NORTHERN NEWS American Planning Association
A Publication of the Northern Section of the California Chapter of APA
Making Great Communities Happen
MARCH 2011 Links to articles in this issue: DEPARTMENTS 6 Director’s note 7 Correction 9 Northern California roundup 12 Where in the world? 12 Onward and upward 13 Letters 14 HSR notes 16 What others are saying 18 Calendar
OUR PROFESSION 8 Membership survey results; AICP | CM information 11 Awards Program Sponsorship Opportunities 13 Prominent planner promotes book, criticizes profession 15 UPDATE: Plan-it sustainably
Residential TODs in Santa Clara County are “over-parked” By Eduardo C. Serafin, PE, AICP, and Justin Meek, with Robert W. Swierk, AICP, and Ying C. Smith, AICP Last year, a graduate class in urban and regional planning at San José State University teamed up with the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) to study parking at transit-oriented development (TOD) residential projects in the southern portion of the San Francisco Bay Area. Observing the parking utilization rates at 12 housing developments near VTA light rail and Caltrain stations, this collaborative research effort produced local evidence that the parking supply at residential TODs exceeds demand. The study corroborates recent research that other Bay Area residential TODs are also “over-parked” (Cervero 2009)—useful evidence for decisionmakers that parking requirements should be reduced for housing projects near rail transit. This article summarizes the objectives, methodology, key findings, and policy implications of the SJSU-VTA project. A complete Technical Report (December 2010) is available at http://bit.ly/gk9Y7p. OBJECTIVE AND METHODOLOGY The project objective was to corroborate other research and determine whether reduced parking requirements can work in Santa Clara County. If the surveys showed parking utilization significantly below parking supply, then local parking requirements could be lowered—in turn reducing residential TOD construction costs and their overall footprint, and making land available for other uses. An initial literature review was conducted to determine best practices for estimating parking demand, identify local parking requirements, and develop a parking survey work plan. An on-site survey methodology was selected, and pre-survey field visits were made, followed by on-site surveys to collect a range of parking-related data. KEY RESEARCH FINDINGS Local parking requirements for residential developments (set by local zoning) clearly have led to a considerable oversupply of parking at the residential TODs surveyed. Each of the 12 TODs surveyed offers more parking than residents need and actually use. Unused parking ranged from 17 to 39 percent. Overall, 2,496 of 9,751 parking spaces (26 percent) were not used at the time of the surveys. A factual and reasonable conclusion is that more (continued on next page)