City Council Work Session   11/8/2023

Okay.

Why is that?

Oh, I know.

Got it.

Okay, are we ready to get started?

Yes, sir.

All right, hereby call this meeting 630 work session, City Council to order.

I will note for the record that all five of us are here.

Ms.

Thomas is not actually in the room with us because I hope she has something more productive to do, but she's in the building if we need her.

So tonight's agenda item is really very simple.

We're here to talk about parking.

James Friese All right.

Good evening, Mayor and members of Council.

My name is James Friese, Director of Neighborhood Development Services.

And as you said, we're here to talk about parking and the different parts of our proposed zoning ordinance that address that issue.

I'm not going to talk at you for very long because I'm going to turn things over to Ben Chambers, our Director, our Manager of Transportation Planning.

Good evening, Council.

I'm Ben Chambers.

I'm the Transportation Planning Manager for the City.

Within the proposed Development Code, there are several elements that address the nexus of land use and transportation concerns.

These elements include increased densities and mixed uses that can promote the efficiency of active transportation and transit and design considerations that increase the appeal and usefulness of our public realms for non-motorized travel.

Tonight, your discussion will be focused on another of those transportation and land use concerns.

specifically vehicular parking.

On this topic, the comprehensive plan set out a goal to provide a balanced approach to parking that supports economic vitality, achieves urban form goals, minimizes environmental impacts, and accommodates pedestrians, bicycles, transit users, and disabled individuals.

As a strategy for achieving this goal, the comprehensive plan recommends examining the potential for phasing out minimum parking requirements with a sub-strategy that the city should manage parking demand to prevent consistent, disruptive on-street parking spillover in residential areas.

The proposed development code would remove minimum parking requirements for off-street vehicle parking.

It does this with the intent to reduce parking demand, support the use of alternative forms of transportation, promote reuse and redevelopment of existing buildings, reduce the overall cost of construction and development, and increase the overall efficiency and use of taxable land within the city.

Removing the mandate for additional parking supply from new development is critical to reducing the parking demand and supporting the use of alternative forms of transportation in the city.

Since the 1950s and 1960s, cities across this country have been relying on minimum parking requirement regulations to manage parking supply as a mitigation to development impacts on parking demand.

The minimum parking requirements that have taken shape in these decades have largely been based on the Institute of Transportation Engineers Parking Generation Manual

and the predicted traffic volumes that are associated with specific land use types in that manual.

The ITE manual assigns parking needs for each land use based on factors that are seemingly correlated with anticipated volumes, so things you might think of like retail square footage, presence of a drive-through, number of employees, those sorts of things.

In fact, these correlations have no statistical significance whatsoever.

They ignore the design context and alternative access options that could be available to a given site and have resulted in overbuilt parking lots and developments that are not oriented towards pedestrian, bicycle, or transit access.

Reducing parking demand also supports another goal from the comprehensive plan.

Improve quality of life and promote active living by reducing automobile use and congestion and supporting multimodal options for safe and convenient travel in conjunction with implementation of the future land use vision.

According to the Institution for Highways and Transportation in the United Kingdom, who back in like 2005 were very focused on looking at congestion in the London area.

You may be familiar with their congestion pricing they have in central London that came out of the study.

The tool that they identified that was most useful for limiting car trips was limiting parking availability.

Changing the parking availability either at the origin or destination end of a trip changes the cost benefit analysis of traveling by an automobile.

Removing parking minimums also supports the development of affordable housing.

The City's inclusionary zoning analysis showed that reducing parking minimums would be effective at supporting the financial feasibility of constructing new mid-rise apartments with support for the deepest affordability levels.

Removing parking minimums removes the burdens of cost and space associated with building unnecessary additional parking.

A parking space for reference is about 300 square feet.

A surface parking spot can cost about $5,000 of space to construct.

If we're talking about a structured parking space, the median cost is over $20,000 of space.

There are also ongoing maintenance costs on top of these capital costs.

When you compound these together, when you're looking at a multi-unit development,

The cost and space requirements that are associated with minimum parking disincentivize the provision of affordable units and in the most walkable, bikeable, transit accessible areas of our city would financially burden the residents and businesses by requiring an expensive, unneeded resource.

Charlottesville would not be alone in removing minimum parking requirements.

In the last decade or so many cities have removed minimum vehicle parking requirements from their city codes including nearby cities of Raleigh, Richmond and Roanoke.

In fact downtown Charlottesville itself has not had minimum parking requirements for years.

Experience has shown that generally developers will continue to support off-street parking to meet the needs of prospective residents, commuters, customers, and employees of newly developed sites.

By removing minimum requirements, this allows the developer to balance the competing cost and space needs as they design the optimal project for a given site.

Removing minimum parking requirements from the development code will not mean that the city is disengaged from the management of parking demands or supply.

Within the proposed development code, transportation demand management plans or TDM plans would be required for larger development projects.

the TDM plan would include an estimated an estimate of anticipated travel levels and identification of the means by which that demand would be addressed either through a combination of on-street off-street or shared parking spaces short-term and long-term bicycle parking accommodations for pedestrians cyclists

transit riders and the mobility impaired or the employment of TDM strategies for reducing single occupancy trips like carpooling, shuttle services, guaranteed ride home programs and parking cash out programs.

The proposed development code also contains detailed regulations associated with the provision of pedestrian access and the provision of bicycle parking.

Regulation of off-street vehicle parking that is within the proposed development code is focused on design provisions that would ensure

The pedestrians are able to travel through safe, comfortable, and attractive environments, as well as mitigating negative environmental effects of developing off-street parking.

The proposed development code, like our city's current existing zoning code, would not regulate the use of on-street parking.

The use of on-street parking is currently managed by our residential permit parking program and by time restrictions on parking spaces around the downtown mall.

NDS is currently developing as part of our work plan for 2024 a scope of work with consultant support for a review and update of these on-street parking regulations while previous parking studies in the city have focused on parking needs around the downtown area this upcoming parking study will be more focused on the process that identifies on street parking issues and employees parking management solutions

The objective of this parking management program is to be responsive to specific neighborhood needs and changing context of those needs as development occurs.

with the understanding that removal of minimum parking requirements in the proposed development code supports the city's goals in the comprehensive plan related to affordable housing, land use coordination, and parking management.

And with the understanding that those impacts to on-street parking would be medicated through TDM plans, the shifting of travel modes, and the reformed on-street parking management process,

We'd like to turn this topic over to you for discussion and we welcome any questions you have related to parking and the proposed development code.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

That was very helpful.

Yes, that's just in the past year.

Okay.

Citywide?

I believe so.

Because Raleigh started

Just this year, citywide as well.

They went straight to citywide.

So this is what a person has suggested.

putting in the ability for a block with the majority of the residents in the block in favor of this to ask for zoned parking, issuing two decals for each lot.

Therefore, the existing tenants are protected from development overloading their street, and it is the developer who will only get two permits to determine how to best develop.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think what they're describing is similar to a permit program.

And what do we have now?

It depends on where you are in the city.

We have a permit program that defines different locations in the city that are covered by that permit program.

And then if you look at the regulation itself, it spells out addresses and number of permits each of those addresses get.

And so one of the things we're committing to if we do this is that in the next six months or so we revamp that program.

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, I support this doing away with the parking minimums.

What you just told us, read to us makes sense to me.

I've listened to arguments on both sides.

I'm a person who has three adult children and a bunch of other folks who come swinging through my house from time to time, and they'll have to adjust, I guess.

But I see the environmental logic.

I see the construction cost logic.

I don't think we have any TDM requirements currently.

Well, the TDM program that we're proposing in the zoning ordinance would be a new section, and it's triggered by projects that are over 50,000 square feet, so generally, as proposed, that's a movable number,

but 50,000 square feet, so roughly a 50 unit apartment building or similar, at that point in time they would have to provide to us an analysis of their potential transportation demand and proposals for solutions.

And that's in this now?

It is in the current draft ordinance.

Now, today we do require projects over a certain size to provide a transportation, you know,

Impact Analysis.

And we do, based on that, look at mitigation measures.

So you've seen in recent projects things like dedicated scooter parking, shared vehicles, dedicated bicycle parking.

There's been a range of things that various projects have come in and proposed.

So in a lot of ways, what this is doing is formalizing that.

Right, right, because, I mean, this just seemed like centuries ago when I did it, it was like, okay, well,

The PDC, they're doing the carpooling, and CAT is doing this, so it's separate, they're doing this, and so it's not really, you know, and I guess it would be then we may have to hire someone because this is really going to have to be a robust type of system where someone is saying, well, you know, I don't have a car, what are my options, and this should be some

I'm definitely in support of this.

This is kind of one of those things when I was in planning school that, you know, it was ideal.

It was in the late 80s, but now it's good to see that cities

are doing this, and I think it's the quickest way, I mean, and some of the information that you gave, Ben, correct, sir, about, you know, that you can do a lot of other things, but this is the most direct or quickest way, I don't know, I forgot the exact language you used, but this is a way to, you know, to get, if they don't have any options, then they will.

Well, the concern that I have is that all of the places where folks have cited an example of changing parking and eliminating parking requirements are all places that have meaningful functional transit systems.

which we do not and we are a number of years away from doing that even if we get the money together to do it it is probably as I understand what we've been hearing through the regional transit partnership at least three years away before we can sort of start

getting at what they call the constrained solution, and we don't have the money for that yet, and we don't know where we will get the money for that.

When one talks about, well, let's use London as an example, London has one of the best developed transit systems in the world.

We look at Raleigh, Raleigh started off, I mean, Raleigh's still got a better system than we do, but Raleigh started off by saying,

We're going to only eliminate the parking requirements in areas where there is adequate transit access.

And I don't know what criteria they use to do that, but

Clearly that was a step.

I've looked at some other things that talk about the abolition of parking requirements.

And in virtually every case, it's a situation, it's a city that's got a much better transit system than we have.

My concern is not at all, I mean, I'm perfectly fine

with the abolition of parking requirements in downtown areas, although to be candid,

We have two large parking garages that fill that bill.

So it's probably not fair to say that we have done anything with parking downtown to change anybody's behavior.

We have not.

We have simply socialized the solution.

And as I look at places, you know, I had this conversation with someone a couple days ago where

It seemed to me that the answer that the person was suggesting to virtually everything was, well, they should just get e-bikes.

and first of all speaking for a somewhat older generation that's probably not going to be happening for an awful lot of folks.

Charlottesville has enough difficulties with terrain and weather and so on so that there are probably a lot of folks who would find that to be an unacceptable solution.

My concern overall has been particularly when we talked as we did in the comprehensive plan about phasing out the minimum parking requirements

I'm okay with the idea that five years from now, ten years from now, we end up with no parking requirements provided that we in fact follow through on what we've been talking about.

At least we've been talking about it more seriously, but it's still frankly still talk to have an adequate transit system.

and I happen to live in an area where from my house it's about a 15 minute walk to the nearest bus stop where one bus runs once an hour and it goes downtown and if I wanted to take the bus to any other place including the University of Virginia I'd have to change and basically it would take an hour and a half to two hours to get to where I want to go.

at least at the moment let's not kid ourselves that is not a meaningful transit solution and I fear that if we enact a provision that ends up abolishing parking requirements completely as opposed to finding some way to key it to transit use or transit access that we're going to end up with a situation where we're going to have a bunch of people who

If somebody builds an apartment complex, and this is of course one of the things we still haven't sorted out is what apartment complexes we're going to allow in RA, RB, and RC.

If somebody builds an apartment complex in an RC zone and they've got say 12 units of housing in there and all those folks have cars and where are they being parked?

They're being parked on the street.

It's easy to say that the market will take care of that as to the building being built, but that's again a question of externalizing the cost, of imposing a cost on somebody who is an innocent bystander in the transaction of taking away the parking that they've relied on for many years.

I used my own example.

We have a driveway that will certainly take a car.

It would even take two cars or even three cars if we wanted to have to move every car in order to get one of them out when the time comes if there were no other place to park on the street.

If my neighbors who are going to be RB decide to build apartment complexes

Even if they've got only allowed two spots per lot?

Well, if the RB lot is only allowed two spots per lot,

It would depend on the outcomes of that parking permit study that we're trying to accomplish in the next year.

We keep, of course, if we had a meaningful enforcement of our parking requirements, that would also make a difference, which we have not, as I keep hearing when I talk to folks who live in the university area.

They complain that there is no enforcement and they can't park their own cars in front of their own houses.

And I just, I think

Where we are right now, I don't think we are ready for abolishing parking requirements in the residential zones.

Let's see.

I'm also curious, I saw the reference in the memo that we got earlier today about the inclusionary zoning report of August 2022 and the reference in the report

says the city's inclusionary zoning analysis from August 2022 showed that reducing parking minimums would be effective at supporting the financial feasibility of constructing new mid-rise apartments with support for the deepest affordability levels.

There were several different policy levers that were investigated through that report that looked at how they impacted the feasibility of building different

Where?

Do you know?

I do see one paragraph.

Well, I'm curious because your statement in here is a much more authoritative statement, shall I say, than anything that I remember reading in the report.

And that's the reason I'm asking the question.

Yeah, there should be a chart in there that sort of looks at different levels of affordability along the left side of the column, and then across the top there are different

MR. I do see a page, page 28 and page 29 talks, has some of that detail.

Anyway, okay.

I'll have to look at that in more detail and see if I can figure out what it really means.

That also gets to the question that arises in some other contexts.

I'm trying to figure out whether the analysis done in August of 2022 and the analysis done more recently by the RKG folks talk to one another.

I'm not sure.

Well, the RKG analysis I did not interpret, and maybe I didn't ask the right questions at the time, but I did not interpret that analysis as saying we're going to look at these specific criteria.

They were looking at broader questions, not trying to get to this level of detail.

And this level of detail, on the other hand,

They're suggesting that it is.

It says by reducing parking minimums by 50%, mid-rise apartments could support the deepest affordability levels.

Well, I've been trying to figure out, and frankly, I had not gone back to look at the 2022 analysis until I saw this comment in the letter earlier this morning.

But I mean, I think at bottom line, the fundamental point that's being made is that parking is very expensive, and particularly in environments where the cost of including

parking into a project is a substantial cost of that project both in the cost of building the parking as well as in the lost land opportunity, right?

Because once that land is now used for parking it can't be used for something else like providing housing.

And so the opportunity cost.

And particularly we talk about when you're hoping that people will be able to make the choice of not having a vehicle

They end up being locked in and having to pay for the cost of that parking as part of the rent or as part of owning a property whether they're going to use it or not.

That ends up becoming kind of one of the fundamental fairness issues of a minimum parking requirement.

And I think it is helpful to separate the notion of parking regulation, a minimum parking requirement, from

from the issue of providing parking.

So you mentioned the parking downtown and how we have that in parking garages.

Parking garages is far more efficient.

A shared parking methodology is far more efficient than requiring each and every lot to provide its own parking.

In fact, we wouldn't have a downtown in any recognizable form if each property was required to provide its own parking.

just it wouldn't work.

And as we are looking for opportunities to provide more housing, more economic development opportunities by no longer mandating that every single property provide parking, we are creating opportunity for shared parking solutions that can more efficiently allow us to more efficiently make use of the land.

I understand that in a commercial context.

Residential uses can share parking resources with commercial uses.

In fact, that's a very common approach in mixed use areas to share those resources.

Sure.

Yep.

But I come back to mandating the provision on parking for folks who may or may not actually, if they use that parking or want to use that parking, but are now required to bear the burden of the cost of that parking.

And suggesting that the policy that's been adopted, a minimum parking requirement basically says

that every single property within the city has to devote a portion of its land area to parking as a use.

And yet we know that that has detrimental impacts on the city from an environmental standpoint, from a fiscal and economic standpoint, from the standpoint of walkability and transportation and all those things that we're trying to accomplish.

And so then the question is, what benefit is that

required parking providing for public benefit because I would argue that a parking space is a private benefit.

The public benefit that it provides is theoretically to reduce congestion.

That was the original idea behind minimum parking requirements.

But what we found over time is that the more parking you provide, the more cars you have and the more congestion you end up with, particularly as that parking led to reducing the use of things like transit and walking and biking.

and so then the other thing it does is reduce spillover parking.

Well our most effective way of dealing with the issue of spillover parking is by regulating the on-street parking.

That's by far going to be more effective than requiring parking on the site because that we can directly control and we can do things like say we're going to limit parking provision to

I don't mean to seem to be trivializing it, but there are an awful lot of folks who, for example, let's say somebody wants to have a party on the street.

Where are those folks going to park?

Sure.

Well, they can take an Uber.

I mean, that's, I don't mean to be flippant, but that is how people get around, I mean, it is.

I work with folks.

$40 a ride.

It is like 25 to 30.

Well, I think the thing is, is that, I mean, to the point about having a party, I think that's right.

People are going to have to find a different way to have a party.

I mean, it's part of what we're saying here.

I think it's a paradigm shift of how, I mean, I get everything you're saying, Lloyd, and I get it, but, you know, it's one of those things that we're going to, if we continue to have to wait on having transit system Ubers that cost $5 as opposed to $25 or $30, I just think we'll be kicking this can down the road for years, and in the meantime, we're trying to get

building zoning ordinance where people can go start building stuff for us.

And I also think that developers are smart.

I'm not saying the market will handle everything.

I don't want to be flipping that way either.

Well, do we want to lower that number?

I think that that was one of the things I had down to maybe we can look at that because, you know, we don't have a lot of development.

You know, I thought that

We saw, we had a presentation, I think it was by UCLA, to say, you know, because I don't hear you say that maybe we make this transition over time, but I thought that that UCLA study said that, you know, kind of going incrementally is not, you know, you're not going to get the impact, you know, and so I don't know how you, we're just going to,

I remember the UCLA study is dealing with parking minimums in that way.

Yeah, and with those developments, you have to have parking.

You have to factor that in as well.

Anyway, I've considered parking as part of that as well.

We're in the process now, we're trying to work out solutions, and I would, you know, from you and maybe Michael, who, and I understand, and that was my concern, we hear complaints, you know, from some developments now, think of the one on Fifth Street, where there's not a lot of on-street, no on-street parking, and, you know,

I know that some of the residents there, they may not be happy, but somehow they deal with it.

They have parties and things like that.

So what are your suggestions if you don't think that we need parking?

Well, my first question was to turn and look at the question of what does it mean to phase in parking requirements, which is what our comp plan talks about.

And I was hoping that there would be some experience and maybe the experience of Raleigh is an example where you start off by saying let's apply it to the places that have good transit and

That's your phasing in process.

I went to a website that tries to describe walkable cities and walkable neighborhoods in cities.

And in Charlottesville, the areas that are deemed walkable are basically the University Avenue corridor up through the downtown mall and down JPA aways.

Anything north of the bypass is not a walkable neighborhood.

Anything south, most of Belmont isn't regarded as a walkable neighborhood.

The goal is to get there, though, right?

Well, but do you get there by snapping your fingers and say, OK, forget it, pal.

You've got to walk a mile to the nearest

to the nearest store or the nearest bus stop or whatever?

Or do you say, you know, let's look for a way to phase that in in some way?

And I don't know what the answer is because, again, I was hoping that there would be some folks with some superior expertise who would be able to tell me what phasing in in our comp plan actually meant.

And so one of the questions I had coming in here was what would it mean to phase in

a parking minimum.

Well, my guess is that when they did the compound was two years ago?

Yeah.

Maybe they thought between then and now some phasing would have happened.

I don't know.

Maybe this is the phasing in that they anticipated.

So I just need someone to answer a basic question and if you've already answered it I didn't I couldn't okay so we're talking about doing away with

The removal of minimum parking restrictions.

That's what we're talking about.

So it would not mean much for those people because they're already being governed by the on-street parking permit program.

What we would be looking at in our following study would be at reforming that program and seeing

are there some changes that we need to do with our curbside management both in terms of where we're putting handicapped spaces, where we're putting parking permit requirements, the zones that are also impacted by those permit requirements.

So what would that entail?

Because it sounds to me at some point

I don't know that we could say definitely that those people with permits wouldn't have permits.

We would be, you know, looking at a reform of the permit program.

I see.

A question in response to some of the points raised.

The community that's collected the most data and shared the most data on that is Buffalo, which is not a city that has a great transit network.

They do have one light rail line.

What they found for much of the city that's not well transit served is that developers continue to provide approximately the same amount of parking because they're responding to the environment in which they're building.

Where it becomes really critical is on those projects.

There were a number of sites that they've identified that were previously unbuildable because of the parking requirement.

And those sites then became buildable.

They were able to find a pathway forward.

Because at the end of the day, again,

We recognize that parking is probably the single most important amenity that most developers, particularly in an environment like Charlottesville, are going to provide.

So they're going to work to provide the parking that they need based on the study.

Each developer knows their market.

They know what they need in order to meet the needs of their customers, tenants, what have you.

But what kind of moving away from an arbitrary number to not having an arbitrary number is it allows somebody to balance those needs.

Because parking often falls in this 80-20 rule where

Most of that parking lot is kind of, they figure out how to incorporate it into the site and they work it out.

But it's getting to those last few required parking spaces.

Those end up being the most expensive in terms of, again, the lost opportunity cost of land, losing other competing site amenities like landscaping and what have you.

And then I know there was a point raised about some of the localities mentioned are obviously very different from Charlottesville in terms of their both geographic size, population size, as well as in some instances the reliability and frequency of their transit system.

I'm curious if you could speak to any, you know, localities you looked at that are similar in terms of being college towns or perhaps closer to us in population.

Roanoke out of the ones that we've listed is probably closest.

Sure.

What was their experience?

They don't have a ton of experience.

They've just done it in the past year.

Well, share my thoughts.

I've never been dead set against removing parking minimums at all.

And my thinking about it, I'll begin with just the criticisms I think are reasonable in terms of I think there are

People who feel or through their lived reality feel that they need to use their car every day in terms of getting groceries, getting to work, particularly if they're working variable hours.

There's clearly areas like Tenth and Page, Belmont, where there's existing parking pressure.

I think it's also a reasonable point that our transit system, it's going to be a number of years before the regional transit governance study is implemented.

as well as there's a lot of folks who just they're not going to want to transition to e-bikes or walking everywhere.

I think all that is true.

I've tried to on these things kind of based my thinking on the available research there is.

And yes, that includes commercial corridors.

That's a different thing.

UCLA study is about, you know, about 8, 10 units in all residential districts as opposed to contrast it against other significant opportunities.

Separate conversation.

But anyway, from what I've been able to read, it seems like most localities that have eliminated them, the market is still building similar to the same amount, both for financing and demand reasons.

I've seen there are several localities of our size, about 40,000, 50,000 people that have lower densities than us that eliminated them and have success.

So, to me, it seems like it's still a reasonable, feasible policy to remove parking minimums, although I think we'll need to do a lot of work on the evaluation of our permit program, even on things just allowing, like, renters to be able to participate in that, what enforcement may look like, particularly in Tenth and Page, where there's that tension with UVA employees.

but I think I think all those legitimate concerns are things that can be addressed while still eliminating parking minimums and I think I read about a few localities of our size that started with eliminating it for commercial or specific areas and they in a period of a couple years just did it citywide and really the reason they started out that was just to address

fears that residents had as opposed to kind of data on what the impact was on residents.

So Michael, would you, if we were to do a more phased approach, would

It sounds like we're going to have to revamp and I would not vote for this if I didn't have some assurances we were going to revamp and I trust you guys revamp the permitting system and also I really do believe that developers will continue to build parking but it sounds like maybe what you're saying is that the phase in to get to what Lloyd was talking about maybe is

No, no.

I raised that just in the localities that phased it in.

They quickly went to fully eliminating them because

The fear that people had just didn't materialize when they phased in.

I think it kind of is evidence of that point.

So I'm not advocating for a phased approach, although other localities have done it.

With the hope that people will use the parking garages more.

Well, I think in our, like... The issue is in the neighborhoods.

The issue, to me, is not downtown.

Yeah, I think... And there's an interesting sort of contradiction, it seems to me, that if we say that

where the developers are going to continue to build roughly the same amount of parking that they've been building before, but that somehow this is the cure to make a whole lot more things affordable.

Well, like you said, it's the 80-20 rule.

It's those last couple of...

I mean, this is just like a design constraint.

You face all the time with these sorts of projects.

If you follow the rules by the letter, you're going to be required to do X. But you can actually get in, you know, 0.8 times X. And that lets you build the project.

And it's that softness or mushiness around the edges that lets people build things they wouldn't otherwise be able to build.

And, yeah, I think you're right.

Right, which is part of the thing about the phasing thing.

It's like, well, even if we just decided right now, snapped our fingers,

I mean we're talking five years before this would really I think have any material impact on anyone and hopefully by that point we've got I mean yeah we need to get serious about transit.

I mean absolutely.

Tell me all of these things have got to work together or

You know, why would we invest, flipping the argument around is, why would we invest all this money in transit if we're still like a car centric sort of city?

Well, in the other, I mean, looking at other localities, it's obviously not 100% efficient, but the market is generally, including the willingness of financiers to back certain projects, it seems like the market is usually building, like, what there's a demand for.

So, you know, it tends to build, again, not perfectly, but generally, like,

units that don't have parking, there's some demand for that, like existing and meeting that.

And for the demand of people who just feel they really need parking, I mean, that's still getting built and financed.

And in some instances, a lot of projects won't even necessarily get, you know, financial backing if they're not including a certain amount of parking because of what the perceived demand is.

I mean, if you pick a typical house, say, in Locust Grove where we live, let's just think about it.

Yes.

And if people had the opportunity to have permits for two cars, right, that would be four.

Now, if we had an RC or RB development that happened right down the street, to Lloyd's point, you know, that would

That could upset the apple cart.

Yeah.

But I still...

Yeah, so I think that there's a couple of things, you know, as part of the TDM, it needs to be an enforcement mechanism as part of the neighborhood parking, you know, that needs to be, because you, you know, it's just a bad feeling when you get home from work or whatever and you don't have a parking space and even though you have, you know, that's not a good feeling and you see something that's

that your neighbors have guests or something that's using it.

I forgot my other point.

It's been a day.

It may come back.

It may come back.

So if we did TDOs for RC, what square footage would that be?

Well, I mean, if that the approach that you want to take, then I would suggest not having a square footage at that level, right?

I would simply say TDMs are required in all districts for some square footage and over and for all projects in the RV and RC.

Do you?

Or all projects over a certain unit count in the RV and RC.

Regardless of square footage?

Regardless of square footage, right.

Because frankly, as Ben noted in his speech, all the tying of parking requirements to square footage is utterly arbitrary.

It doesn't actually make any logical sense because parking is tied to economic activity, not the square footage of a building.

I mean, I should speak of, but there's the... A little more than that.

The IT, the IT transportation manual.

There was very few ones really kind of squirreled down and looking back in the pendants.

It was really only one or two studies that they base it on.

Sometimes, you know, gosh, you did it in like Tucson, Arizona, which is a great place, but a lot of places they may have done the studies may have been different than it was there, but I did

remember what I wanted to say.

So I'm kind of a very visual type of person.

So a project that we recently approved at the end of the downtown mall, like across the street from the Omni, some new residential units.

And they, what would that look like under this new development, I mean under this new proposal?

They wouldn't be required to have any parking.

Of course, they could.

And theoretically, they could have more units and more affordable units or be required to give more.

What would it look like with regards to parking?

Yes, ma'am.

And I'm assuming it's triggering the transportation demand management requirement?

Yes.

Right.

So,

So they may, in fact, be required to provide a certain amount of parking.

Because one of the things, once you've triggered that transportation demand management requirement, you have to demonstrate that you have to provide what your transportation demand is going to be and how you're accommodating that from both a transportation perspective, transportation system perspective, and a parking perspective.

So you have to basically break out, here's how many trips my project is going to generate and how I

and here are the actions I'm going to take in terms of physical attributes of this site.

I'm going to put a cat bus stop on the site.

I'm going to put bike parking or whatever.

What's my mode share going to be relative to those trips?

And for that mode, that portion of that mode that you're anticipating is going to be vehicular, then part of that proposal is going to have to be parking spaces.

Right.

that's that's it's bound to be part of the mix because that's the environment we live in today and that's why I think that really that there's probably have to be a staff maybe this new person that's going to be dedicated to following up and forcing this because I think about when I was doing planning that when there was a lot of new nursing homes or

nursing care facilities, a whole wide range of it, that they would open up and say that they had transportation, they had a bus, but really that didn't and it really started putting a lot more burden on the county and the city to provide John and other services for them, but they, people bought in with it that they said they were going to provide all these services for them and

Yeah, I completely agree.

I know at one point you all came to us with a proposal about hiring some company or something to do that.

Remember this?

About three, six months ago, one of our meetings, you mentioned something about maybe hiring a contractor that we would outsource check-in parking.

I don't know, but I definitely agree that we're going to need to boost our

Like transit, that's part of what's going to make this work.

There's got to be a monitoring component.

Part of what this effort is attempting to do is mode shift within the realities of the city and where we are today and where we will be over time.

But part of this effort is mode shift.

in order to ensure that particularly things that are programmatic that a development is committed to doing like providing access to car share, right?

Yep.

Right.

It's like Airbnbs.

I mean, we've got to, like, if we're going to have rules, we've got to enforce the rules.

Right.

And if that means investing in whatever, then so be it.

We should try to recoup the costs by, you know, fees or whatever.

Right.

Well, I think for that new apartment complex above where Livery Stable is now

Maybe I'm wrong, but wouldn't they already be exempt from parking minimums?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

There's a parking garage associated with that.

Similar with code building, obviously commercial rather than residential, but I feel like those are examples of the kind of parking you still have built just with more flexibility, whereas maybe I'm wrong, I think that

Bling on the name.

That office building kind of near Kindlewood off the downtown mall did have a parking requirement.

323, Garrett.

Yeah.

It did.

And you kind of see what that resulted in as something, just a really crappy building that the residents in Kindlewood hate because it towers over you even more.

All you do is look at three stories of parking and

Granted, that's because the office... They're leasing them out.

What?

They're leasing them out.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, if you look at barracks, I mean, creation of parking minimums and...

Clearly, shopping centers build parking for December 21st.

Sure.

Well, and they're walking back from that.

And it's actually Black Friday is the highest peak day.

Is it now?

There was a previous community where I worked, a shopping mall, that had

They determined that at the peak hour on their peak day, which was Black Friday, they had 900 extra parking spaces.

And that was because they were seeking a reduction in their parking minimum requirements so that they could start to make those spaces available to a shuttle company.

to shuttle people into downtown Boston.

On the residential side, and again, I apologize, it is a Boston example, but the Regional Planning Agency in Boston did a study and determined that most apartment complexes only occupied 70% of their parking spaces.

in the study area that they were looking at in Greater Boston.

They made that determination by going around at 1 a.m.

and doing parking counts with the permission of the property owners.

So there is a fair amount of evidence out there that minimum parking requirements have led to a significant oversupply of parking.

Supposing we were to say we want to have we're going to cut our minimum parking requirements in half for residential purposes.

So single family R1 is one space for single family residential.

If you have an accessory unit then that requires another space for the current code.

I'm not too worried about the parking requirements for a single family house.

What I'm worried about is we plunk down an RC affordable 12 unit apartment complex and one of the reasons we've made it affordable is that we've abolished the parking requirements and so there's more affordability but that doesn't mean that the folks don't drive cars.

and particularly because we still I think most of the places that are at least have it at least have a little bit of bus service kind of by definition but it may only be once an hour and that that's still not an adequate response so again the issue for me is not with the people who would be occupying the new building it would be for the neighborhood who are having this change foisted upon them

and maybe that's something that needs to get phased also and figure out a way to phase that impact so that it doesn't run the risk of seeming to be such a, in some cases they would regard it as a drastic change.

You know, this gets back to my overall

or analysis paralysis, I suppose, that the best thing we have going for us in all of these plans is that it isn't going to happen on the schedule that the proponents think it's going to happen on.

And which always makes me nervous if the reason why it's appearing to be palatable is that it isn't going to work.

I mean, again, I come back to the metaphor of maybe analogy, I've got to use the word like in there somewhere, I guess, but the ecological metaphor, you know, creating that design opportunities, and this was something that James mentioned to me, creating the design opportunities such that the market, and not just the market, but people can figure out ways

to build what they need as minimalistically as possible, as inexpensively as possible, without having to have a bunch of rules or minimizing the number of rules.

I mean, relative to your point, Lloyd, about the impact to neighbors, if you built an RB

place.

But if we made the rule that people that

owned a home or the landlord or whatever had by right two permits.

Is that what you all were describing earlier?

Yeah, I think that's, I mean, we're hesitating to commit to exactly what the permit program looks like today.

Wouldn't that, I mean, you're talking about two to four spots for people to park.

two on their land and having the opportunity to buy two on the street.

You know, it's interesting.

At least an earlier draft of this code would have basically prohibited parking in the front yard.

It's still there for your three unit and up buildings.

Yeah, absolutely.

Right.

So, and one of the design considerations that we've talked about early on was the number of places, particularly been built in the last 15 or 20 years, where you've got basically a garage and a house built above the garage and you come in and there you are.

And those folks, of course, have only that park.

And I gather that would not, at least the earlier version, did not permit that kind of construction.

They could.

You could only have a driveway that was one car wide, as I recall.

So if you say Rugby Avenue and say something was built there that, you know,

The folks that are concerned, understandably, I'm not trying to minimize their concerns, but say one of the larger RC units was built, the neighbors would still have their off-street parking, which in most cases you could put three or four cars there, and then they would still have at least the option to buy two permits for the street.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I'm also thinking of just having, in the last couple days, driven around Huntley and so on.

There's no place you could put on street parking there.

because everything is so cheap to jowl.

And in fairness, I mean, it's going to be very, very street specific.

I mean, Belmont is going to be very different than Greenbrier.

And there's, yeah, part of what we are

looking at when we think about this permit parking program is recognizing that there are streets where on street parking isn't going to happen.

Either it's going to be one side of the street or it's going to be no sides of the street.

And that doesn't mean you magically get to have a parking space because you don't have one.

It's probably not the best example in that when it was built, it was built with no parking on either side of the street and that's what folks signed on for.

They have off-street parking, but again, that was part of the homeowners association that was put together at that time.

So residents

So I guess it would, would it be impossible for somebody on one of those streets to make themselves, you know, to build themselves an apartment?

If they're an RA zone, I think they would be proposed for RA to say, well, we're going to put three or four units on my lot.

So I'm going to divide my house.

Which means, I mean, part of what that does is it reduces the value of that unit on the marketplace.

Yeah, in chatting with Natalie and Ms.

Oschrin, our soon-to-be new colleague, I know that one of the points that she's made to me is just that having, and you said this earlier, I think it was you, James, induced demand, having parking lots

Having more parking that you absolutely need induces demand.

So I know that she has pretty strong views on this as well in terms of reducing, eliminating the on-demand or the minimum.

Yeah, that word.

Separately, I mean, is there a known kind of timeline or hoped for timeline in terms of when that process for evaluating the, was it just the permit system or was it broader than that?

Okay.

Yeah, so we don't have a timeline completely fleshed out.

Okay.

No, I've got a few other things on that plate, but this one's a fun one.

By late winter, you mean

Like February of 2024?

No, we'd be getting started January, February of 2024.

Or spring of 2024.

Right.

Yeah.

But second semester, how about that?

There you go.

Well, you certainly will be after January 1.

I don't know about now, but I think there's at least three of us.

I'm not sure what Ms.

I'm debating.

And I'll come back to what I said earlier.

I think one of the reasons it might not be as bad as some folks have conjured up that it might be is that all of these processes are going to take at least five years for anything to really happen and maybe we just say, okay, let's reconcile ourselves to the fact that there are going to be a lot of changes in the next five years and figure that

Money we ain't got.

Okay.

I think the other thing that we're really going to have to start putting some, you know, focus on political capital, whatever word you want to use, and specifically I think in some conversations with the university it needs to rise to the top, is the regional transit governance.

effort.

So they're getting pretty far along in terms of what that might look like.

That's more like three months then.

Realistically, I think the big conversation will be between UVA, Albemarle, and Charlottesville about funding and what mix of funding streams to do.

And it should be noted it's a lot of money, but if you look at their analysis across Charlottesville and Albemarle, it's a

Yeah.

I mean, if we're given the go ahead from whatever state entity or whoever, Todd Divers maybe, are you listening?

It can definitely be funded.

Right.

This is new money that's coming into the system.

That would be the idea that would fund itself like an authority would.

And as you move forward with this, this is kind of a side I definitely would like to

have some type of tax and authority with that so that we'll be able to really have the impact that we wanted.

I know it's difficult.

We couldn't get it for schools.

We can't get it for the little kids.

Well, I know.

The public defender's office, the establishment of that failed like eight times in a row.

And I remember hearing about the history.

Four.

Four.

Let's make it 20.

Go for it.

I think there is, for sure.

Yes.

So I have a question.

Sure, what is it?

There was the reference to RKG and the ability for them to provide some perspective.

Did we work through whether or not we need that?

Well, the question in my mind was simply whether this analysis and their analysis are working in the same direction or are they maybe coming at the same point from different directions and I don't know the answer.

But we already have RKG slated to join us

Could you please reframe the particular question again?

Well, I'm understanding the question to be to compare and explain the differences between RKG's analysis and the HRNA analysis from August of 22.

Yes.

Right.

But you're speaking to the fact that they seem to be arriving at similar conclusions, but you want to understand are there differences in the analysis and the analysis the same?

No.

And HR&A looked at the parking reductions as a, they were suggesting that as kind of a bonus thing to support affordable housing creation.

They didn't include it within their analysis of what was necessary for the market to be able to

For market rate developments, we understand that there's a certain capacity for producing a certain amount of affordable units at a certain AMI.

They didn't arrive at their conclusion dependent on a parking reduction.

I had the sense that they were saying if you reduce parking minimums by 50% and you give that to somebody, then they can get a bonus.

Yes, yes.

And if that were to enable affordable housing,

Or let's say they want to do affordable housing and will then give you a 50% reduction in your parking requirement.

Right.

They were looking at it from the perspective of this is a significant cost.

So does that answer your question or you still need RKG to further explain?

They're still going to be on the call.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

We don't want that.

That's right.

I don't know to who.

The transportation demand management plans, I know previously you've said one of the challenges is once zoning passes you're anticipating a possible increase in the number of permits and projects.

Understood.

The approach I'm taking to capacity related to increases in permitting broadly is that we don't know what that's going to look like.

It could be a spike at the beginning, and then it lowers and evens out.

It could be steady state.

It's going to change because the regulations change, but it also is market dependent.

So my approach at the end of the day is over the next several years, we're going to

We're going to first go ahead and put into place some on-call consultant services so that when we have a spike in applications or when we have applications that exceed our capacity and conduct review, we can tap those resources and use those.

and then over the next several years we'll assess and try and get to an understanding of what the steady state is and then match our staffing capacity to that.

Okay.

Does that make sense?

Definitely.

Okay.

Definitely makes sense.

Yep.

Well, so if we've exhausted the topic for this evening,

So, I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

We're a very interactive council.

I don't know if it's Portland, Oregon or Portland, Maine.

It's probably Oregon.

That reverted, you know, did some changes back to their, you know, had some minimum, eliminated their minimum, but went back because of complaints of neighbors and stuff.

They did, they removed minimum parking departments, they put them back, and I believe they're at a point where they've removed them again.

But see, that's an example of flexibility.

The point you're making is the politics changed.

I'm sorry?

Yeah.

And one of the points that I have tried to make in all of this is let us not get to a situation where we

What does that mean?

Could I, just as a note, on November 29th our scheduled meeting topic is the zoning map itself.

Not to steal your thunder, unless you want to, you know where I'm going?

No, I don't.

The mayor requested that each of you provide a list of those areas or streets or blocks or however you want to do it that you were interested in discussing at that meeting and I've gotten, at this point, two.

I'm accepting

Yes.

We don't want that.

Don't worry.

They'll have it to you before the 15th.

Let's do it for next Monday.

Yes, next Monday.

I'm focused on the Affordable Dwelling Unit Ordinance, which does cover all those topics.

Okay.

There you go, Michael.

Is the meeting on Monday at 6?

I think so.

Hold on.

Let's see.

Where?

Here?

Oh, our favorite meeting.

I just want to say thanks.

Wait a minute.

Let's look at that.

I tell you.

Well, this works regardless.

City space.

City space.

What?

Okay.

I want to thank our staff.

I don't know how you all do it.

And give us, you know, our apologies to your spouses and families.

Okay.

I think we're adjourned.