More on parking minimums

It has been argued both on this blog and in a piece in The Uniter, that parking minimums--that is the minimum number of off-street parking spaces that a residential development (in a new or rehabilitated building) must have--adds costs to residential developments. These costs are particularly prohibitive in built up urban areas, where available land is in shorter supply than in new greenfield suburban developments.

Parking minimums have been detrimental to density, visual quality, housing affordability, and other things the City's long-term planning documents have ostensibly been trying to "encourage" for the past 25 or so years. And yet an arbitrary set of parking minimum regulations were enshrined in the City's 2006 By-Law.

Even within the City's "urban infill areas," which strangely encapsulate every central neighborhood in Winnipeg except the North End, developers must build 80% of the mandated parking minimums. Within this area, particularly close to transit corridors (ie, a three-minute walk from River and Osborne St., parking minimums make developers pay an "impact fee" where there is likely to be significantly less impact (new residents' cars clogging existing parking facilities) than anticipated. This is true for commercial and institutional developments as it is for residential.

Market Urbanism, a blog frequently referred to here, notes that a study published in the January, 2011 issues of Housing Policy Debate found parking minimum regulations in New York City "have the potential to increase the cost of housing and encourage auto use in multiple ways."

"If developers are providing more parking than they would otherwise, they are incurring extra costs some of which are likely passed on to residents and potential residents - impacting affordability. If parking were a significant moneymaker for developers when unbundled from the price of housing, we might expect to see developers exceeding the minimum requirement more often than was case. [...] If developers are providing more parking than they would otherwise, they are incurring extra costs some of which are likely passed on to residents and potential residents - impacting affordability. If parking were a significant moneymaker for developers when unbundled from the price of housing, we might expect to see developers exceeding the minimum requirement more often than was case."

In 2004, the City of Winnipeg did away with these arbitrary and prohibitive parking minimums for all of Downtown. It should do the same for the rest of the city.

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Further links:
"Parking Policy Reform More Important Than LEED Certification"
"Externalities, Meet Externalities"
"Onsite Parking: The Scourge of America's Commercial Districts