‘Parking benefit districts’ make headway in Texas and the West

Austin, Texas, this winter established its first “parking benefit district,” which will regulate parking demand in the West Campus area, where the city intends to increase residential density. The city will install parking meters in the district, centering on San Antonio Street, and will use the revenue from them to improve sidewalks and curb ramps, plant street trees, and make other enhancements to the district’s streetscape. Austin is one of several cities introducing methods aimed at bringing the price of on-street parking in line with demand and at avoiding the development of too much parking. The methods may make parking more costly, but the neighborhood gets the benefit of having the revenue channeled into projects of the neighborhood’s choosing. West Campus residents will tell the city each year how they would like to spend the money collected from meters in the neighborhood. City staff will work with sources of parking demand — such as offices and retail centers — to promote alternative transportation methods that would reduce the volume of driving and parking demand in the neighborhood. The US Environmental Protection Agency is providing a grant for the program. Parking innovations — advocated by UCLA Professor Donald Shoup, whose book The High Cost of Free Parking was featured in the April 2005 New Urban News — are also moving forward in Seattle and several California communities. For Seattle’s South Lake Union District, Jeff Tumlin and Tom Brennan of Nelson/Nygaard transportation consultants completed an on-street parking study for the city’s Department of Transportation. It calls for charging market prices for curb parking, where on-street parking currently is free and not time-restricted. It’s anticipated that hourly parking rates will be adjusted regularly to reflect actual demand levels, providing business customers, employees, and residents in South Lake Union with access to on-street parking for a fee. The consultants advocated installing wireless-networked multispace meters so that the city can continuously monitor occupancy and adjust the prices. The city also has legislation pending that would remove minimum off-street parking requirements in South Lake Union and five other “urban centers” in Seattle, as part of a package of zoning reforms in neighborhood commercial areas. tiered pricing system The small California city of Truckee has switched from free downtown parking to multispace meters with tiered prices: $1 per hour for the first two hours, $2 for the third hour, and $3 for the fourth hour, said Patrick Siegman of Nelson/Nygaard’s San Francisco office. The revenue will be dedicated to the downtown. “The little city of Pacific Grove, California, has also instituted this kind of tiered pricing for new meters installed near the Monterey Bay Aquarium,” Siegman added. “I expect the trend to spread, while time limits for on-street parking — which were never an economically efficient way to manage parking — will slowly fall from favor.” Both the city of San Francisco and the San Francisco Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission are embarking on major studies aimed at reforming parking policies and organizing parking benefit districts. Supervisor Chris Daly has proposed that the city limit off-street parking in all its downtown neighborhoods to 0.75 spaces per housing unit, which he said would reduce downtown congestion, promote walkable streets, and lower the cost of housing. Some hotels, restaurants, retailers, and developers have argued that such a limit would hurt business if visitors compete with residents for parking spots on the street or in garages. The debate has been prompted by a downtown housing boom. Shoup voiced support for a proposed limit, telling the San Francisco Examiner, “The whining you hear is the sound of change.”