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Sacramento in various forms for years. Once such bill, AB2097 by Assemblywoman Laura Friedman, D-Burbank, was introduced in the Legislature in the 2021-22 session eliminating parking requirements for developers building near major transit stops. The City of Newport Beach was one of several entities to oppose the bill, writing at the time, “We believe cities, not the state, are best suited to determine the parking needs of development projects in their jurisdiction.”

CalAPA also opposed the bill, writing at the time in its own opposition letter, “Far from helping our fellow Californians who are struggling against the high cost of housing, this bill only further adds to the burden of underserved communities by removing choice and mobility from residents of developments that may fall under this law.” Nevertheless the governor ultimately signed the bill into law, calling it a “win-win” to address housing affordability and the state’s climate goals.

Indeed, the political push to move more people from cars to transit has grown increasingly desperate. Transit ridership, a sliver of total trips in California, cratered during the pandemic and has never fully recovered, leading to what many transit advocates are calling a “transit fiscal cliff.”

“Public transit is central to the state’s hopes of reducing transportation emissions,” notes longtime political columnist Dan Walters in a commentary for the on-line publication CalMatters. “Officials want more Californians to park their cars – or not buy them in the first place – and use buses and light and heavy rail systems for commutes and other personal trips. Despite these hopes, transit ridership is going the other way, and transit system operators and advocates are using terms such as ‘fiscal cliff’ and ‘death spiral’ as farebox revenues decline and there is greater demand for taxpayer money to shore up their operations.” The California Transit Association recently reported that as of the third quarter of 2022 overall ridership was averaging just two-thirds of what it had been during the pandemic. In urban Los Angeles, despite billions in investments in recent decades in subway and light rail systems in the county, recent studies have found 73% of commuters drive alone to work and only 6.8% utilize public transit. Further, ridership has declined more than 19% since 2013.

“Legislation like that (AB2097) puts us in an interesting position,” says Jon Hamblen, parking manager for the City of Pasadena’s Transportation Department.

“Parking lots are never the highest and best use of land for a municipality, but as a practical matter, where are all those cars going to go? Theories are nice, like build more public transit, and car use will get lower, but I haven’t seen that happen yet. We still have the same vehicular needs.”

He noted that the City of Pasadena bans overnight parking, so there is baked-in conflict if there is not enough off-street parking available. “The city can’t do anything -- it’s a state law. The neighbors are upset, but our hands are tied. In downtown areas, we are pretty maxed out in terms of parking.”

“In terms of trends,” he added, “this is absolutely one. Cities are going to see publicly held assets devoted to parking and say, ‘how can we reuse that?’” Hamblen is active in an organization of parking professionals and others in California, which puts on conferences, training sessions and other professional development activities for those who work in this area. Even the organization, known as the California Parking Association, recently changed its name to the “California Mobility & Parking Association,” a branding exercise also undertaken by the International Parking and Mobility Institute.

The office of Friedman, who is currently the chair of the Assembly Transportation Committee, did not respond to an inquiry from California Asphalt for this story. However, her office posted a social media message on Twitter on Jan. 1 of this year on the bill, saying, “I’m in Sacramento to make a difference, not to play it safe. AB2097 eliminates parking minimums near major transit stops.”

Dictating local parking policy from Sacramento certainly has rankled, with some saying less regulation and more flexibility is what is needed. That’s the view of Daniel F. Ramos, Vice President of Ramco Enterprises Inc., a developer in Sacramento and Yolo counties that also owns and operates commercial real estate properties. (Disclosure: CalAPA leases office space in a Ramco building in West Sacramento).

“Let the market dictate,” Ramos says. “As a developer I will take the risk in developing the project. I will finance it. I will work to ensure the project is successful. Let me determine the parking.”

“Parking is expensive,” Ramos added. “You want to find the right balance. Nothing is worse than having a building, a commercial project, that is under-parked and you can’t lease it.”

He also favored creative, out-of-the-box thinking, such as unbundling parking from individual projects so that parking needs can be assessed in the context of the neighborhood, which could present opportunities for shared parking scenarios. “This is a more efficient use of public parking,” he said.

The market-based approach is also favored by Kim with Watry Design, Inc. “We design parking,” she said. “We don’t approach it from the perspective of more is better. We try to figure out what is the right amount of parking for a project. Some parking minimums have been problematic and can make a project cost prohibitive. Most cities require a certain amount of parking based on the land use, but often that doesn’t take into account the uniqueness of the individual location.”

She agreed that additional flexibility on the types of parking, and how that parking is used, not only by those in a particular development but also in neighboring developments, takes some out-of-the-box thinking but ultimately can help all parties achieve their goals. Flexibility is the key.

“The rules and regulations are one thing,” Kim said, “but you need to consider the market. It actually helps when you get rid of the regulations and let the market handle it.”

The shared parking concept is also catching on, Kim said.

“That is another thing we look at a lot — shared parking studies,” she said. “When you have mixed use developments, there is an opportunity to share parking among different groups. A prime example is multi-family residential and office developments. During business hours, residents go off to work yet the office needs parking, and vice versa. When office tenants are leaving, the residents are returning home. In this case, you don’t have to build parking that is unused. By looking at the sharing ability, you can build less parking overall, but still service the users. You can make it work with a lot less.”

That approach may mean less parking is constructed, which is not necessarily good for the asphalt pavement industry that builds parking lots, but can help reduce costs of the project, with the savings passed on to the end users.

Aaron Terry, president of CalAPA paving contractor member Terra Pave, said he worries where all of this is headed.

“Absolutely this would affect us,” he said. “If there is a finite pie of work to go around, and it starts to get cut back incrementally, there will be a major impact to the business. There are so many unknowns.”

He added that there are some areas in Southern California he avoids because of a lack of parking. “You can’t find parking. Talk about a mess. It deters me as a person. You want ease of access.” This is to say nothing of the Americans with Disabilities Act concerns, for whom walking or biking, or arduous and inconvenient transit trips is not an option.

For most of the nearly 70-year history of the California Asphalt Pavement Association, the focus on the parking lot was how to build them and how to maintain them. CalAPA members provide the asphalt and perform the paving for everything from stadiums to strip mall parking lots. CalAPA has provided training on proper mixing of asphalt and proper placement in the field, a handy checklist for field personnel, and tips and best practices at Contractor Dinner presentations. For decades, as California grew, there were more people, more cars, and a need for more places to park them. The need to build asphalt parking lots, the most economic way to store vehicles, seemed limitless. That go-go California optimism has been replaced by NIMBY (“Not In My Back Yard”) thinking, and what former Gov. Jerry Brown way back in 1976 famously called “an era of limits.” Beyond limits, homeless encampments have proliferated across California, taking over street parking and asphalt parking lots, much to the dismay of local business owners and government officials.

It doesn’t take a degree in urban planning to see that less parking means less mobility options, more inconvenience, more time wasted, and a curtailment in business activity, tourism and other essential elements of the California economy and quality of life. Less parking also means a lot less work for he asphalt industry, plain and simple. Nearly half of the asphalt work in California is in the private market, with parking lots comprising a large chunk of that business.

Another prominent California road builder, speaking on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, was less diplomatic in his assessment of the state of play.

“This is just one more pain point for the anti-car zealots to ‘incentivize’ us out of our cars. Stop building parking spots, stop building and maintaining roads, and the drivers will stop driving,” he said. “Is that what voters want for themselves, or just for “others”?

He added, “There is always the feel-good story about someone biking to work in San Diego instead of driving, but how does that work in August in Bakersfield? Or in Truckee in December?

Disincentivizing drivers has become the social engineering tool of our time. There are always groups clambering to social engineer the lives of others but very few of us invite others to social engineer our own lives. Cherry picking parking space metrics to make a point is a fool’s errand. We all know of neighborhoods in our own community where the parking is woefully under-built, and other areas where the parking spaces are underutilized. Perhaps common-sense decisions should reign and not more government edicts.”

Even if Electric Vehicles are the answer to reducing emissions and Greenhouse Gas emissions, where are all those cars going to park? At last count, California had about 31 million registered vehicles. Meanwhile, more anti-parking legislation has been introduced in the Legislature this year. And activist groups continue to agitate for reclaiming or repurposing parking lots in the name of the environment, housing affordability and enhancing communities. CalAPA has taken the lead in raising this issue with other likeminded stakeholders in the hopes of turning back the tide, but the future looks grim. “We get asked a lot of questions on sustainability,” Kim, the parking lot planner and designer, noted. And less parking is often part of the conversation.

At this juncture, as with all in-depth parking stories, there is always a requisite appearance by famed 1960s folk singer Joni Mitchell. In her 1970 hit “Big Yellow Taxi,” she sang:

They paved paradise, put up a parking lot

With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swingin’ hot spot

Don’t it always seem to go

That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til its gone

They paved paradise, put up a parking lot.

Left unanswered in the song, however, is how Mitchell, a longtime Angeleno, knew about the pink hotel, the boutique and the “swingin’ hot spot.” How did she get there? It is likely a car trip was involved, and at some point that car needed to be parked.

Don’t it always seem to go? CA

Russell W. Snyder, CAE, is executive director of the California Asphalt Pavement Association.

REFERENCES:

Peters, Adele (2023) “How parking lots across the U.S. are being turned into housing – and not a moment too soon.” Fast Company, April 6, 2023.

Margolies, Jane (2023) “Awash in Asphalt, cities rethink their parking needs” The New York Times, March 7, 2023.

Walters, D. (2023) “Transit ridership falters, posing a ‘fiscal cliff’” CalMatters, Jan. 22, 2023. (www.calmaters.com).

Milman, Oliver (2022) “Shifting gears: Why U.S. Cities are falling out of love with the parking lot.” The Guardian, Dec. 26, 2022.

Khouri, Andrew (2022) “California bans mandated parking near transit to fight high housing prices, climate change.” Los Angeles Times. Sept. 23, 2022.

Brown, E.G. Jr. (1976) State of the State Address, Jan. 7, 1976. California State Library, “The Governor’s Library” website (www.governors.library.ca.gov). Accessed April 13, 2023)