Eliminating 'parking minimums' helped U.S. cities. Could it work here?

The City of Ottawa is proposing a change it says should make housing more affordable, stimulate new construction and help the environment - but drivers might not like the sound of it.

Transportation and plan‐ ning experts argue that re‐ moving "parking minimums" - the number of parking spots that, at the very least, must be included in any new development - does all those things and more. They say cities that have made the leap apparently experience none of the issues naysayers warned about.

"There was definitely some pushback and some fear," said Chris Hawley, a se‐ nior planner in Buffalo, N.Y., which became the first major city to take that step seven years ago.

"The sky did not fall, and people can still get around."

Those fears included that major developments would be built without providing any new parking, plunging neighbourhood streets into daily chaos.

But those "doomsday pre‐ dictions" have not come to pass, Hawley said.

In fact, removing parking minimums spurred develop‐ ment rather than stifling it, he said.

"That was a pleasant sur‐ prise."

More flexibility, not less Since Buffalo made that move, dozens of other U.S. cities have followed suit.

North of the border, Ed‐ monton, Calgary and Toronto are among the major cities to also go that direction, with experts saying the results ap‐ pear similar regardless of where the decision was taken.

"The experience around the world on that issue is it actually liberates develop‐ ment," said Rachel Wein‐ berger, director of research strategy at the Regional Plan Association in New York.

She said "the theory and the practice aligned" to show that getting rid of parking minimums promotes density and boosts the housing sup‐ ply.

Buffalo and other cities noted an uptick in certain forms of development that parking minimums had made difficult, including low-rise in‐ fill projects and conversions, developments Ottawa is also aiming to foster.

In Los Angeles, relaxing the rules revitalized historic office districts, said Donald Shoup, professor of urban planning at UCLA and author of The High Cost of Free Parking.

"There were wonderful buildings in terrible condi‐ tion," he said. "As soon as the city removed the off-street parking requirements, 57 his‐ toric office buildings were converted into apartment buildings in the next eight years."

Costs are passed on

One key point experts make as to why relaxing parking minimums can spur development is that there are costs that come with adding spots - costs that can be high enough to stall progress.

That's noted, in fact, in a background document pub‐ lished by planners as part of Ottawa's comprehensive zon‐ ing bylaw review, one that hints at the sort of pushback the city is expecting if it takes that step.

The report cites research that pegs the cost of parking at $25,000 to $65,000 per spot, which is passed on by developers to businesses, homeowners and tenants including those who don't have a car.

Requiring parking along with housing can add "15 to 20 per cent" to the cost of construction, while also tak‐ ing up a lot of space, Wein‐ berger said.

For example, removing two parking spots can pro‐ vide enough space for a smaller and more affordable studio apartment, which might not be economically feasible otherwise.

"If you have a parking re‐ quirement of one space per apartment, that leads devel‐ opers to build larger and more expensive apartments because enlarging apartmen‐ ts doesn't require more park‐ ing," Shoup said.

"It just makes complete sense."

The 'pseudoscience' be‐ hind minimums

These minimums can also lead to a glut of parking that's never used, argued Chris McCahill, managing di‐ rector of the State Smart Transportation Initiative at the University of Wisconsin.

"A lot of that parking that's required by a city often goes to waste, and the cost of building it gets passed

along to us whether we use the parking or not," said Mc‐ Cahill.

"We pay for it in the ser‐ vices and products that we buy. We pay for it in rent."

Cities also pay through the stress added to stormwa‐ ter systems by the glut of im‐ permeable parking surfaces, he added.

Ottawa has had codified parking minimums since 1964, although staff could not say what - if any methodology was used to create them.

They likely originated with the Institute of Transporta‐ tion Engineers, a standardssetting organization made up of experts in the field which the city says no longer rec‐ ommends using parking ra‐ tios at all.

"Minimum parking re‐ quirements are complete pseudoscience with no evi‐ dence," argued Shoup, sug‐ gesting the practice was al‐ ways based on flawed logic.

That's largely because the ratios of parking spots per household or business were based on peak demand, in neighbourhoods built with‐ out sufficient transit alterna‐ tives.

Building for the future McCahill's research sug‐ gests that building neigh‐ bourhoods around parking encouraged driving.

Back in the 1980s when parking lots were popping up across North America, McC‐ ahill said families that would otherwise have walked be‐ gan to rely on cars for short trips. That trend has contin‐ ued.

"Having a guaranteed parking spot at home and wherever you're going, it is probably one of the most im‐ portant factors that affects people's decisions about how to get there," he said.

But that doesn't mean that eliminating parking re‐ quirements will create an im‐ mediate shift.

Hawley noted that public transit usage has not seen a significant uptick - likely be‐ cause of the pandemic - al‐ though he believes that change will happen "gradual‐ ly" over decades.

OC Transpo likewise does not expect to get back to prepandemic ridership levels anytime soon, even as poli‐ cies promote the creation of housing near transit hubs.

Dawn Parker, professor in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo, de‐ scribes the struggle as a "chicken and egg" scenario, where a "critical mass" of neighbourhood density needs to be created before there are enough people will‐ ing to leave their cars behind for public transit.

Her proposed solution is to design and subsidize multi-level parking garages that could eventually house people rather than cars.

"Build those parking garages so they can be con‐ verted to housing," she ex‐ plained. "When we reach that critical mass ... a household might be able to give up their car, that parking wouldn't be needed, and those surface parking garages could be re‐ purposed."

Regardless of how the shift happens, the experts hope people will understand that while change can be "painful for a minute," the al‐ ternative could be a death by a thousand curb-cuts.

"There's a bandwagon of cities that are enjoying all the ideas," said Shoup. "It worked well in other cities, why wouldn't it work in Ot‐ tawa?"