Culver City eliminates parking requirements
Posted on 01-02-2023 09:44 PM
Culver City eliminates parking requirements
City of Culver City abolishes parking requirements
Councilmember Alex Fisch of Culver City writes that he cannot come up with one good reason why everyone should pay for parking. Research shows that mandatory parking prevents affordable housing from being built, causes people to drive, and raises the cost of literally everything.
Parking minimums are typically required by cities depending on the type of use: a new Culver City restaurant requires one parking space for every 100 square feet of floor space, a new apartment building requires 25 parking spaces per unit, etc.
Parking expert Don Shoup calls these requirements pseudoscientific. A long time ago, someone studied the type of parking available at suburban restaurants. A decade ago, cities required all restaurants to park excessively, based on that baseline. According to Fisch, parking requirements across the country are determined by . . . nothing. Councils make them up and pass them along without critical examination.
Is downtown parking necessary for a restaurant as well as one in a strip mall? Should a 20-unit residential building across the street from a light rail station have the same amount of parking as a suburban 20-unit building? Not necessarily. Parking should be tailored to an individual project, not one-size-fits-all. Culver City does this now.
Despite Culver City's new policy, parking will remain available in new restaurants and housing developments. In new developments, parking will still be included; however, the city won't require developers to meet minimum parking requirements. According to the ordinance itself, the amendment eliminates minimum parking requirements, yet parking will still be available.
Several years were needed to complete this reform, Fisch said.
After carrying forward previous councilwork that actually required a fee to reduce parking, city council asked to examine more evidence-based Culver City park reform. There were many advocates organizing and educating local communities as the policy ship slowly turned. A city council vote on eliminating mandates drew only ten or so objections, and it seemed that they had never encountered any academic or journalistic attention to the matter.
In last night's vote, Mayor Daniel Lee, Councilmember Yasmine-Imani McMorrin and Councilmember Fisch voted for, while Vice Mayor Albert Vera and Councilmember Goran Eriksson voted against.
The parking requirements of hundreds of American cities have been eliminated. In 2017, Buffalo, New York, ended its parking mandate. This was also the case in Hartford, Connecticut. A similar pattern was followed in 2021 by Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. Cambridge, Massachusetts, joined Culver City a few nights ago.
Sacramento, Berkeley, Emeryville, and Alameda have all eliminated their parking mandates. During the past few years, San Diego has implemented parking reforms in quality transit areas that have eliminated business parking requirements. The city of San Jose enacted a similar reform, eliminating many parking requirements. In January of 2023, the State of California will prohibit cities from requiring parking near quality transit under A.B. 2097, which was sponsored by Assembly member Laura Friedman.
As far as I am aware, this is the first citywide lifting of parking mandates in Los Angeles County. Parking requirements have been removed in some areas, mainly downtowns, in Lancaster, Los Angeles, and Santa Monica.
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