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L.A. Council Committee Approves Step toward Eliminating Parking Requirements (la.streetsblog.org)

submitted 1 month ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/citylife@beehaw.org

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Yesterday, the Los Angeles City Council Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee approved a motion that could lay the foundation for ending harmful parking requirements for new development.

This could lead to developers right-sizing parking based on what makes sense for a specific project, instead of current one-size-fits-all city codes that apply to both the urban core and far-flung suburbs. Eliminating city parking requirements does not mean that all, or even most, new development will have no parking. It means that parking will be tailored to specific needs for each project.

Many Streetsblog readers know that parking mandates increase housing costs, including rents. Experts term these generally outdated excessive requirements a pseudoscience. Eliminating parking requirements is good for walkability, housing (quantity, affordability, and streamlining approvals), and climate.

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[–] Hirom@beehaw.org 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I assume this is about eliminating car parking requirements.

What about changing the parking requirements to be vehicle agnostic? Require construction projects to have parking for X people, rather than X cars, and consider the requirement met if it's a mix of bicycle parking, cargo bicycle parking, and car parking.

Bicycle parking takes less space. So that'd be an incentive to deliver projets with more bicycle parking, and should help reduce housing cost.

California may not be bicycle-friendly, but it has to start somewhere to be. A colleague of mine used to commute to work in that area using an electric bicycle, it helps cover more distance than a classic bicycle.

[–] alyaza@beehaw.org 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What about changing the parking requirements to be vehicle agnostic? Require construction projects to have parking for X people, rather than X cars, and consider the requirement met if it’s a mix of bicycle parking, cargo bicycle parking, and car parking.

this is already how most parking mandates work (they're not for X amount of cars, they're obliged to have a set ratio of parking spaces to people), and changing it in this manner would almost certainly lead to no change because Los Angeles is extremely car-dependent and sprawling, and bicycling is only useful with actual pro-bike infrastructure which largely doesn't exist.

[–] Hirom@beehaw.org 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Requirements do specify a number of ~8x18 ft cat parking spaces. The regulation mention the space needed to park a car, rather than the word "car", to make things precise and consistent. See https://www.munistandards.com/ca/los-angles/parking-requirements/

Good point on the overall transport infrastructure. Parking is necessary but not sufficient. Parking requirements and urban planning should work in pair to make the city human and bicycle-friendly. It won't happen overnight, so better start soon.

Requiring car parking space around a building means there's more space between building, ie buildings are further part. So the parking requirement itself contribute to city sprawl.