A New New York: A Miami-sized parking problem.
In Part 4 of our New New York Series, we shine a spotlight on the City’s gift of space to cars, whose negative externalities impact all denizens. NYC welcomes cars enthusiastically with a two-pronged regulatory approach that dates back to the mid-1900s:
- (Underregulation) Allowing free-to-anyone, hog wild parking on virtually every residential street, and on Sundays and holidays on commercial streets
- (Overregulation) Setting steep minimum requirements for off-street parking in zoning
It is now clear that parking induces demand for driving. If parking is plentiful and cheap, driving becomes an attractive option, and more people buy and use cars. With its pro-parking policies, NYC practically begs its residents to use cars in lieu of transit, contributing to:
- congestion, pollution, and traffic deaths;
- an inability to use streets flexibly or clean them daily;
- more dangerous and costly development;
- transport and use-of-space inefficiency; and
- urban inequality.
With this now-evident parade of horribles, coupled with the new challenges presented by COVID; Mayor de Blasio, DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg, and DCP Commissioner Marisa Lago should take the once-in-a-generation opportunity to totally reform the City’s parking policies. With these in place, NYC will be a better, cleaner, greener, safer, more vibrant place to live post-pandemic than it was before.
Underregulation of On-Street Parking
In 1950, during the car-centric Robert Moses era, NYC started to offer free parking on its residential streets. This was enacted alongside a commitment by car owners to move their vehicles to alternate sides of the street every 2–3 days to accommodate street cleaning. The concept stuck, and 70 years later, New York is the only major city in America that doesn’t have a residential permitting system. Nearly 3,000,000 free-to-anyone on-street parking spaces are offered throughout NYC’s residential neighborhoods, and on Sundays and holidays in metered commercial districts. Restrictions around alternate side parking have only loosened over the decades, even in the face of mounting health, safety, climate, and quality-of-life issues stemming from car traffic. Just as we need our streets to be cleaner and more open than ever during the pandemic for safe walking and biking commuting, and outdoor dining, shopping, schools, and services, the City has intermittently canceled alternate side parking to “make life a little easier for all of us”.
Over-regulation of Off-street Parking
If the City’s curb gift to car owners weren’t bad enough, the NYC Zoning Resolution requires developers throughout NYC to include off-street parking for every new development in proportion to the amount of car and truck traffic expected to be generated by the building, based on long-ago, aspirational estimates of car ownership. This is applicable to all building types, boroughs, and districts except in the densest areas of Manhattan, Long Island City, and Downtown Brooklyn.
Residential parking requirements for new developments vary depending on the district density and the likelihood of public transit.
- R1-R4: (low density) 100% of lots must have at least one parking space
- R5-R10 buildings can calculate parking requirements based on a complicated array of factors, but generally must have a minimum of spaces for between 40–85% of units, depending on density, with some exceptions or waivers for small developments.
Commercial and community facility parking requirements for new developments also vary depending on the district density, size of building, use, number of employees, and/or likely traffic. Manufacturing facilities require one space for every three employees or 1000 SF of floor area.
To understand the values prioritized by NYC’s off-street parking regulations, it’s helpful to examine some of the exceptions to the regulations in place.
- Manhattan Core. The most obvious exception to NYC’s off-street parking regulations is that they do not apply in much of Manhattan (Community Boards 1–8, generally running from Central Park to Battery Park). Takeaway — dense, transit-rich, walkable communities don’t need off-street parking
- Affordable Housing and Transit Zones. There is a reduction in required parking for affordable housing, and an elimination of parking requirements in “Transit Zones” (areas outside the Manhattan core within one-half mile of a subway station). Takeaways — off-street parking requirements are financial burdens on developers, making affordable housing more expensive to build, and therefore harder to achieve. Again, transit-rich, walkable communities don’t need off-street parking.
- Small Lots — in certain districts, lots less than 10,000 square feet in area have a reduction in parking requirements (e.g. parking spaces for 70% of units reduced to 30%). Takeaway — off-street parking is a financial burden that could make smaller developments infeasible.
- Minimal Required Spots — a parking requirement that falls below a certain threshold (e.g. 15 spaces in R7 & R8 districts, 5 spaces in R6 district) is waived. Takeaway — forcing a developer to provide a handful of parking spaces could endanger the viability of a development
These exceptions to the City’s off-street parking regulations make clear that the City knows that parking is expensive to produce, will hinder the development of affordable housing, and is not necessary in functioning urban environments with a wealth of transit options.
Using Envelope’s own data, we estimate the number of residential off-street parking spaces that are required based on the City’s parking regulations and the existing built condition of the City to be over 1,000,000. Non-residential parking adds roughly 1,100,000 additional spots. These are in addition to the free on-street spaces already on-offer.
The Space We Need.
In other words, NYC provides well over 5,100,000 spaces for private car storage. At 160 square feet per space this totals ~816 million square feet, or about 30 sq miles of space in NYC (not counting commercial parking garages or bus / taxi / public-fleet parking), for a total area nearly the size of Miami, or 10% of NYC’s land area.
It is not surprising, given this vehicular utopia, that car ownership continues to rise, with a seemingly pandemic-driven spike in summer, 2020. Today, there are well over two million private cars in NYC across 45% of households, not counting commercial vehicles, buses, trailers, motorcycles, farm vehicles, or taxis. In July, 2020, more than 40,000 new cars were registered, many to first-time buyers. For every private car, there will be ~2.6 parking spaces — 1.5 public/on-street and 1.1 more private/off-street — for its exclusive use.
Reducing On-Street Parking
In aggregate, in a city as expensive and tight as NYC, the square footage allocated to private car storage is staggering. Since about ½ of car owners use the curb to park overnight, UCLA Professor Donald Shoup recommends charging local garage rates for curb parking, ~$400-$600/month in Manhattan, $175-$300/month in Brooklyn, and $200/month in Queens, for revenue of $3b/year. These proceeds could be used to fund additional clean public transportation options, more parks and green spaces, pollution mitigation, health care, and a far more-efficient, green, and economically-just City.
Reducing Zoning-required Parking
Zoning also should be stripped of all minimum requirements for off-street parking, while limits on the maximum allowable spaces would continue to apply. As above, developer dollars saved can be submitted via taxes to fund clean transit options and other public services to support an influx of new residents. These initially can be applied disproportionately to transit deserts to ensure equality of access to alternative transport options.
While cyclists, pedestrians, new micro-mobility providers, and urban planners have been fretting about ubiquitous car parking for years, COVID has finally brought the issue mainstream. Today, more and more people try to move around the city using bikes, scooters, and their God-given feet. More and more restaurants, bars, retailers (and soon schools, houses of worship, cultural events, meetings, and more) try to use every available square inch of outdoor space to serve their constituents safely and pleasantly. For these citizens and businesses, parked (and moving) cars take up space, and are a dangerous, revenue-depleting, constant reminder of the resurgence of congestion and pollution that had magically disappeared at the height of Shelter-in-Place.
NYC should act immediately to strike parking minimums from zoning, and to reduce car parking on our streets via progressively steep fees or simple elimination of spaces. The private sector can figure out parking space supply. The quest for a 15-minute city demands it.
