Parking review part 1: Parking choices matter

Which kind of city do we want DC to be in the future?

Our parking policy decisions decide which city we will be.According to our current zoning, if the typical townhouse burned down tomorrow, it would have to be rebuilt with more space for parking, even in dense areas. The land under my building, with about 12 units, is probably not even big enough for the parking lot that the zoning code would demand. Our zoning requirements, mostly dating from the 1950s, assume most people will drive, and force new buildings to contain large parking lots, which makes driving cheaper compared to transit and spreads out the development, encouraging more driving.

The average American family spends 19% of their income on transportation—getting to and from work, school, friends, and activities. Out in the most auto-dependent exurban regions, this jumps to a whopping 25%. But in transit-oriented areas, transportation is only 9% of the total pie, leaving up to 14% more money—tens of thousands of dollars a year per family—for other needs.

The parking zoning review working group saw this information and more from Nelson\Nygaard at the kickoff meeting a week ago. Rob Goodspeed wrote a great article on it as well. What turned out to be the key question for the group was this slide: “If spillover effects can be prevented by other means, minimums become unnecessary.” Can they? On this, not everyone agrees. I’ll go into more detail in the next post.