One of the most common complaints people have when heading into their local downtown or any popular neighborhood is finding a place to store their car. They circle the block looking for an open spot, causing congestion in return. It’s not that open spots don’t exist, it’s that they either cost money or are more than a block or two away from their destination. Through film and television, we have been sold the fantasy that we should expect easy car storage at our destinations, always pulling up right out front. Over the last 70 plus years we have been building suburbia and retrofitting cities to continue this illusion by putting a sea of asphalt in front of our buildings. While this gives people the feeling that their car is nearby, it may actually be further away than if you used the garage three blocks away from a downtown restaurant. Now I don’t believe I can fix all of the car storage problems, but there are plenty of ways we can chip away at them while encouraging people to use other modes of transportation.
To start, I think it’s important for us to use the phrase “car storage” over “parking.” This may seem trivial, but when you hear the phrase “car storage” you start to understand that we have been subsidizing the storage of private property in our public spaces for decades. And that space is not free to build. Curb space could be used for other modes of transportation (bikes and buses) or for loading zones for local business, instead of forcing many delivery drivers to stop in the travel lane, blocking traffic. We have attempted to privatize some of this by requiring a minimum number of spaces at private developments, but that has only exacerbated the issue by spreading businesses and residents out further and encouraging more and more people to drive where they could previously walk or take transit. So with that in mind, let’s take a look at a few different approaches to fixing this storage issue and how they might all work together to improve how our cities function. And remember, these strategies can be used in our cities, villages, and towns.
Ending Minimums
To start this conversation off, we return to a topic I’ve mentioned time and time again throughout my blog - ending parking minimums.
As cars began to dominate our roadways, space to store them was scarce. To accommodate this increase in cars, cities turned to a new tool, zoning, to require new developments to provide off-street storage for cars. Much like many other aspects of zoning codes, these minimums come with the appearance of being based on scientific reasoning and study. In reality, they’re not based on much at all. If you scroll through municipal zoning codes online, you start to see very similar requirements for places that are very different from one another. You might even be surprised to learn that much of New York City is governed by parking minimums as well - even in a city where more than half of households do not own a car.
But let’s look at what parking minimums do. If you’re looking to build a small restaurant or bar, you might be required to build one parking space for every three seats. Well, three seats might only take up about 50 square feet, but the space to store that car takes up around 200 square feet. That space begins to add up to the point where the restaurant is now surrounded by a deep moat of asphalt for car storage. And it doesn’t come cheap - with the average cost to build a lot coming it around $5,000 to $10,000 per space. But let’s say you’re not building this restaurant from scratch. You’re looking to repurpose an older building in your neighborhood that would make a great spot for neighbors to walk to for dinner. Many older buildings don’t come with lots next door. You might need to look at tearing down a building to provide the required number of spaces for your customers, or hope to have a variance approved so you can provide fewer spaces or none at all. Both of these options add expense to a project and may impact whether a project is feasible or not. To get a sense of just how much parking is required, below is a table giving a snapshot of some of the requirements found around Onondaga County.
This does not mean car storage won’t exist, it just allows developers to build the amount they believe they need to be successful. We don’t have to look far for an example. Buffalo eliminated minimums in 2017. In the years since, nearly every development has built some car storage, with many building close to the number they would have been required to before this change. The upside is, if those developments choose to expand, they can now opt to build upon their lots without needing to provide additional spaces.
Beyond the costs and logistics of providing these spaces, it also reduces access to businesses for anyone outside of a car. Large lots push businesses and residences further and further apart, reducing the usefulness of transit and making it difficult to walk or bike. If you’ve ever walked through a parking lot on a hot summer day or on a freezing winter day with a harsh wind, you know just how unpleasant these spaces become. When looking at the images below, its easy to see which place is more pleasant to be in, yet our arbitrary rules prevent more of these places from existing.
With all of this in mind, it’s time for those of us who champion removing these minimums to emphasize what we gain instead of what is lost. We gain flexibility for businesses large and small. We gain affordability by reducing the costs of construction. We gain the ability to create more accessible places. In many ways, we gain freedom.
Dynamic Metered Spaces
Now that we have addressed off-street car storage requirements, we must look to our streets, beginning in our business districts.
Metered spaces across downtowns and in neighborhood business districts have prices that do not reflect their true value. Some spaces, near major destinations, popular restaurants and bars, are priced at the same level as spaces on the outskirts of their neighborhoods. For Syracuse, this is $2 per hour. While this is a deal in Hanover Square or Armory Square, what sense does this make near the highway viaducts several blocks away from any destination? Most people would understand that these spaces do not hold equal value and should be priced differently - and no, they should not be free.
Donald Shoup, the person who has truly brought car storage policy to the forefront in urban planning settings, has long advocated for a smarter approach to pricing our curbs. In 2014, he worked with San Francisco on a pilot program, SFPark, aimed at pricing the city’s streets to reflect the demand for space. Using cameras and sensors, the city tracked how much space one each block was being used to store cars at any one time. Pricing at the meters would change to reflect this usage, trying to find the price at which every block had one to two spots open at all times. Its important to note that San Francisco aimed to keep this program cost neutral, meaning they did not want drivers to spend more per hour than under the original pricing scheme. In more desirable places the price could be over $6 per hour while further out they could be as low as $0.50 per hour. At the end of the pilot, they measured less congestion on the study streets due to reduced circling for spots, and noted the average price per hour for each driver went down while the overall revenue went up, meaning there was an increase in turnover.
Other cities have instituted similar programs, including Seattle, WA and Calgary, Canada. These cities set their target occupancy rates a little differently and adjust their prices on different timelines, and even have different prices based on the time of day. One thing Syracuse should learn from some of these other cities is that we turn off our meters too early, at 6pm (although most of us know its before that) right when they begin to hit another demand peak for dinner at local restaurants. Keeping meters on until 8pm would help manage the demand better and encourage higher turnover in the most coveted locations.
Our curbs are too valuable to give away for nearly free, but we must recognize that not all curb space is valued the same. Programs like this prove that you can use the same amount of space to provide access to more and more people if it is managed well. Dynamic metered pricing can also be tied into benefit districts, which I will discuss later in this post.
Centralized Car Storage and Improved Garages
While it is important to manage our curbs well, there is still demand for longer term car storage for workers and residents in our business districts. At the same time, we cannot have surface lot after surface lot creating dead zones throughout. Instead, we need to look for opportunities to provide shared lots and structures in a more centralized way.
I will be the first to say that parking garages are less than ideal.They are far more difficult to redevelop in the future than surface lots, they cost far more per space ($24,000 - $34,000 per space), and are often less appealing to drivers due to the decreased visibility causing safety concerns. But, for now, they are a necessary evil that we must contend with and work to improve. Garages help to centralize car storage, freeing up other land for development. Not all garages are created equal. Below are multiple examples of garage throughout Downtown Syracuse, some doing a much better job of preserving the streetscape than others, including providing ground floor retail or office space.
Beyond the traditional garage, vertical car storage, often seen around New York City, provide a less expensive and less permanent option. According to a 2014 New York Times article, vertical car storage devices cost less than half (roughly $16,000 per space) than a conventional garage. While still more expensive than a surface lot, the value is created through freeing up additional land for development.
Employer Incentives
A final piece to car storage in our downtowns and business districts involves our employers. While more suburban office parks and commercial centers offer free car storage for all, many employers in downtowns and business districts provide permits for their employees to use designated lots. These are often purchased from the building, lot, or garage owner and are considered pre-tax benefits for employees. But what about employees who walk, bike, or take transit to work? In effect, those employees are losing out on a portion of their pay all because they choose not to drive to work, or perhaps they cannot afford to drive to work.
Instead, we should require employers to provide alternative transportation benefits to their employees. In practice, whatever funds were used to pay for car storage could instead be given to employees in the form of transit passes or a cash payout. New York City requires all employers with more than 20 full time employees to offer these types of passes, but similar programs exist in smaller cities as well, such as Hartford, Connecticut.
By allowing employees to choose which commuting option works best for them, without financially penalizing them (and yes this is a form of financial penalization), we begin to emphasize that all modes of transportation are equal instead of prioritizing the car.
Residential Permit Systems and Benefit Districts
Now moving to our residential neighborhoods. Car storage isn’t just a downtown issue. Urban neighborhoods, village centers, and anyone living near popular destinations often compete for spaces to store their vehicles in front of their homes. While no one should be guaranteed a piece of public land to store private property, helping improve access to people’s homes is a reasonable policy choice, within some restrictions.
Many cities have implemented residential permits with a wide range of rules, but often the prices are too low and management of the system is hit or miss. So here are a few things we should consider about permit programs to make sure we gain the most benefit from them:
Track curb usage on a regular basis - every couple of years
Only institute permit programs in neighborhoods that truly have a storage issue. Set the goal (maybe 70% of curb space used) and track it over multiple days to ensure the need is there.
Limit the number of permits provided per household
Providing more than two or three permits per household would quickly overrun whatever space is available
Institute an increased price for each additional permit beyond the first
The more space a household consumes, the more it should pay
This goes for larger vehicles as well - vehicles larger than a sedan or a compact SUV (think Chevy Trailblazer) should pay a higher price for a permit due to the additional space they consume
Utilize license plate readers instead of hang tags
Helps to cut down duplicated tags and improves efficiency in enforcement
Put the funds gained from the permit system back into the neighborhood
The last point is crucial. Using the funds collected from the neighborhood, either from permits or dynamic metered spaces, to reinvest in those specific neighborhoods help to build good will for the program as well as provided a consistent funding source for needed improvements. Sidewalks, bike lanes and bike racks, pedestrian lighting, street trees, all can be funded through what is known as a parking benefits district. Cities across the country have raised millions of dollars for neighborhood improvements through similar programs. Pittsburgh has used funds to improve public safety infrastructure in nightlife communities while Washington D.C. improved trash collection services. Neighborhoods should have a say in how their funds are used to improve their communities.
On a related note, and much to the anger of many college students, I believe permits to store student cars on university campuses are necessary. In my time in college, and in seeing many posts on social media since, students are often angry at having to pay an additional fee to store their car on campus after paying tens of thousands of dollars to attend classes there. This mentality ignores the thousands of students who do not have cars and should not be forced to subsidize those who do. College is one of the few times in life where cars really are optional in most American cities. Campuses are built to promote walkability and often run bus and shuttle services to off campus locations for free or very reduced prices. But that is all I will say on that topic as working with universities is a complex issue that deserves its own examination.
Moving Forward
Car storage is a tricky issue and we must be open to different solutions and act creatively. None of the ideas covered here will solve the problem alone, and they must be combined with other changes to our transportation network. We cannot think of these issues in a vacuum. Land use decisions, public transit networks, biking and walking facilities all factor in to how our public realm is used. The more we promote modes of transportation beyond private cars, the more space we can take back from car storage.