Unlocked WA Post article on the hidden costs of parking
Why free street parking could be costing you hundreds more in rent
https://wapo.st/3pag8o4
Start of the article:
If there’s a building in America, a local government has decided the number of parking spaces it needs.
San Jose at one point required miniature golf courses to have 1.25 parking spaces per golf tee. In Seattle, bowling alleys needed five spaces per lane. Dallas, meanwhile, determined a sewage treatment plant must have one parking space for every million gallons of sewage treatment capacity.
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The first parking minimum was implemented for an apartment building in Columbus, Ohio, in 1923. By the 1950s, with the expansion of the suburbs and personal automobile ownership, they were a nearly universal feature of new urban development.
But these rules not only overestimated the amount of parking that was needed, they created a society that virtually demanded a car to conduct daily life, says Catie Gould, a senior climate and transportation researcher at the Sightline Institute, a sustainability think tank in the Pacific Northwest.
“Most people have no idea these rules exist,” says Gould. “It’s why the suburbs look the way they do. It’s not that everyone loves to drive.”
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Parking minimums shape your entire life even if you don’t realize it, from the size of your rent check to the length of your commute to how many friends live nearby. Requiring businesses to include copious parking spots raises the cost of construction and the amount of land needed, codifying sprawl. . . .
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