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Tenant seeks snakes to settle score over selfish neighbor’s parking practice.

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When Donald Shoup quipped that most “thinking about parking seems to take place in the reptilian cortex,” it’s doubtful he could have imagined this Craigslist request for 10-25 one inch wide snakes that a frustrated tenant in Durham, NC is seeking to put inside a van taking up a prime parking space.

Picture of 1970s van with two large snakes photoshopped on it.
Artist’s conception of snake-based parking management.

When a common resource isn’t properly managed, some people are going to take advantage. Unbundling parking from the rent might convince this van owner to park elsewhere, or get rid of an unused vehicle. Allowing people to choose to pay more for a premium reserved space could save the snake handler from the extra walking, maybe some of that revenue could discount rent for people who don’t mind walking? Whatever the case, there’s a lot of ways to do parking better, a den of snakes probably isn’t one of them.

Screenshot of Craigslist Post: Hello all, I'm hoping someone in the area can help me. One of my neighbors in my apartment complex has left their van with the window cracked in the best spot possible of the entire complex. About 2 months ago management reached out that cars needed to be moved from one section of the parking lot for maintenance and some asshole took an A class parking spot to leave their dilapidated van to just sit there. Now I have to park over 300 feet from my door so this van can just sit dormant. Heres the plan: They left their window cracked about an inch and i'm looking for 10-25 snakes of that size to feed through the crack into the van to give them a "surprise" when they finally get this piece of shit out of my yard. I promise to also send mice and other critters through the window so the snakes can stay well feed and hopefully grow. I swear to god this is not a joke, Im so fucking irritated. I will do anything to make these peoples lives HELL Thanks
Craigslist ad seeking snakes for van.

I’m hoping someone in the area can help me. One of my neighbors in my apartment complex has left their van with the window cracked in the best spot possible of the entire complex. About 2 months ago management reached out that cars needed to be moved from one section of the parking lot for maintenance and some asshole took an A class parking spot to leave their dilapidated van to just sit there. Now I have to park over 300 feet from my door so this van can just sit dormant.

Heres the plan:

They left their window cracked about an inch and i’m looking for 10-25 snakes of that size to feed through the crack into the van to give them a “surprise” when they finally get this piece of shit out of my yard.

I promise to also send mice and other critters through the window so the snakes can stay well feed and hopefully grow.

I swear to god this is not a joke, Im so fucking irritated. I will do anything to make these peoples lives HELL

Thanks

https://raleigh.craigslist.org/pet/d/durham-looking-for-snakes/7351217310.html

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Portland equitable mobility plan: Tax parking lots, require equal commute benefits

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  • The Pricing Options for Equitable Mobility (POEM) Task Force recommended a citywide flexible commuter benefit program (parking cash-out), a tax on privately-owned off street parking, and accelerated implementation and expansion of performance-based curb pricing.
  • Fees for urban delivery and transportation network carrier/for-hire (TNC) services recommended to reduce congestion and pollution.
  • The Task Force also recommended a “unified financial assistance system,” potentially in the form of cash payments, to mitigate impacts of pricing strategies on low income households.

After meeting for eighteen months, Portland, Oregon’s Pricing Options for Equitable Mobility (POEM) Task Force issued it’s final recommendations which include: flexible commuter benefits (parking cash-out), increased on-street parking metering and permitting, development of a fee on privately-owned off-street parking lots, and accelerated implementation of the city’s existing performance-based meter pricing policy. The proposal also recommends the city develop a “unified financial assistance system for households living on low incomes that could be applied across pricing programs and transportation services to reduce burdens on these households and administrative complexity.”

The Task Force was asked to consider “if and how new pricing strategies could potentially be used more intentionally to improve mobility, address the climate crisis and advance equity for people historically underserved by the transportation system in Portland, including, but not limited to, low-income Portlanders and communities of color.” The group heard from subject matter experts regarding parking pricing, tolling, congestion pricing, cordons, and many other traffic demand strategies and discussed and debated the merits of each strategy given Portland’s geographic and political particulars and while centering equitable outcomes and transportation justice.

It will take several years to implement the Task Force’s recommendations, assuming they are accepted by Portland’s City Council, but there are many innovative solutions proposed which should be explored in other cities.

A Parking Based Alternative to Congestion Pricing and Cordons

The POEM Task Force did consider road usage charges, highway tolling, and London-style cordons, but Oregon’s Constitution mandates that road, gas, and vehicle registration revenues be used “exclusively for the construction, reconstruction, improvement, repair, maintenance, operation and use of public highways, roads, streets and roadside rest areas in this state.” Furthermore, the city lacks sufficient jurisdiction to toll the highways that run through the city and the bridges that cross the Willamette River. Because of this, the Task Force felt that tolling and cordons would be less likely to manage congestion while advancing the goal of equitable mobility for all Portlanders. Instead, if implemented, the recommendations would seek a similar effect as a cordon by using fees on parking, urban delivery, and TNCs.

  • By accelerating performance-based parking for the central city, drivers would pay the market rate for on-street and publicly-owned off-street parking.
  • A tax on privately-owned parking lots could be implemented as a peak-hour entry/exit surcharge for commuters parking all-day in central city lots and garages.
  • Congestion-based surcharges for urban deliveries and TNCs would discourage peak-hour deliveries and encourage passengers to use other modes, such as transit or e-bike share to enter or exit the central city.
Private garages, like this one in Downtown PDX, would be subject to some form of tax or fees under the recommendations.

Such a system would be more porous than a cordon, but designed properly, could be quite effective with less technological investment and fewer jurisdictional and privacy concerns. In addition, the revenues from parking and TNC/delivery fees are not restricted by the Oregon Constitution and could be spent on transit subsidies and other multi-modal improvements and incentives.

Level The Playing Field For Commuters

The first near-term recommendation from the POEM Task Force isn’t actually a pricing strategy nor a new idea, in fact it’s one of the first ideas Donald Shoup proposed for parking reform: parking cash-out.

A “flexible commuter benefits program” (h/t Cheryl Cort and the Coalition for Smarter Growth) would require employers who pay for or subsidize parking for their commuting employees to provide an equivalent taxable cash benefit to employees who do not drive and park. Many employers provide a transit pass to employees who don’t drive to work, but the cost of a monthly transit pass in Portland is less than 1/2 the cost of a monthly parking space in Downtown and people who commute by bike or on foot may prefer a cash benefit to a transit pass they don’t use often.

Cities should seize upon the opportunity provided by the disruption of the last year to encourage mode shifts for commuters as people return to the office. A citywide (or regional) flexible commuter benefit program is a great way to do that.

Rethinking Exemptions and Discounts

Higher parking meter rates, delivery fees, and surcharges will have a bigger impact on lower income households even though they are likely to incur fewer charges due to lower overall consumption. One of the tougher challenges faced by any government looking to use pricing to reduce single occupancy trips and congestion is figuring out how to provide protective relief for low income households without making the programs ineffective. Low income drivers, and particularly low income drivers who are BIPOC face institutional hurdles to accessing rebate and discount programs, which often require providing the same documentation to multiple agencies or taking precious time to go to an office or fill out forms. On top of that, the individual needs to know that the program exists in the first place.

The POEM Task Force grappled with this issue at nearly every meeting and came up with some innovative solutions that would provide more flexible and equitable transportation subsidies for low income households and reduce bureaucratic and administrative overhead and complexity.

Foremost, the Task Force urged the city to develop “one set of income-based policy standards” for rebate and exemption programs, to apply to current and future programs. Portland is already piggybacking other programs like the “Golden Transportation Wallet” onto the low income transit pass verification of TriMet, the regional transit agency.

But exemptions and discounts for parking permits and tolls only benefit low income households which own and operate cars. The recommendation acknowledges this by suggesting that “cash rebates or payments” are preferred as they allow individuals to make their own choices about transportation. Furthermore, the Task Force recommends the city explore “a unified financial assistance system for households living on low incomes.” Such a system could operate like a universal basic income (UBI), providing a cash subsidy or perhaps a credit for city services that could be used to pay parking fees, transit, water bills, etc.

A program (statewide or regional would be best) to provide a cash rebate or dividend from climate related tolls, taxes, and fees would be a simple, equitable, redistributive, and effective way to mitigate the regressive impacts of economic strategies to reduce driving and GHG emissions. Such a program would deprive wealthy opponents to pricing of the ability to use low income households as a prop to defend their desire to maintain their own subsidies to drive and park cars cheaply.

Anything worth doing is worth doing well…

Opponents to paid parking and demand-based parking pricing often claim the city is gouging or just seeking revenue through pricing. As a result, many cities set prices too low to impact demand or to even meet the true costs of administering the pricing program. POEM’s report acknowledges that “pricing policy is only effective if it reduces traffic demand and/or raises enough revenue to fund effective demand management or multimodal improvements” and “[s]etting rates or surcharges too low to affect demand or fund improvements is inequitable.“

This is a critical point to make when advocating for paid parking, congestion pricing, or any other similar program. If your city is charging $2 per hour to park in the restaurant district and all the spaces are full, then the fee isn’t solving the problem and the city isn’t providing any value for the cost. If the market clearing price for parking in that area is $5 per hour, then increasing the price to $3-4 dollars IS gouging. The consumer will remain frustrated, the streets will remain congested, businesses will not have supportive turnover, but the city will collect more money just because it can.

A pricing program should deliver value to the community, either in the form of funding effective programs or actually providing a less congested road or curbside. No one wants to pay for parking, but an effective program will likely have much more support.

Now For The Hard Part

This recommendation is a very strong output from a large and diverse group of stakeholders. There were 18 voting members of the Task Force present at the final meeting on July 12th and all of the recommendations passed with at least 16 votes in favor. In the Fall, the recommendations will go to City Council where, hopefully, they will be accepted and adopted as city policy, with direction to the relevant bureaus to get busy developing implementation plans.

The recommendations are necessarily vague on program design. How effective and innovative the city’s flexible commuter benefits program, private parking tax, and low income mitigation policies end up will depend on the leadership of Portland’s elected officials and grassroots advocacy community. But other cities don’t need to wait to review this document and apply the concepts to their own climate action and transportation plans. Hopefully, Portland won’t be alone, or will even be beaten to the punch, in implementing such a comprehensive suite of transportation demand management.

Note: The author of this post was a member of the Pricing Options for Equitable Mobility Task Force.

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We Sorted Through Parking Codes So You Don’t Have To

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Written by University of Illinois at Chicago students Maggie Kochman, Zane Jacobson, and Bobby Siemiaszko.

From January through May 2021, three students at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Urban Studies program (UIC) performed work on their end of year project with the Parking Reform Network. This project involved updating the Strong Town’s map of cities that have reduced or eliminated parking minimums; the students worked with Tony Jordan, Jane Wilberding and other PRN members to review, update, and more clearly synthesize the data into a new database.

The widely cited map hosted by Strongtowns is a great resource, but lacks direct code citations and detailed verified information.

The crowdsourced map on the Strong Town’s website was provided to the Parking Reform Network with over 180 cities, districts, or policies related to eliminating or reducing minimum parking requirements. All inputs were entered into a database using Google Tables and were systematically verified and reformatted by the UIC students. The general method for verification was to start with a city in the database without a report search “city name” and “parking requirements” or “city code.” Then find the parking requirements section of the city code to identify if there are exceptions to parking requirements, parking maximums, or notable reductions in minimums. The documentation process was to create a report for the city and fill in what kind of progress was made and then to create a citation with a link to the city code and a screenshot of the referenced section.

The improved dataset uses tags to provide granular information about the scope and magnitude of parking reforms.

The database had four main tables: (1) City, which stored general information about the City itself (2) Citation, which details the sources used, (3) Contact, information to connect with the individual who reported or researched the policy, and (4) Report, which the details of the policy were stored. Within the Report tab, several categories were created to better understand and delineate where each City stands in their parking reform process:

  • The status of the policy: (implemented, passed, planned or unverified
  • How aggressive the city’s policy is: reduced  minimums, eliminated minimums, implemented  maximums
  • Applicable land uses: residential, commercial, etc.
  • The magnitude of the policy: applied only to the city center, along a main street, adjacent to transit oriented development, or citywide
  • Specified requirements: was the policy implemented by right of the city, in lieu of fees, an affordable housing requirement, or something else

Each student worked with PRN members and then independently to fill out one line of information for each city. Oftentimes, multiple choices were applicable for the same city. For example, cities are more willing to reduce or eliminate parking requirements for a downtown district than for residential zones citywide. There were 58 verified reports of “City Center/Business District) reductions or exemptions, versus 29 citywide. 

As we went along, we realized it was not just a simple look up and fill in the data project.  Each city was and is its own entity and has its own way of doing things. There is no one cookie cutter way that cities are eliminating or reducing excessive parking requirements. Meaning that recording each entry was tedious, complex, and sometimes very difficult to find information. If you could find the City Code for the city, it was then a challenge to find the parking requirements. Some cities had comprehensive charts, others had detailed paragraphs, whereas others were very vague or sometimes too specific. To actually be able to choose the correct tags for each city was generally not an intuitive process. Looking at a city like New York with five boroughs and many different neighborhoods and associated requirements within it makes the process of assigning a uniform label  difficult, if not impossible. However, one thing is clear:  parking reform is gaining momentum–cities are lowering or eliminating requirements  where maybe 10 years ago were much higher.

This database was developed to  make it easiest for cities to adapt and improve upon their parking codes through the power of example and precedent. For instance, having a platform to search and identify r cities with downtowns that have eliminated residential parking could be an effective resource when presenting to a city council or the public.    This could then make a much easier argument if city X wants to become more like city Y, finding relevant information at a fast pace that is easy to compare between cities.  The more cities that have parking reform, the more the map can fill up and can pave a way for the future change of reducing and eliminating excess parking requirements. 

Editor’s Note: Since the UIC students completed their coursework, the Parking Reform Network has continued work on verifying these records. Henry Vorosmarti, a Research Intern from Case Western University is currently working with Ryan Johnson, a student at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design on the project. We’re planning to release the dataset and a new map later this year.

Event: Tackling Parking Reform in Hawaii – Taking Down Parking Lots and Unpaving Paradise.

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This free event will take place via Zoom on Thursday, May 20th beginning at 4PM Pacific (7PM Eastern).
To attend this event you must register here.

In February of 2021, the City of Honolulu overhauled its parking regulations for the first time in three decades, making history and eliminating minimum parking requirements. This was largely led by Kathleen Rooney, the Director of Transportation policy and programs at Ulupono Initiative, an organization that invests, educates and advocates to support locally produced food, renewable energy, clean transportation, and wise management of freshwater and waste in Hawaii.

Hawaiian Themed Event Details Graphic. Details are all in Post.

The Parking Reform Network will talk to Kathleen about just how she was able to achieve such a major policy change, exploring the impact parking policy reform has on the community’s climate and transportation goals, discuss the road to passing this ordinance, and highlighting lessons learned, successes, and more! 

Minimum parking requirements make market rate housing more expensive, reduce the number of affordable housing units, decrease the amount of space for non-parking uses, encourage people to own more cars and drive more, and disproportionately burdens the poor, old, young, and disabled, who subsidize transportation for the relatively more affluent. Eliminating minimum parking requirements is critical to parking reform in any city, allowing for more affordable housing costs, achieving climate goals, and creating a more walkable environment for all. 

Don’t miss your chance to hear how Kathleen passed one of the larger examples of off-street parking reform in the country, unusual for the size of the population it impacts and the range of geographic landscape it covers in Hawaii!

We’ll have a Q&A and breakout session with Kathleen after her presentation. 

This free event is made possible by Parking Reform Members, if you would like to support events like these join the network or donate today.

Registration is required for this FREE event. Click here to RSVP.

More about our speaker: Katie is the Ulupono Initiative’s lead on transportation-related policy and programs in advancement of cleaner, multi-modal transportation in Hawai‘i and reducing our dependency on cars. Her current projects include rightsizing parking policies and helping expand immediate transportation choices and access to those choices.

Kathleen Rooney at a bike share station, there is a #66 AIKAHI bus in the background.
Kathleen Rooney – Ulupono Initiative

She brings 15 years of national experience in the transportation and planning, combining both to advance community visions and goals in many diverse communities across the nation. For example, using a combination of analytics and storytelling, she helped two West Virginia towns strategize around health, leading to two trail program implementation grants. She also helped to conceptualize a resiliency center in Washington State, operationalize multimodal accessibility metrics in Florida, and develop a statewide transportation demand management framework for New York State.

Prior to joining the Ulupono team, Katie served as a project manager of Renaissance Planning in Orlando, Florida, and as a senior manager at ICF International in Washington D.C.

Katie holds a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Maryland and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Tulane University in New Orleans. 

You can support a parking reform movement. Join the network or donate today.

Biden to Upgrade White House with Eco-friendly Parking Garage for 12,000 cars

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White House circa 2012 (looking dated already!)
Photo by René DeAnda on Unsplash

There’s nothing more American than cars. That’s why Biden and the 117th Congress have both passed a bill supported by US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and the National Parking Association to modernize the White House. The White House Administration will put this historic structure to its best use by converting most of the building into the world’s largest free parking garage. Tourists will now be able to enjoy the White House without ever having to leave their car.

The retrofit will include 460 Tesla supercharger stations and a green roof on the top floor. However, the the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure rejected additional helicopter pads on the roof due to concerns about noise pollution in the historic district. There will be a bike parking sculpture on the fifth floor. It has been designed by a team of award-winning artists and can support as many as a dozen bicycles! Seating for pedestrians is also important, so the sculpture has a built-in bench at either end. Local bicycle and transportation advocacy groups opposed the garage until a representative from the National Parking Association pointed out that bicyclists can ride the elevator to the top level and then bike all the way back to the bottom.

For the convenience and security of the president, there will be a separate, dedicated garage attached directly to the Oval Office. As current and former presidents of the USA are not permitted to drive cars on the open road, Biden will have a presidential racetrack built into the basement. Biden looks forward to racing his 1967 Corvette. “I like speed”, Biden says.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki says “We’re sharing this valuable infographic because we know infographics get more shares.”

The garage complex is slated to cost $1.64 billion dollars or roughly $130,000 per stall. At the insistence of congressional proponents of the Green New Deal, a minimum of 1/3 of the cost of the garage must be spent on environmentally-friendly features, such as the bike parking and green roof. The garage will be designed to be convertible to self-storage or new office space for lobbyists, although such a retrofit will cost an additional $500 million dollars. The structure will be built with recycled concrete sourced from demolished parking structures overseas. The floors inside the garage will be embedded with solar panels and will generate energy from a state-of-the-art LED lighting system.

Besides the National Parking Association, other supporters of this eco-friendly effort include National Wetlands Coalition, Friends of Eagle Mountain, The Sahara Club, The Alliance for Environment and Resources, The Abundant Wildlife Society of North America, the Global Climate Coalition, the National Wilderness Institute, the Environmental Policy Alliance of the Center for Organizational Research and Education, and the American Council on Science and Health. [citation]

Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie (R) reports that Washington DC is on track to get statehood now. Adding capacity for 12,000 more cars has addressed his pressing concerns about congestion in DC.

The green roof asphalt tiles specified in the plans are a state-of-the-art washable eco-composite with green pigmentation. The Department of Defense will be selling baked goods to fund the construction of the garage. Finally, the Biden White House plans to construct a drive-through Dairy Queen that will serve free ice cream.

Join the Parking Reform Network today!

Image of Joe Biden at Detroit Auto Show via https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Joe_Biden_at_the_Detroit_Auto_Show_in_2014.jpg

This article was also fact-checked and contributed to by Mike Kwan, Lindsay Bayley, and Tony Jordan.