Parking minimums for businesses

[Anondson]

I hunted for another thread for this, maybe it could get shoved to its own thread, but I had a thought about Minneapolis changing its parking policy regarding residential development. The gist is that a new residential development along high frequency transit will have a much reduced amount of parking that will be required of it.

Should we push a policy change that certain businesses along high frequency transit can also have reduced parking minimums? Maybe we consider reducing parking minimums for businesses along bike lanes if they instead provide a certain count of bike parking or are located near a bike sharing station?

Businesses are denied licenses if they can't come up with arrangements for enough parking, which gets into silliness when bars or clubs are forced to offer abundant parking for drivers who are explicitly drinking. This is a ridiculous incentive.

It seems the change regarding residential parking minimums shines a spotlight on the minimums required of retail and restaurants on high frequency transit and bike lanes.

[mattaudio]

Of course, I'm categorically opposed to parking minimums of all types. But I'd rather see us move to very lightweight parking minimums based on square footage of net new retail/commercial space. It's ridiculous that one tenant has X required spots, another has Y, and a bar has Z required spots for their drinkers. This creates unnecessary friction keeping business and commercial spaces from matching up for a lease. I've recently run a few rough pro formas for development opportunities in my neighborhood. I could build some "Form Follows Finance Fourplexes" in areas without minimum parking, but I can't built any commercial space into them (Up to 20% of space can be non-residential when funded by a traditional FHA mortgage). http://www.cnu.org/sites/default/files/4F_Revised.pdf

[RailBaronYarr]

I agree there's an odd mashup of requirements for different business types. Not that P*rtland is the end all, but I compared our commercial requirements to theirs when I wrote that residential parking piece. Here's the image. In 2009 they were rationalized a bit across the board. Where most cities require a space per XXX sqft, ours typically give an exemption for the first 4,000 square feet, which kinda removes the argument that getting small biz into historic (or new) commercial spaces in the city is held back by parking requirements.

I think Matt's idea of combining some of the uses would be a better tactic than trying to lower the average number required, as it removes red tape in getting new tenants into spaces when one fails or moves. I think CM Bender could get behind lowering some of the numbers, but given the timeline of the changes ('09, '15), she may take too much heat in proposing more before seeing how the residential change plays out.

[MNdible]

Yeah, it used to be very common that new commercial spaces caused a big kerfuffle over parking. I haven't heard a peep of that since the new commercial parking regs went into effect, which tells me that the market is demanding more parking than the regs do. At this point, revisiting this seems unnecessary.

[mattaudio]

which tells me that the market is demanding more parking than the regs do.

So then why would we need regulations?

[MNdible]

Like clockwork, Matt. Like clockwork.

I suppose the reason would be that we, as a society, have decided that businesses should bear some minimal responsibility for storing the cars that they're bringing into an area. If I open up a discotheque, for example, and it attracts hundreds of people on a regular basis, is my business entitled to suck up all of the on-street parking lot in an area, to the detriment of all other users?

Just because most businesses are interested in ensuring reasonable access doesn't mean there won't be some bad actors who would take advantage of the situation.

[mattaudio]

They should take advantage of the situation, if we're stupid enough to subsidize free or below-market-rate on-street parking.
The rational response here is to start implementing meters and permits anywhere there is a shortage of parking, at a price sufficient to ensure last space availability. #obviously

[FISHMANPET]

In an "ideal" world there'd be no parking minimums, and bad actors like that would be dealt with by the fact that on street parking prices would be demand responsive such that demand would equalize. But that could penalize existing businesses if their customers aren't willing to pay as much as the discotheque customers I suppose.

I'm sure Shoup has thought about it, but it's really not worth putting much thought or political capital into as long as people are building above the minimums. As soon as they start building the minimum (like is being done with a lot of apartment development) then it's time to take another look at the regs. Until then we've got other fish to fry.

[RailBaronYarr]

It's a reasonable argument to be made, especially since most pro-parking reform folks typically support government-provided bike parking and are okay with transit not covering its operating costs. I get it. You could also easily make the case that the "other users" are sucking up demand for the parking for the discotheque, especially if they're residents complaining they won't have a spot to park or space for their grandma to visit. Why is one user valued above the other? Why assume existing users are given preference while new users must bear the cost? If we had parking minimums for new development but everybody int he neighborhood had to share in the cost of building it to maintain the on-street availability, that'd make sense.

We're in a tricky situation where we made some really sweeping social reforms for 30 years after WWII that put us in a place where we probably can't ratchet it down to zero immediately. But we should have a 30 year plan that gets the regulations to a place where they're at that place, with public management of on-street (and even district, maybe!) parking in full swing in all identified areas where parking is remotely tight.

Continued development of our urban neighborhoods is going to be a chicken/egg situation of added residents demanding more commercial space, which in turn makes more living nearby attractive to more people. Parking is at least among the top 3 reasons people oppose new development. We need a better strategy.

[trigonalmayhem]

On the one hand I love relaxing parking requirements because parking is a terrible use of urban land. On the other hand considering what a giant stink business owners put up at the slightest suggestion that anyone remove street parking for better uses of public ROW and how many improvements that kills ... Eh. If they would stop listening to businesses complaining about street parking reductions then by all means.

[trigonalmayhem]

Like clockwork, Matt. Like clockwork.

I suppose the reason would be that we, as a society, have decided that businesses should bear some minimal responsibility for storing the cars that they're bringing into an area. If I open up a discotheque, for example, and it attracts hundreds of people on a regular basis, is my business entitled to suck up all of the on-street parking lot in an area, to the detriment of all other users?

Just because most businesses are interested in ensuring reasonable access doesn't mean there won't be some bad actors who would take advantage of the situation.

But it all comes back to who should be responsible for the cost of private vehicle storage. Should the business owner who profits directly from customers pay for them to store their cars (or rather pass the cost along to them directly via prices) or should society in general subsidize it. I'm not sure any talk of parking minimums is meaningful until we stop providing free street parking and price what parking we do retain at its actual cost.