Latest and Greaterest

A grocery store on Rhode Island Avenue NE. Photo by AlbinoFlea on Flickr.

Previously:

• #10: Row houses aren't obsolete after all
  
• #9: Removing minimums is proven elsewhere
  
• #8: Car sharing reduces parking demand
  
• #7: On-street management solves "spillover"

Today's topic: How requirements damage the viability of our neighborhood retail.

A common topic of discussion in many neighborhoods is retail. Once upon a time, most people shopped at local stores for groceries, hardware, clothes, or vacuum cleaner repair. Today, more and more commerce happens online, at major mall-like destinations like Georgetown, or in suburban malls.

These trends have harmed neighborhood retail corridors. In some areas, like upper Georgia Avenue, the debate centers around how to bring any successful retail to the area to avoid being nothing more than fast food restaurants, check cashing establishments, and liquor stores. In richer neighborhoods like Dupont Circle and Cleveland Park, it is about maintaining a mix of stores to serve neighborhood uses instead of becoming a monoculture of bars and nightclubs.

Parking requirements undermine these neighborhood efforts. When we require parking, we force residents of newly constructed building to pay for it, either through parking spaces bundled with units or higher housing prices needed to cover the cost of the garages. If residents have already paid for parking, they're more likely to have cars; if residents already have cars, they're more likely to drive when shopping instead of patronizing neighborhood retail.

Along the Rhode Island Avenue retail corridor, retail is struggling as it is in many other areas. When we build new residential buildings with required minimum parking (and often lots of it, those new residents are more likely to drive out to Prince George's Plaza than to visit a nearby establishment on Rhode Island.

With fewer patrons, we have fewer businesses, making it even less appealing to shop in the District. It'll take a lot of work to break out of this vicious cycle. As long as our zoning code subsidizes and encourages driving, it inhibits that process. The Zoning Commission should adopt OP's recommendations and start us down a path toward stronger neighborhood retail.

I may have a reason every day to eliminate parking requirements, but the Zoning Commission needs to hear from more citizens, not just me ten times. Please to write your own comments for the Zoning Commission here and testify on the 31st.

Photo by Brave Heart on Flickr.

Previously:

• #10: Row houses aren't obsolete after all
  
• #9: Removing minimums is proven elsewhere
  
• #8: Car sharing reduces parking demand

Today's topic: On-street management tools, not parking minimums, are the right techniques to handle "spillover."

We do not force new apartment buildings to provide cable television or Internet access, yet there aren't legions of "neighborhood activists" fighting to require cable in all new buildings. Why? The only difference between parking and other amenities like cable and laundry is the concern about "spillover"—the idea that if we don't build lots and lots of parking, new residents will park on the street, taking up spaces that existing residents are "entitled" to.

But our Residential Parking Permit system only barely works even today. In some areas, employees move their cars every two hours; in other areas, parking demand is mostly nights and weekends where drivers from outside DC can park for free and as long as they like anyway. Besides, even when cheap off-street spaces are available, drivers will take an on-street space if they can get one for the convnience.

As experiences from other cities show, the best policy is effective on-street management through performance parking techniques. DC is already refining an appropriate mix of on-street management techniques for our city through the pilot programs in Columbia Heights and around the Nationals ballpark.

Around the ballpark, the pilot has accomplished its goal. DC built a major traffic attractor and provided vastly less parking than 1950s zoning code writers believed possible, less than most other cities who have built new stadiums, and yet we have experienced no major problems. ANC 6D, the ANC in that area, even passed a resolution last month supporting the performance parking system and asking DDOT to keep it in force.

The news media have reported with the pilots, and those are being solved. On-street management gives us a wide range of tools; in time we will perfect a system that can work in every neighborhood where conditions warrant. No city that has tried performance parking has failed to reap significant rewards.

Our zoning code will last for another fifty years. We will identify the best on-street management systems within one or two, well in advance of potential new development with slightly reduced parking. We should not enshrine bad practices in zoning for half a century because of uncertainty about a system that already works here and is so successful in other cities.

Don't forget to write comments for the Zoning Commission here and testify on the 31st. Every comment makes a difference!

The proposed Starview Plaza. Image from the PG County Planning Department.

Rethink College Park has drawings of the project, a 6-story, 550-bed student housing development on Route 1 with ground-floor retail along the street. (I predict that UMD students will consider the building's food options inadequate and start calling the building "starve you".)

In compliance with Prince George's County zoning requirements, there are 2.5 spaces per 2-bedroom unit and 3.5 per 4-bedroom unit (why?) They then get an automatic (and arbitrary) reduction of 10% for being downtown, and another (arbitrary) reduction of 20% because students are expected to use "Alternative Modes of Transportation," like the UMD shuttle which would stop there, or bicycling or walking the 1 mile to the center of campus.

Nevertheless, we have 355 spaces for 550 people, meaning planners expect 64.5% of students to have their own cars. I don't know the current ratio at Maryland, but for people living right on the main commercial strip and a moderately short walk to campus, that seems high.

This also seems like a perfect opportunity for car sharing. And the PG Planning Department recommends it... "a minimum of two". How about more like twelve? Zipcar has 40-45 users per car. Even the 195 students who definitely won't own cars (because there are fewer spaces than students) could support 4-5 Zipcars; if there were more, more students would use them and not drive.

The arbitrary parking ratios of the PG zoning code become more absurd when we look at the shared parking provision. To its credit, this development does not have dedicated parking for the stores (which will probably serve mostly walk-in customers and residents anyway). To fulfill the requirement of 48 spaces for this much commercial square footage, they set out a schedule of times of day when commercial parkers should be able to use the residential spaces. That assumes that only 60% of spaces are filled during the day.

I'm sure at most 60% will be filled, because I doubt 355 students will fill up all of those spaces. But if they did, which the zoning code assumes, that also assumes that 40% of them will drive. For a building housing workers, that might make sense, but it strains credulity to believe 40% of students will drive one mile to park on campus. But 60% is the standard, so 60% is what the planners use.

I wouldn't be surprised if 40% of students bike to campus, though. That's why it's nice the PG Planning Department is recommending the developers add bike parking. Unfortunately, they're only suggesting a minimum of 40 spaces for both residential and commercial—way too little. DC's proposed rules would mandate 1 Class A (indoor, locked) space per 3 units, for a total of 184 bicycle parking spaces, and 1 per 20 Class B (outdoor) spaces, or 28. Plus, the 10,000 commercial square feet would require, under DC's proposal, 2 more Class A and 1 more Class B. That sounds much better than 40 spaces on "two standard bike racks".

The building itself looks okay, though Rethink College Park commenter Kevin Fallon points out the missed opportunities for a nice outdoor deck and walking/biking trail facing the creek. Instead, the building has a large and very vertical blank facade on that side.

There's a lot to praise about this project. It's fairly dense in a downtown area near campus, and will have street-facing retail. But laboring under completely arbitrary and excessive parking requirements leads to ridiculous outcomes. RCP commenter tt puts it aptly: "The empty lower parking level will make a good skate rink - they should be careful where they put the columns."

Photo by tvol on Flickr.

Previously:

• #10: Row houses aren't obsolete after all
  
• #9: Removing minimums is proven elsewhere

The hearing is Thursday, July 31 at 6:30 pm. Please try to attend and testify if you can, or submit comments to the zoning commission in this thread.

Today's topic: Why car sharing services, like Zipcar, enable lower minimums.

Car sharing provides a key piece of the puzzle to give residents a real choice between car ownership and not. Anyone should be free to own a car, but we should also ensure that adequate alternatives exist for the 37% of DC households who do not own cars, including those who choose not to own cars. 20% of new car-sharing customers even give up their cars when switching, and each shared car takes five other cars off the road and out of parking spaces.

The OP recommendations require new parking facilities with 50 spaces to provide one car sharing space, with another for every additional 100 spaces. Each of these spaces would go for free to a car sharing service interested in utilizing them, whether Zipcar or another service in the future.

Some opponents argue that this requirements subsidizes car-sharing companies. But a requirement to provide car-sharing spaces in large garages no more subsidizes a company than plumbing requirements subsidize plumbing companies. Any company can choose to provide a car-sharing service; there is only one operating in DC right now, but there were two until recently, and in the future, if market conditions make a second potentially profitable, there will be again. Meanwhile, Philadelphia and San Francisco both have car-sharing nonprofits, and in San Francisco the nonprofit City CarShare competes with the for-profit Zipcar.

Besides, many developers are already choosing to include car-sharing in their developments, since many potential residents appreciate the service. Having a Zipcar in the garage makes giving up a car more appealing, helping residents to save money. Since developers are putting in car-sharing spaces anyway, any requirement is no great burden.

A small car-sharing requirement will lower housing costs by decreasing car ownership rates, lower VMT saving money on road repair and improving our air, and make the parking minimums even more clearly unnecessary. The Zoning Commission should approve the OP draft, removing most minimums and requiring car sharing spaces in large parking facilities.

Please write comments for the Zoning Commission here and testify on the 31st.