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Best Parking Policies of 2020

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By Jane Wilberding, Lindsay Bayley, and Tony Jordan

As we conclude our first year as an organization, we would like to reflect on recent accomplishments made in the area of parking reform throughout the U.S. and across the globe. Below is the Parking Reform Network’s summary of the best parking reform policies that came out of what proved to be a tumultuous year for so many.

One of the biggest areas for reform was in the continued elimination of minimum parking requirements. A range of communities, from big cities like Edmonton, to mid-size cities like Pittsburgh and Traverse City, to Hamlet (IN), have chosen to remove the mandate to build car parking with new development. 

Portland passed what is arguably the best low-density zoning reform in the US, which included eliminating parking requirements on 3/4th of the land in the city. By allowing builders to provide the amount of parking their future tenants may need, the housing market can become more responsive to changing needs. Small scale developers will have an easier time building housing, and they’ll be shifting away from subsidizing driving. 

Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) have also continued to make news. San Diego eased car parking requirements for ADUs and Chicago eased its ban on Accessory Dwelling Units. The Windy City also made news with their Equitable Transit-Oriented Development Policy Plan. In Seattle, paid parking rates will increase or decrease in downtown and surrounding neighborhood business districts as determined by a performance-based parking program.

There was exciting news for Parking Benefit Districts laws in San Marcos, TX. By charging tourists for the most valuable parking spaces (as advisory Board member Donald Shoup advises), the City is helping to manage demand. A portion of the revenue generated from the meters would be allocated to “address littering and park rule violations by hiring additional park rangers and park maintenance crew members.” 

Washington, DC is making progress on improving the parity for commuters who do not drive through the adoption of a Parking Cash Out law. Employers with more than 20 employees who pay for their employee parking, will be required to offer all employees a commuter benefit. That way, people who pay to take transit will be on the same footing as people who drive and are given a free parking spot. The law will not go into effect until 2023.

Other cities moving forward toward reducing or removing minimum parking requirements in 2020 include: Vancouver and Calgary (studying the possibility), Honolulu (PRN member helped to get requirements reduced and in some cases, eliminated). Paris is committing to eliminate half of its car parking.

We are eager to continue to influence and document the parking reform policies in 2021.   

The Parking Reform Network has 160 members hailing from 22 of the US states and DC, three Canadian provinces, two Australian states, and Singapore. Our membership includes an impressive array of parking professionals, city planners, educators, consultants, authors, and activists.

Since our launch in March 2020 we are proud of our growth and accomplishments, including the following:

  • We have added over 600 tagged links to the Link Library for articles and resources
  • Research Intern Andrew Kiefaber conducted a survey of 14 cities’ on-street parking management policies for our parking policy report card project.  Learn more.
  • Research Intern Evan Kindler has begun a literature review of Parking Benefit Districts to assist Board Member Mike Kwan in producing the first “chapter” of a Parking Reform Playbook.
  • Communications Intern Angel York is helping us to streamline our publishing and membership communications processes to keep members better informed of our activities.  
  • Our Board graded Portlanders for Parking Reform’s candidate survey responses for the May 2020 City Council primary election.
  • We hosted a fun and informative online membership meeting in September where members got to meet each other and mingle with Don Shoup, Norman Garrick, Todd Litman, Patrick Siegman, and Paul Barter!

We’re on a roll with weekly Parking Reform News posts and we’ve got a great and growing archive of original posts on our blog.

We worked on parking reform, we are working on parking reform, and we will keep at it until parking is reformed. Please donate. And spread the word!

Are Parking Authorities Obsolete?

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As a recent graduate student at Rutgers University in New Jersey where I studied city planning and transportation, I entered the program with a strong interest in transit-oriented development (TOD). I was excited to be going to school in a state with one of the busiest commuter railroads in the U.S. I loved the idea of living in a state where I could access reliable transit for work and everyday needs, and not own a car. But I didn’t expect parking reform to be on the top of my list of my concerns.

My interest in parking reform started when a particular study caught my attention:  transit-oriented developments across the US were using less than half of the parking spaces they created to meet parking regulations. Instead of building much-needed housing, office buildings or retail on valuable real estate, much of the space just sat empty.

As someone who no longer owned a car, but rode buses, trains and bikes, this was a gut punch. I thought – why should cities invest millions in parking when so many can live comfortably without owning a car? Who gets to decide who pays for, and in effect subsidizes, the cost of driving a car instead of using a train or riding a bicycle?

So in 2018, when I learned that New Brunswick, NJ (home to Rutgers University) had a parking agency that was $390 million dollars in debt, I was shocked. The agency had been failing to generate sufficient revenue, and the residents of the city (about 35% of whom are under the poverty line) were on the hook if the agency ever failed to pay back their debt.

With some digging, I learned from community organizer and journalist Charlie Kratovil, that New Brunswick is home to the most parking decks of any city in the state! And so began my interest in understanding what exactly are parking authorities, and where they operate. Here’s what I’ve learned..

Parking authorities are quasi-public agencies that usually own significant parking assets (such as parking garages or downtown parking spots) and are charged with the financing, management, planning and operations of on and off-street parking services. They’re found in at least twelve states (Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia), and are found in densely populated cities (see Google Maps) such as Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Chattanooga and Birmingham.

Parking authorities have a lot of power. Their members are appointed (not elected) by the governing body and Mayor, and have powers that exceed that of a basic public agency or a parking utility or parking department. They operate independently without requiring the direct oversight of the city government, and are not controlled by annual appropriations. They also can act as a city’s major real estate developer, have the power of eminent domain, and have the ability to buy, sell and/or lease property.  As an example, the map below displays all of the land parcels owned by the New Brunswick Parking Authority (NBPA), which owns important real estate in downtown New Brunswick.

map of land parcels owned by New Jersey Parking Authority in New Brunswick, NJ

As an independent agency, parking authorities have been created to expedite construction and management decisions of parking facilities and lots and not be overridden by local officials or elections. For example, a parking authority could make the unpopular (not necessarily incorrect) decision to raise the price of parking on specific streets, or finance a parking garage in a busy neighborhood, to the ire of some residents. Parking authorities can shield elected officials from public backlash, for better or worse.

The creation of parking authorities stems from the state. In New Jersey, the State Legislature recognized parking authorities as a key tool in the economic and social revitalization of cities. Meanwhile the New Jersey Supreme Court backed the legislature stating that “parking authorities were a viable method to address crucial parking issues in downtowns”. (1963)

In a nutshell, parking authorities have enormous decision-making power and can be extremely influential when it comes to the urban makeup and transportation system of a city. However, a lot has changed about our country and transportation system since the 1960’s. For example, we now have more transportation options, have the option to work from home, or call for a ride with a smartphone.

In some cases, allowing parking authorities to have unchecked power has led to grim consequences including overbuilt parking and cities burdened with debt. In a worst-case scenario, parking authorities can contribute to a city’s bankruptcy. This was the case of Scranton, Pennsylvania, which defaulted on a parking authority bond in 2016 after falling to $300 million in debt. A primary driver for why Scranton (the same city for the hit show “The Office”) went bankrupt was the loss of their main industry (coal mining), while facing an eroding tax base and aging population.

A lack of accountability, transparency and mounting debt within parking authorities has caused residents of some cities to take control.  In some New Jersey cities (such as Jersey City, Montclair and Bloomington), residents decided to abolish their parking authorities as local studies demonstrated that residents would save significant sums of money. For example, Jersey City is currently saving about $850,000 a year in management / healthcare costs after merging their authority with the existing Public Safety department. The Board of Commissioners in West New York, the second-most densely populated municipality in the U.S. with a population greater than 50,000, voted to dissolve its parking authority in 2019 and transform it to a parking utility (which would have more government oversight) after a local study found it would save $429,000 in operations costs a year. In New Brunswick, long-time resident Charlie Kratovil ran for mayor in 2018 on a campaign platform which included abolishing its parking authority and replacing it with a local Department of Transportation.  And in what may be a first for a mayoral race, Kratovil announced his platform from a parking lot where he announced “parking relief is coming to New Brunswick”. In his campaign, Kratovil vowed to get the parking authority out of the real estate business, as the NBPA has failed to generate revenue from its real estate assets, including a major grocery store which shuttered its doors.

Another agency, the Philadelphia Parking Authority (PPA), gained national attention in the reality TV show “Parking Wars.” In recent years, the PPA has faced local and FBI scrutiny for corruption and siphoning of funds from the City and School District of Philadelphia.  In 2014, local outrage sparked a change.org petition calling for the PPA to be fully controlled by the city of Philadelphia. In 2017, the state auditor general found that the PPA lost nearly $80 million in revenue for the underfunded Philadelphia School District. Following this audit, Governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Wolf, called for the State Legislature to abolish state control of the PPA.

In May 2019, Philadelphia Councilman and Republican David Oh, tried to pass legislation to hand control of on-street parking and other functions to the city. However, the city’s lawyers informed him that if the resolution passed, the state would sue the city. So are Philadelphia’s parking policies at the mercy of state legislators, and not Philadelphia’s own residents?

In December 2020, Philadelphia City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart released an audit of the PPA which found that management salaries exceed that of parking agencies at all other major cities. In addition, the audit showed that political patronage is a problem, as a sample of PPA employees showed that 23% were politically connected. Her audit has heightened calls for transparency and accountability for the PPA’s budget. Rebecca Rhynhart shared her findings in this interview on WURD Radio.

If we are to be serious about parking reform, we need greater awareness of all of the political forces and institutions behind it, such as parking authorities. The public needs to understand who controls the levers of power not only at the local level, but on the state and regional level too. We need to know how parking policies can affect city budgets for education, transportation and other social services.

Do you know who controls parking policy in your community or region? Is it controlled by a parking authority or other entity?

If you’d like to support more articles like this and other resources for parking reformers, join the Parking Reform Network at parkingreform.org/join.

How Do We Grade Parking?

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Part 2: Creating a Parking Survey

This is part 2 in a 3-part series. If you missed it, here’s part one.

This is where the wheels hit the road (metaphorically, clearly, we are trying to reduce the number of wheels on the road). Tony and Jane produced a survey to begin making a database of on-street (non-residential) parking management in our lucky top 14 cities. The survey they produced collects data on 5 categories for scoring parking management: On-street parking management, technology (single-space meters, pay stations, pay by plate, etc.), curb space allocation (loading zones, parklets, etc.), meter revenue allocation, and equity.

Demo scorecard for Portland - Five evaluation areas and how to improve them. Scores out of 100. Evaluation areas are: on-street parking prices, technology and management, curbspace allocation, equity and inclusion, and revenue allocation.
Picture links to the 2-page pdf with demo scorecards for Portland and Chicago.

To kick off the research effort, Jane and Tony both filled out as much of the survey as possible for each of their respective hometowns, Portland and Chicago, to demonstrate what the finished scorecards might look like.

General information on parking management was easy enough to find. Information on hourly rates for parking is easy to come by on city webpages, and we were able to find data for all 14 cities (the most expensive parking was $7 per hour in downtown Chicago). After collecting the basic information on street-parking such as, daily meter maximums, parking time limits, and what the hours of operation are, information about street-parking becomes significantly less transparent on city webpages. Data on how meter rates are set can be hard to find. Normally the best way to find it is to search local news sources. The mechanics of who recommends rate adjustments and how often adjustments are made can be very tricky to find without an insider from each parking department to help out.

Finding which technology was used for collecting parking revenue was easy enough, but figuring out how parking occupancy is measured (manual parking survey, direct measurement by payment or sensors. Drones?) is not information that cities make readily available. Again, the best bet for finding out how occupancy is measured is to comb through local news sources on the subject.

Of the five categories we collected data on, the place where research generally hit a dead end (another road metaphor, you’re welcome) and had the least available information was Equity and Outreach. Here our goal was to find information on what different municipalities are doing to assess the impact parking policy reform has on low-income and BIPOC residents. How does the municipality reach out for consultation on parking reforms? Does the city offer discounts or subsidies for low-income residents using street parking? And how are parking violations enforced?

It is important to look at parking through an equity lens similar to other aspects of the transportation network. Like most aspects of our transportation system, inequity is built into our parking system. Most members of the Parking Reform Network see the fight against free parking as a fundamental step for fighting climate change, addressing runaway housing costs, and creating a more equitable and safer built environment, yet we also have to recognize that for many people driving a car is the only viable transportation option.

As rent goes up in neighborhoods that are well connected to jobs by various forms of transit, those who cannot afford the rising housing costs are forced into further-flung neighborhoods or suburbs where having a car is, for all intents and purposes, a must. Forcing these already over-burdened residents to then also have to pay higher parking costs just because they cannot afford to live in transit-rich areas is one of the many ways our transportation system makes being poor very expensive.

What reforms can our cities make to adjust parking prices so that those who can afford it have to pay a fair price to park their car in the city, while those who have no choice but to drive still have access to all parts of the city? And how do we make sure that parking tickets and fines are not used as a tool to collect revenues from those who are least able to afford it? In essence, a healthy parking system collects more revenue from fares than it does from fines (see Westworld blog post on healthy parking systems here). It is often the case that fines fall disproportionately on those who are least able to afford them, and this is a situation that parking agencies should address.

This will be one of the major questions we explore as we move into the next phase of data collection where we reach out to municipalities to confirm the data we have collected. If any members of PRN know any good examples of parking management strategies that address equity concerns, we would love to hear from you.

Next Step: Presenting results from Data Collection

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How Do We Grade Parking?

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Part 1: It’s a work in progress.

One of the persistent questions at the Parking Reform Network is what services can we provide for our newly formed community? What services will help advance the various initiatives of our members? One of the most useful tools for persuasion that advocates can use to advance their goals is comparison. “Peer city X has had success with policy Y, we too could benefit from policy Y!” But within the parking reform community, there is no standard model for comparing parking policies across municipalities. The Parking Reform Network exists for sharing information, strategies and educational materials to help support a nationwide (multi-national even- with members in Canada, Australia and Singapore) network of parking reformers. But the first task for sharing is having a shared set of criteria.

How do we compare parking management strategies? There are many other grading systems available for comparing different aspects of urban life, such as walk or bike scores, or cost of living scores, but a comparable parking score does not exist. Creating a similar parking score is a very challenging task as, much like a snowflake, each city is unique and has its own reform and regulatory needs. One city may need to reform parking to create more space for housing, another might be preparing to build more bike lanes, and some cities might simply be looking to recover parking revenues. How each of these municipalities measures the success of their parking policy will vary wildly. Who determines what parking policy is objectively “good”? What the heck does good mean anyway? In order to build a tool for comparison, first we had to determine a standard model for what “good” parking policy looks like.

Research for the project started with data collection on parking policies across several large American cities. We chose to start with the cities that have the most PRN members. The cities that we chose to collect parking policy data on were Austin, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, Nashville, New York, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington D.C. and Madison Wisconsin (not technically a large city, but it is my hometown, and I couldn’t resist).

The first step in creating a scoring model was to gather all of the relevant sources for each city. We collected sources on residential requirements, residential parking permits Transit Demand Management (TDM) Programs, on-street meter parking, public garages and parking authorities. Then we determined that the most practical place to start was to compare on-street meter parking. Meter parking is the aspect of municipal parking policy that has the most abundant information and materials on municipal websites. It is also one of the primary places that residents regularly encounter parking policy. This is also the area of parking reform where some of the most interesting work is being done to reform parking policy changes such as dynamic pricing, parking benefit districts and especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, parklets and pedestrian streets.

Part Two: Creating a Survey.

Parking Reform Spotlight: Lori Droste

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On January 26, 2021, Berkeley City Council will consider several proposals to remove or reduce parking requirements. In the first of what we plan to be a series of Parking Reform Spotlight interviews, I spoke to Berkeley City Councilor Lori Droste about the proposals and why she wants to eliminate car parking requirements.

The following is a lightly-edited transcript of the video presented above:

Lori Droste: I don’t see how people can say that they’re climate leaders and favor parking at this point.

Tony Jordan: Hi, I’m Tony Jordan from the Parking Reform Network and that was Lori Droste city councilor in Berkeley, California. Since 2015 Lori has been working to eliminate car parking requirements in Berkeley and on January 26th city council will make their decision. I recently spoke to Lori to find out more about what they’re doing.

Lori Droste: So, we have the planning commission proposal which eliminates off-street parking minimums for all new projects except in sort of the dangerous hillside region and in areas where the road is less than 26 feet. And then we have our staff recommendation which eliminates off-street parking for new projects with 10 or more units. And then we have another council member [who] floated a different proposal.

Tony Jordan: I asked Lori how she came to propose these reductions and here’s what she had to say.

Lori Droste: I had done a lot of research around what makes housing so expensive. So I went at it actually from that point of view, about why it costs so much to live in California, and actually throughout the United States this is an issue. It didn’t make sense to me that we were mandating parking when people wouldn’t necessarily want it. So, I really sort of pushed this measure forward during a time when when people weren’t really talking about parking and how it relates to housing costs. And of course there are huge climate issues, too, that are associated with parking.

Tony Jordan: It’s common for cities to tie parking reductions to other mandates like affordable housing. Lori says this is the wrong way to frame the issue.

Lori Droste: You know that’s sort of akin to saying “all right, well you have asbestos in this building, so we’ll remove the asbestos if you give us something else.” The idea that parking is at all a net benefit is ridiculous and if people want to have parking then they need to justify why they should have parking. We see the impacts that has to our climate. We see the impacts it has to housing affordability.

So that conversation has changed a lot over the past few years whereas before it’s sort of framing it as a giveaway to a developer: “well okay, you can take away your parking but you have to give us something for it,” and now the conversation is: “this [car parking] is not good for our society, period.”

Tony Jordan: I think that Lori is right, the conversation has changed in many cities and here’s why she thinks that’s happened.

Lori Droste:  So now we see a significant amount of young people coming to meetings saying there’s a connection here, there’s a connection between our housing costs which are burdened by parking. There’s a connection between climate change and parking. I think that the tenor has changed because there’s been a lot more younger people involved in our meetings and people really seeing this issue play out on our streets. Literally seeing homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk and saying: “okay we need to do something about providing homes for people as well.”

Tony Jordan: What’s Lori’s advice to other parking reformers who want to eliminate car parking mandates in their cities?

Lori Droste: Really making the connection between climate change, for instance, and parking. There’s a lot of evidence around that connecting people around housing costs and parking.

And also revenue for cities, right? Parking is dead space. So we’re able to get a lot more revenues for cities to institute or augment newer existing programs; so I think really focusing on that. Also I think the language around it needs to be clear so we’re just saying we’re not going to require you to build spaces you don’t want to build.

Tony Jordan: Lori mentioned several times in our conversation that they are proposing eliminating parking requirements not banning parking. Some of her constituents live in the Berkeley Hills, where narrow roads and windy streets combined with fire risk to pose specific hazards. She stressed that the city has been thoughtful and deliberate about the particulars of this policy and argues that reducing car parking requirements isn’t a radical thing at all.

Lori Droste: I really tried to make this a policy that can resonate with every resident of Berkeley, because it’s actually good policy. There’s this idea this is something really extreme and ideological and only for people who take the bus or who ride bikes and what I’m trying to say is it’s not. This is the future. We need to imagine how we want to create a city not for just now, when people are driving, that’s [still] true. A lot of younger people aren’t [driving now], but we have to also envision our cities in 50 and 100 years.

Tony Jordan: Berkeley city  council will hear these proposals on January 26th here’s how you can weigh in.

Lori Droste:  Well, I certainly would recommend writing in to council@cityofberkeley.info and saying that you support our planning commission’s proposal. That is the most progressive parking recommendation of the three and that eliminates off-street parking minimums except for those very treacherous hillside regions. We also have parking maximums on the plate as well. We have a really robust package and I think our planning commission did a really tremendous job.

Tony Jordan: I hope you found this informative. If you’d like to support more interviews like this and other resources for parking reformers join the Parking Reform Network at parkingreform.org/join.