Best of 2020: Edmonton Becomes a Model for Parking Reform
You see it all the time. Local officials are interested in enacting a much-needed reform—say, relaxing zoning codes to give homeowners the flexibility to create accessory dwelling units, which can provide rental income, ease the pressure on housing costs, keep grandma close, etc.—but they need to point to other cities that came before them. To show the benefits, and to reassure wary constituents that the whole thing won’t blow up in their face.
All around North America, more and more towns, cities, and states are leaning toward reducing parking minimums or ending them altogether. They’re doing the math and discovering that all that excess parking is costing them both in real dollars and in missed opportunities. And so they’re looking around for success stories. Thankfully, there is a growing list to choose from. (We host a crowdsourced map that shows many of them.)
This year, it was thrilling for us to watch Edmonton, Alberta, a city whose official slogan is “The Oil Capital of Canada,” become that country’s first major city to end parking minimums. We were inspired not only by what they did but how they did it. And we predict that more and more cities—in the United States as well as Canada—will be looking to Edmonton as a model of parking reform.
Back in May, we published an article by Ashley Salvador, one of the advocates helping to end parking minimums in Edmonton. We knew right away that the article would make our year-end “Best of…” list. (Salvador actually has two articles featured on the list. Don’t miss her earlier piece on Accessory Commercial Units.)
We also had the opportunity to go deeper with Salvador and with her colleagues. First, I wrote an article about how Edmonton got to the point it was ready to make the change, and what’s happened since the law change? (Was it parking chaos?) I also shared seven lessons I thought parking advocates everywhere could take away from Edmonton’s experience. Then, Ashley Salvador, Travis Fong, and Anne Stevenson did a webcast about how Strong Towns advocates can end parking minimums in their own cities.
Exciting things are happening in Edmonton. And now we all get to look to that city as a model for the change we want to make closer to home. — John Pattison, Content Manager
“Will Edmonton Be the First Major Canadian City to Eliminate Parking Minimums?” by Ashley Salvador
Excerpt:
Areas in red show space allocated to parking in different locations in Edmonton. From top left to bottom right: mature neighborhood, Strathcona, Downtown, developing neighborhood/suburb.
Now, how did Edmonton get to a place where removing parking minimums altogether is on the table? It didn’t happen overnight. A talented team of city planners has been slowly chipping away at parking minimums for years, beginning with reductions to minimum requirements. The opportunity to remove minimums city-wide comes after extensive working on establishing a shared vision for a more sustainable, compact, and healthy city.
Beyond this shared vision, helping residents and elected officials see that there is little risk associated with removing parking minimums has eased fears. City streets will not be flooded with parked cars. Private individuals, businesses, and developers will still provide parking, and the City has tools at its disposal to effectively manage on-street demand to ensure parking is reliably available for those who need it. Removing minimums is a practical, fiscally responsible choice that will allow the market to course-correct after decades of auto-dominant planning regulations. It will provide property owners with the freedom to decide how much or how little parking to provide.
“Parking minimums are costing your city. For a way forward, look to Edmonton.” by John Pattison
Excerpt:
Image via Flickr user Dave Sutherland.
When Salvador and Fong were looking at the obstacles that kept people from pursuing garden suites [or accessory dwelling units], they made a list: permitted use vs. discretionary use, size limitations, location restrictions, and more. To that list they also added: minimum parking requirements.
“It really comes down to the allocation of space,” explains Salvador. “You don’t have infinite space in your backyard; you either get to devote it to a place for someone to live, or a place to park your car. If you are mandated by the city to provide two or three stalls, that’s just taking away valuable living space. So someone who wants to build a two- or maybe even a three-bedroom garden suite is now forced to build a tiny bachelor pad instead, with three stalls of parking they don’t need.
“Parking minimums really limited the market and functionality of these suites. In some cases, it limited the accessibility, too—as when someone who wanted to build a granny flat but were forced to put it on the second story to make space for parking.”
It wasn’t just potential ADU owners running into issues with minimum parking requirements, says Salvador, who is also involved with the broader infill housing community in Edmonton. From missing middle development to even larger-scaled ventures, parking minimums were often tipping the scales and making projects inefficient and ultimately unviable.
“Ending Parking Minimums: How to Make the Case with Facts and Options” (Webcast)
Excerpt:
Here are some of the key insights Salvador, Fong and Stevenson brought to this conversation about getting rid of parking minimums once and for all:
Any town can get rid of parking minimums. Edmonton is a very typical car-centric North American city, and yet they built momentum to make a change to their parking requirements.
Parking is costing your city and your developers far more than it’s worth. In Edmonton, these advocates calculated that parking spaces cost anywhere from $7,000 to $20,000 per stall, depending on the type of parking structure (surface lot, underground, etc.). They also found that just 7% of parking lots in the city were achieving capacity on a given day.
Make your case with facts and options. In Edmonton, the team gathered the facts about parking costs and benefits, then presented them to the community, showing the different tradeoffs they make, depending on how much parking they require in their city. Salvador, Fong and Stevenson made it clear to the public and stakeholders that removing minimums did not mean getting rid of parking; it just meant letting the market decide the right amount of parking.
Parking is a surprisingly emotional issue. In the process of ending minimums, the team in Edmonton received plenty of pushback, especially from people within government who felt their expertise was being threatened. Empathy and patience were important tools throughout this process, and it was necessary to appeal to different sorts of concerns along the way.