Proposal to restrict parking hits snag
From today’s Examiner, “Controversial legislation that would limit parking downtown hit a snag recently when an opponent filed an appeal related to the measure. The proposed regulations, sponsored by Supervisor Chris Daly, would limit parking in new housing downtown as well as ban any new stand-alone parking garages.”
“The Board of Supervisors Land Use committee was scheduled to hear the legislation Wednesday, but Wade Randlett of SFSOS, a quality-of-life advocacy group, challenged the environmental review by the Planning Department. Randlett said his intent was to slow down the proposed rules to allow more time for scrutiny.”
“Last month, the Planning Commission recommended a maximum of three parking spots for every four housing units. Daly’s legislation calls for one spot for every two units. Already, several downtown housing projects have less than one space per unit.”
I still don’t understand why they don’t just drop the parking requirement and see what the developers would build on their own. Again, forcing the market to do something artificially is only going to cause problems. Right now there is a minimum number of parking spots per unit that must be provided. If the requirement was axed (with no new requirement) perhaps we’d get a best-of-both-worlds situation where some buildings (in the right locations with lower priced housing) could be built with less or no parking, while the locations and unit types that would only sell if there were parking could be preserved.
Just a thought… And nobody has seemed to have suggested it…
The parking “requirement” isnt so much a SF government thing as it is a bank loan thing. Banks are extremely hesitant in CA to loan large amounts of money to huge residential projects if they dont have parking.
Anonymous at December 8th, 2005 at 6:20 pm ( )Even in SF, when building next to DT, Banks want parking with their projects.
Sheesh, what’s wrong with parking? Many people have cars. There is a shortage of parking spaces. Build more parking! This is not rocket science.
I’m sure even Chris Daly has a car.
Anonymous at December 8th, 2005 at 10:26 pm ( )good point. perhaps folks should demand that Daly give up his car? I know he rides his bike a lot, but he likely has a car, too…
Matt Lanning at December 8th, 2005 at 11:36 pm ( )What’s wrong with parking is the additional cost of parking, the traffic created and effect it has on architecture taking space at the street level away from retail/storefronts and create parking garages.
Many make the argument that housing without parking will not sell, but the fact is less than 40% of households downtown own a car and requiring parking only drives up the cost of housing either by including a parking space in the cost of a unit (which seems to be getting less common as parking becomes more and more a separate rental) or by taking away space within the building that could have otherwise been turned into housing units.
There have been a good number of letters in the papers, mainly from those living outside of downtown, that portray it as though no one would ever travel downtown again to go shopping or to shows because there would no longer be any parking. Businesses back the car drivers out of fear, when they would in fact be better off without parking. How much does it add to the cost of business for stores to provide a huge amount of space for single occupancy vehicles?
With less private parking downtown, fewer residents would have cars because of the difficulty in keeping and parking them. They’d put a greater demand on public transit, which if we Muni were competent, would mean more and better transit options, which in turn would make it easier for even more downtown residents to ditch their cars (many already are for other alternatives like City Carshare and Zipcar), which would mean less congested streets for those coming from outside of downtown to come and shop or work.
Jamisonw at December 27th, 2005 at 5:49 pm ( )