San José Joins in the Push To Abolish Parking Minimums
This article was originally published on Silicon Valley Bike Coalition, and is shared here with permission. All images for this piece were provided by the author, unless otherwise indicated.
I moved to San José five years ago—or, to be more exact, I moved to Alum Rock with my aunt and her family. At the time, I also worked at a cafeteria and got home at around 3 p.m. every day, which was perfect because there was plenty of street parking in front of my aunt’s house, given that most people didn’t get off work until 5 p.m. This also meant I couldn’t move my car after 3 p.m., otherwise I would risk having to park near the cemetery and walk 2–3 blocks home, depending on where I found a parking spot. Even nowadays, you can tell there are more people living in the neighborhood than it was originally intended for by the amount of cars parked creatively in the streets and driveways.
Although parking space in my neighborhood is a hot commodity, I am delighted that last week, City Council voted unanimously to eliminate parking minimum requirements in most areas of the city for new developments joining Sacramento, Berkeley, Emeryville, Alameda, and San Diego as Californian cities that have implemented some form of policy to eliminate parking minimums. This policy would also incentivize alternative modes of transportation, like biking and public transit—something that I fully support and am excited about, though my family, not so much (at least, not yet).
What does this mean for a car-centric city like San José, and more specifically for communities like the east side, where my family lives?
Firstly, eliminating parking minimums does not mean that the already existing parking will be taken away. (My aunt’s neighborhood parking situation will remain the same, for instance.) Instead, this new policy will remove mandates on developments to have an arbitrary, antiquated amount of parking that ends up sitting unused. They’ll bring into balance the number of parking spots with other ways of getting around. To be clear, this doesn’t mean developers won’t provide any parking at all. It means the city won’t dictate a minimum amount of parking a developer must build, instead allowing a project’s parking to be sized right, according to the context.
Other cities that have removed parking minimums. See here if your place is on the map!
Currently, San José requires 1.7 parking spaces for every two-bedroom home in multi-dwelling residential buildings, and retail stores often must provide one parking space per 200 square feet dedicated to sales. Constructing a single parking space in San José costs between $30,000 to $100,000, depending on location and design! That is a lot of cement, money, and space that is being used to accommodate vehicles instead of people. By not requiring multi-dwelling residential buildings to have the 1.7 parking spaces for every two-bedroom home, the cost of building housing significantly goes down and the cost of a parking spot is not added to your rent, especially if one doesn’t own a car (For example, University of California researchers C.J. Gabbe and Greg Pierce found that nationwide, bundling the cost of a single garage space into rents “adds about 17 percent to a unit’s rent.”)
Travel Demand Management (TDM) is an important complementing component to the removal of parking minimums in San José. TDM can provide or incentivize convenient amenities and viable, affordable transportation options, like transit subsidies and bike share programs. They can also include infrastructure improvements, such as making new street connections, bicycle, and micro-mobility network improvements, trails, or other walking network improvements. Adding TDM measures will help create a paradigm shift where we are no longer dependent on cars as our primary source of transportation. These expanding options will encourage new residents and employees to reduce driving to work or around the neighborhood. They’ll cut down on the traffic San Joséans already experience, as well as hopefully the traffic deaths.
This new policy will allow San José to re-envision how we plan for, and accommodate, more housing and better transportation, while also creating a healthier environment for all.
Daniela Castañeda is passionate about reimagining a more just, sustainable, and women-centered bicycle infrastructure. Her interests include the intersection of gender-based violence and urban planning. She is a community organizer with the nonprofit Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition, where she is currently mobilizing under-resourced communities in east San José and east Palo Alto to create safer communities for even the most vulnerable of community members. SVBC's mission is to build healthier and more just communities by making bicycling safe and accessible for everyone. You can check out SBVC’s work on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and their website.
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