We are Proposing Responsive Parking for Lexington. Nationally, traditional parking regulations have produced eight parking spaces for each car, meaning for every vehicle owned, seven spaces sit vacant throughout the city. These spaces cost money to create and maintain. Who bears those costs? Ultimately, they are passed on to the consumer who may or may not be even using the spaces. Lexington deserves a responsive parking system that does not require more parking to be built and maintained than is needed, but that does address the health and safety of its users. Missing the Mark with Current Regulations • Our regulations are based on factors that the City can control (building size, bedroom count, dining seats, etc), but that do not actually have an impact on parking demand. • Factors outside of the City’s control actually DO impact parking demand (business popularity, market demographics, location, etc.) • Nearly every city in the U.S. uses the same resource for determining parking minimums based on the same flawed factors, and Lexington is no different.
Shifting the Focus from Parking to People • Urban planning is based on providing regulations that address the health, safety, and welfare of the city’s residents. • The responsive parking proposal moves away from arbitrarily regulating the number of spaces and focuses on addressing safety through site design standards for parking lots. • Nationally and locally pedestrian deaths are on the rise. Defined site design standards: • Include human-scaled elements • Reduce vehicle speeds • Create predictable circulation for vehicles and pedestrians
• The responsive parking proposal corrects this and provides choice for parking providers.
• Provide marked and illuminated pedestrian paths and crosswalks
• The standards also support the environment by: • Mitigating urban stormwater issues • Improving our urban forest Under current regulations, 2 restaurants of similar size have the same parking requirements - even when one is used mainly for drive-through and the other for dine-in.
• Reducing the urban heat island effect
The Cycle of Sprawl • By requiring more parking than needed, Lexington regulations are contributing to costly development patterns • The 2018 Comprehensive Plan, Imagine Lexington, specifically discourages sprawling development and overparking, but our regulations actively require it.
Victoria Transport Policy Institute, “Evaluating Transportation Land Use Impacts”
The Bottom Line of Our Responsive Parking Proposal:
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No longer regulates the number of parking spaces required for development
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Focuses on parking lot design that enhances health, safety, and welfare of the community