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Free parking outside the $1,000/mo garage

This $1,000+/mo. parking space (without the 18+% parking tax! but one Curbed commenters calls bullshit) on the Upper East Side has been bouncing around the NYC blogosphere, and Curbed commenter low baller just about sums up my thoughts on the matter: And people howl because street parking is going up to $1 / hour (but of course free after 7pm and mostly free all the time off the avenues)? So let me get this straight – Upper East Side apartment: $4,000 a month, parking $1,000 a month, parking spot outside said apartment free, or at most $1 an hour. And oh, how they howl!

Parking politics in the 1920s and a bleg

While doing research for something totally unrelated, I came across this paper by Asha Weinstein (.pdf) on parking policy in Boston in the 1920s. One of the things she (?) discusses is the political feasibility of charging for the right to park downtown: Despite this general consensus, however, there was no shared view on what might constitute effective downtown parking policies. On the one hand, most people supported modest policy changes such as modifying existing regulations, improving motorist compliance with those regulations, or building more off-street parking, but even the strongest advocates of such policies never claimed they would significantly impact congestion. At the other end of the spectrum, a few people called for the drastic options of banning all street parking during business hours, or charging a fee to park on the streets. These proposals were touted as highly effective congestion relief, but they garnered little serious support and generated storms of opposition, and were never treated as serious proposals by the larger community. […] So you might think to yourself, “Banning parking entirely seems kind of draconian, but pricing parking at least sounds rational.” But you’re not a Bostonian living in 1926: Even less popular than a parking ban was the idea of a parking fee. In January 1926, this new approach to parking was proposed by a sub-committee of Boston’s Ways and Means Committee and Mayor Nichols. The proposal called for keeping the existing parking regulations, but charging drivers an annual fee of $5 to $10 for the right to park on city streets. The opposition from business and automobile advocacy groups was decisive and adversarial. All the city’s newspapers ran scathing articles. For example, the high-society Transcript immediately published an editorial warning that the proposed fee would be counterproductive as a revenue-generator because it would likely […]

Link list

1. Development blogger Roving Bandit criticizes UN-Habitat executive director Joan Clos for saying that Africa is “confronted with […] the challenge of preventing the formation of new slums.” I wonder if Clos thinks that the Lower East Side was born with yoga studios and Starbucks. 2. A kidney dialysis center in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia wants to open in an abandoned industrial site, and when the City Council moved to overrule the local residents’ objections to the clinic staying open nine extra hours a week, they sued and called it an attack on democracy. The residents claim to want “peace and quiet,” which I guess you can’t get when you have people whose kidneys are failing all around you. Edit: Commenter Terry Nicol pointed me in the direction of this story earlier this year about a locally-owned Chestnut Hill grocery store that was threatened by a local resident for selling prepared food. 3. Yonah Freemark writes about Dallas’ new and extensive, but underperforming light rail network. Apparently the new lines were built along automobile corridors and bypass the densest parts of town entirely, and so the system functions more as a glorified park-and-ride rather than as an engine for infill growth. 4. Topher Matthews lays out his proposal for “performance parking” (i.e., charging market rates for street parking) in Georgetown. This is desperately needed in this very trendy and congested area – I remember one hairdresser on Wisconsin Ave. telling me about the convoluted game of hide-and-seek she played in order to park for free on the residential streets. Unfortunately, one DC Commissioner apparently believes that, even in one of DC’s most walkable neighborhoods, parking minimums are necessary: “This is an office building. There’s no Metro, people are going to drive.” 5. Apparently satellite photos show that the […]

Environmentalism vs. density, Clean Water Act edition

I know I’ve kind of beaten this horse dead, but this environmentalism vs. density stuff just enrages me too much to relegate it to a link list. Here are some excerpts from an article about how the EPA’s proposed new rules for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay could impede dense, environmentally-friendly development: For decades, the federal Clean Water Act has tried to get communities to reduce the effects of stormwater runoff. Heavy rains often carry fertilizers and soil into streams and rivers — ultimately killing aquatic life in vulnerable bodies like Chesapeake Bay. In response to tightening federal requirements, the state of Maryland is putting together a regulatory system that aims to cut the amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment flowing into the degraded Bay. But opinion is sharply divided over whether the plan will have a good or bad effect on the character and location of future development. […] In the letter, Potter warned, however, that there are “potential conflicts between the TMDL mandate and Smart Growth” — conflicts that neither the state of Maryland nor the Environmental Protection Agency has adequately addressed. “I believe the WIP will definitely make it harder to do low-density greenfield sprawl,” says a forum organizer, Stuart Sirota, principal of the New Urbanism-oriented TND Planning Group. “But I am concerned that the [state plan] may have the unintended consequence of making it more difficult to do higher-density infill within redevelopment areas and growth areas.” Another forum organizer, Jim Noonan, who in the 1990s helped implement Governor Parris Glendening’s original smart growth program, agrees with Sirota that the Maryland plan may hinder dense, walkable, transit-served development — the kind of development that meets smart growth objectives. Noonan, practice leader for comprehensive planning at KCI Technologies, also predicts that unless the watershed plan is altered, it […]

Livechat invitation and more thinktank responses

As promised, I want to reprint the responses I got from Wendell Cox and Randal O’Toole, but first I wanted to invite everyone to a livechat that’s being organized by Tim Lee. Tim used to write for Cato, but now he’s pursuing a PhD at MIT and doing freelance writing on tech policy. He organizes these livechats occasionally and has been kind enough to ask me to be his guest, so if you want to participate (or just watch), go to Tim’s website on Wednesday between 9:30 and 10:30 pm EST, and click on “General Chat” on the bar in the lower right-hand corner. The audience should be relatively small, so if you have something you want to ask or discuss or debate, there’s a good chance that we’ll get to it. So anyway, Marc Scribner has posted his response to my response to his response to my response (sorry, couldn’t help myself) to Seattle’s recent land use liberalization. Wendell Cox’s response was similar to Marc’s, so my disagreements are similar, but Randal O’Toole took a different approach, and one that I pretty much completely agree with: I have no significant problem with liberalizing parking codes. My one caveat is that planners need to remember why those parking minima were there in the first place. In some cases, they were put in because some guru somewhere said that was the way to do it. But in other cases, there was a genuine concern about the need for off-street parking in order to prevent congestion around on-street parking. In this case, I agree with Don Shoup that the remedy is for the city to charge market rates for on-street parking. Sometimes, of course, the market rate is zero. But other times parking should be metered to insure that everyone who really wants […]

Marc Scribner at CEI on Seattle’s land use regulation

A few days ago I wrote about inner Seattle’s residential density liberalization, and I mentioned that I’d emailed a few land use writers at libertarian think tanks to get their reaction. I’m happy to report that all of them responded, and throughout the week I’ll post links to/reprint their responses, along with any comments I might have. So first I’d like to direct y’all to CEI’s OpenMarkets.org where Marc Scribner responded. He essentially said that the move looks like a net benefit in terms of land use liberalization, but that Seattle’s limits on sprawling growth (as opposed to infill growth) are more serious and costly. I’m glad that he agrees with me that Seattle’s new plan will be a positive marginal change, but I’m not sure that I agree with some of the other things he says. I’m certainly not going to defend King County’s urban growth boundary – we’re opposed to them, and think that people who are concerned about sprawl could achieve better results less coercively by simply allowing more infill and stopping the subsidies for all modes of transportation. But I do wonder how Marc reached the conclusion that sprawl restrictions are more onerous than density restrictions. He points to the run-up in housing costs in Seattle over the last decade, but given that we’ve already established that Seattle has both sprawl-prohibiting and density-prohibiting regulations, I don’t see how he’s decided that the former are more significant than the latter. This is a difficult question to answer, and on some level can only be done properly by liberalizing and observing. But barring that, econometric methods can be used to make guesses as to how restrictive such regulations really are – something we’ve tried to do before with parking minimums. I do not, however, see any of those […]

NYC & DC links

New York City 1. A while ago I wrote about how Manhattanville’s blight, and therefore Columbia’s ability to use eminent domain, was the fault of bad zoning. The nearby neighborhood of West Harlem looks like it’s learned that lesson, and is seeking to protect itself against encroachment from Columbia by upzoning itself. Unfortunately it’s not a pure upzoning – there’re also affordable housing mandates, regulations against “sliver buildings,” and some unspecified protections for existing structures. The massive 100-block rezoning is the first in half a century. 2. A handful of buildings in Downtown Brooklyn may get historic district’d. 3. A massive parking garage in Jamaica, Queens is receiving huge tax breaks, ostensibly for reducing congestion. Why am I not surprised to see that it’s owned by an organization with “development corporation” in its name? 4. Janette Sadik-Khan wants to expand the “pop-up cafe” program that essentially lets businesses use parking spaces as seating areas. I personally think that anyone who’s willing to pay more than the current metered parking rates should be allowed to do whatever they want with the space. Washington, DC 1. Security expert Bruce Schneier suggests closing the Washington Monument “as a monument to our fears,” and Matt Yglesias wants terrorists to blow it up – something I’ve suggested before. Maybe if that boring obelisk were gone, people would give up on DC’s height restriction and consider turning the Mall into a place that’s actually pleasant to be. 2. Unsuck DC Metro on why the Metro’s escalators suck – it’s the unions!

Environmental review vs. congestion pricing

One of the sickest paradoxes in American law has got to be the arduous environmental review that’s applied to transit and dense building projects, but I didn’t think it was this bad. From an article about San Mateo County residents bitching about being asked to pitch in for the roads they use: The earliest the city could set up congestion pricing would be 2015, after a lengthy environmental review process. Note that except for maybe a few toll booths or, more likely, cameras, a congestion charge doesn’t require any new construction. I’m really curious as to what statute makes such an absurd environmental review necessary – any readers care to take a guess?

Seattle’s land use liberalization

It’s not often that I find a plan that I can wholeheartedly agree with, but this one from Seattle sounds damn near perfect, at least in terms of marginal change (my emphasis…apologies to Publicola for stealing their content!): 1. Instead of the current generic land-use standards, the new regulations include five different allowed housing types: Cottage housing (collections of small single-family-style houses), row houses (rows of units attached by a single wall), townhouses (attached units that occupy space from ground to roof), autocourt townhouses (townhouses that each have a private garage), and apartments. 2. The maximum allowable height would be increased from 25 to 30 feet (basically, from three to a potential four stories)—a change that prompted commenters like Eastlake gadfly Chris Leman to accuse the council of supporting “larger and taller condos… that are bulkier and …. really worse than the worst townhouses” because they would block views, make it impossible to plant trees, and displace low-income housing. 3. The size of new developments would be determined by floor-area ratio (the ratio of a building’s floor area to the lot on which it is built) rather than simple building footprint, allowing more flexibility in building size. 4. Row houses would not be subject to the same density limits as auto-oriented townhouses, allowing them to cover more of a lot. 5. The law also includes new design standards to improve the appearance of new low-rise buildings and make them fit better into neighborhoods; 6. The changes would reduce the setbacks required between housing and the street (and between low-rise townhouses or row houses and each other), allowing more development on a lot; 7. Require developers to provide space for garbage, recycling, and food waste bins for smaller buildings, making it easier for residents of small town houses and apartment buildings […]

Reinflating the housing bubble through the FHA?

I’d like to believe that, at least for another ten years or so, no amount of government money will be able to override investors’ memories of the most recent housing bubble. But we may soon find out what lessons we really learned: While everyone has been watching Fannie and Freddie, the administration has quietly shifted most federal high-risk mortgage initiatives to FHA, the government’s original subprime lender. Along with two other federal agencies, FHA now accounts for about 60 percent of all U.S. home purchase mortgage originations. This amounts to more than $1 trillion and is rising rapidly. The administration justifies this policy by saying it is necessary to support the mortgage market, yet borrowers are once again receiving high-risk loans. […] The Dodd-Frank Act [the recent financial reform], however, exempts FHA and other government agencies from appropriate standards on mortgage quality. This will give low-quality mortgages a direct route into the market once again; it will be like putting Fannie and Freddie back in the same business, but with an explicit government guarantee. For example, thanks to expanded government lending, 60 percent of home purchase loans now have down payments of less than 5 percent, compared to 40 percent at the height of the bubble, and the FHA projects that it will increase its insured loans total to $1.34 trillion by 2013. Indeed, the FHA just announced its intention to push almost half of its home purchase volume into subprime territory by 2014-2017, essentially a guarantee to put taxpayers at risk again. The subprime bubble was years in the making by the time it popped, so if this FHA lending doesn’t continue for much longer and/or doesn’t accelerate, it might not be a problem. But it does make me worry that the political incentives haven’t changed since the ’90s […]

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