public amenities in exchange for bonuses on nearby projects.
It’s not dynamic pricing, but Laguna Beach, CA is raising rates with the aim of achieving 85% occupancy at their meters.
This letter to the editor from a student at the University of Utah makes a convincing connection between excess parking and public health, it’s excellent. In Philadelphia, a parking reformer writes in to defend the city’s parking tax. And this post makes the argument that San Francisco should use parking revenue to close transit budget shortfalls.
On the lighter side of things, Don Shoup might be joking when he suggests Monopoly should remove Free Parking from the game, it’s certainly on brand. And officials have decided to close off most of a $4.5 million dollar garage in Butte, MT to stop local teens from using it for fun. The garage has been mostly empty since COVID struck.
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