A majority of City Councilors support elimination of parking requirements

The Charlottesville City Council will hold their public hearing on December 5 on the Development Code, a fancy name for the new zoning code. The new rules for where buildings can go will expand the number of homes and businesses that can be built all across the city. Council has had a series of previous work sessions which I’ve attempted to summarize in previous articles.

On November 8, Council held a discussion on a change in city policy that would no longer require developers to provide parking for automobiles. Ben Chambers is the transportation planning manager for the city. 

“Within the proposed development code, there are several elements that address the nexus of land use and transportation concerns,” Chambers said. “These elements include increased densities and mixed uses that can promote the efficiency of active transportation and transit, and design considerations that increase the appeal and usefulness of our public realms for non-motorized travel.” 

That means new rules for parking for off-street vehicles to make way for land for streetscape elements such as sidewalk and tree planting areas. Chambers said this comes from the Comprehensive Plan adopted in November 2021. That was the second of three projects that are part of the Cville Plans Together initiative. Specifically Goal 4 of the Transportation chapter.

“Provide a balanced approach to parking that supports economic vitality, achieves urban form goals, minimizes environmental impacts, and accommodates pedestrians, bicycles, transit users, and disabled individuals,” Chambers read from the document. 

One of the strategies says it bluntly: “Examine the potential of phasing out minimum parking requirements” and that’s exactly what the new Development Code does. 

“Removing the mandate for additional parking supply from new development is critical to reducing the parking demand and supporting the use of alternative forms of transportation in the city,” Chambers said. 

It is important to remember that the Charlottesville Downtown Mall does not have parking requirements and has not had them for many years. Another thing to note is that other elements of the Development Code will discourage on-street parking or even prohibit new on-street spaces in some locations.  

Chambers said engineers have traditionally used vehicle trip generation studies to determine the number of parking spaces that will be needed for particular uses. 

“In fact, these correlations have no statistical significance whatsoever,” Chambers said. “They ignore the design context and alternative access options that could be available to a given site and have resulted in overbuilt parking lots and developments that are not oriented towards pedestrian, bicycle, or transit access.” 

Chambers said removing parking minimums will lead to more affordable housing because developers won’t have to provide spaces. He estimated the cost to build a 300 square-foot surface parking space is about $5,000 and over $20,000 a space for those in parking structures. 

“The city’s exclusionary zoning analysis showed that reducing parking minimums would be effective in supporting the financial feasibility of constructing new mid-rise apartments with support for the deepest affordability levels,” Chambers said. 

Chambers said dropping requirements doesn’t mean developers won’t build spaces at all. The idea behind the change is to provide more flexibility.

“By removing minimum requirements, this allows the developer to balance the competing cost and space needs as they design the optimal project for a given site,” Chambers said. 

Transportation Demand Management plans would be required for development projects over a certain size to show how the building would accommodate all modes of travel. 

“The TDM programs that we’re proposing in the zoning ordinance would be a new section and it’s triggered by projects that are over 50,000 square feet as proposed,” said James Freas, the city’s Neighborhood Development Services Director. “That’s a moveable number. At 50,000 square feet—roughly a 50 unit apartment building—at that point in time they would have to provide an analysis of their potential transportation demand and proposals for solutions.”

Chambers said that in the next year, the Department of Neighborhood Development Services will also be looking at changes to rules for on-street parking as well. That will cover the existing system through which parking permits are reserved for tenants in some city neighborhoods. 

City Councilor Brian Pinkston supported the elimination of the requirements. 

“I’ve listened to arguments on both sides,” Pinkston said. “I’m a person who has three adult children and a bunch of other folks who come swinging through my house from time to time. They’ll have to adjust, I guess.”

Vice Mayor Juandiego Wade hinted at his past as a transportation planner when he indicated his support for the removal of requirements.

“It’s good to see that cities are doing this,” Wade said.

Charlottesville Mayor Lloyd Snook was more skeptical due to a concern that the city does not have sufficient alternatives to driving in place to support the change. 

“The concern that I have is that all of the places where folks have cited an example of eliminating parking requirements are all places that have meaningful, functional transit systems which we do not and we are a number of years away from doing that,” Snook said. 

Charlottesville is working with Albemarle County through the Thomas Jefferson Planning District to form a regional transportation authority to help pay for more robust transit, but formation would be at least three years away. He bristled at one European city being mentioned as an example of a community that reduced vehicles through inner-city congestion charges.

“When one talks about, let’s use London for an example, London has one of the best developed transit systems in the world,” Snook said.

Snook said Raleigh began its reduction of parking requirements gradually as opposed to doing it all at once as proposed for Charlottesville. 

“Raleigh started off by saying ‘we’re going to only eliminate the parking requirements in areas where there is adequate transit access,’” Snook said. 

Snook said Charlottesville’s terrain is an obstacle to older people getting on e-bikes or bicycles.  He suggested the city take a pause on eliminating minimums until the transit system is improved. 

“I happen to live in an area where from my house it is about a 15-minute walk to the nearest bus stop where one bus runs once an hour and it goes downtown and if I wanted to take the bus to any other place including the University of Virginia I’d have to change and basically it would take an hour and a half to two hours to get to where I want to go,” Snook said. 

Pinkston said that other alternatives exist such as on-demand private transportation. He urged the city to make the paradigm shift. 

“If we continue to have to wait on having a transit system and Ubers that cost $5 as opposed to $25 to $30, I just think we’ll be kicking this can down the road for years and in the mean time we’re trying to get a building and zoning ordinance where people can go start building stuff for us,” Pinkston said. 

City Councilor Michael Payne said he thought eliminating parking requirements would be feasible, but the city would need to evaluate the existing permit process. 

“Even on things just like allowing renters to participate in that and what enforcement might look like particularly in 10th and Page where there is that tension with UVA employees,” Payne said. 

As of November 8, City Councilor Leah Puryear said she was still debating what she thought about the idea.

“It seems like something that would be feasible,” Puryear said. 

Toward the end of the conversation, Pinkston said the city needs to begin to convince the University of Virginia to take a more meaningful role in the area’s regional transit governance. The firm AECOM continues work on a study on the issue, as I reported earlier this month from the Charlottesville-Albemarle Metropolitan Policy Board of which City Councilor Payne is a member. 

“Realistically I think the big conversation will be between UVA, Albemarle, and Charlottesville about funding and what mix of funding streams to do and it should be noted that it’s a lot of money but if you look at their analysis, across Charlottesville and Albemarle it’s a pretty small increase in either sales tax or other sources can permanently fund it,” Payne said. 

General Assembly approval and signature by Governor Glenn Youngkin will be needed for additional taxing power. 

There are two more work sessions to go through including the November 13 meeting which dealt with affordability provisions in the Development Code. I will get to that by the end of the week but the next edition is going to take a look back at transit. 

Before you go: The time to write and research of this article is covered by paid subscribers to Charlottesville Community Engagement. In fact, this particular installment comes from the November 28, 2023 edition.

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