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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 this podcast and 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.

Event: How we won parking cash-out for Washington, D.C., and how you can too!

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Date: March 30th
Time: 7-8pm Eastern Time (US & Canada)

Cheryl Cort
Cheryl Cort

The Parking Reform Network is excited to welcome Cheryl Cort, the Policy Director for the Coalition for Smarter Growth to speak about the campaign for a Washington D.C. bill to require parking cash-out as part of employee commuter benefits. The “Transportation Benefits Equity Amendment Act” passed in April 2020 requires employers who provide free or subsidized parking to also offer benefits to employees who choose other ways to commute to work, such as taking transit, walking or biking. In a city where most residents don’t even drive to work, this is a big victory!

Why should parking reformers pay attention to parking cash-out? For starters, parking cash-out can reduce the need for new or existing employee parking and the costs of leasing more space. Secondly, parking reform policies sometimes can clash with drivers who want free or plentiful parking, or communities that have limited transportation options, as it may be unclear what the immediate benefit is to them. However, parking cash-out is one idea that may quickly find supporters from more diverse groups. As Donald Shoup (who first developed the idea) wrote, parking cash-out comes close to the goal of pareto optimality:

Parking cash-out makes many people better off while making few, if any, worse off. Commuters are better off because they get a flexible new fringe benefit, one that allows each person to choose the commute option best for her or him. Employers are better off because offering the new fringe benefit costs them little or nothing, and helps to attract and retain workers. The government is better off because tax revenues increase with no change in the tax rates. Finally, society is better off with less traffic and cleaner air. Economists describe a change as “Pareto optimal” if it makes some people better off without making others worse off—a great asset in public policy.

Shoup, Donald “Parking Cash Out”

Sounds like a win-win for all! Join this free event and get some insights on how parking cash-out can be won in your city: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcoce2srzMuH9HdHfw-w5BelLGF-guiwhnM

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

This free event is made possible by members like you.

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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When I was a graduate student at Rutgers University in New Jersey where I studied city planning, I entered the program with a strong interest in transit-oriented development. 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 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 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 New Brunswick Parking Authority 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 U.S. states (Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia), and densely populated cities such as Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Chattanooga, Baltimore, Miami 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 the U.S. and transportation 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.  Local outrage sparked a change.org petition in 2014, 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.