Category: District of Columbia

Capital Bikeshare becoming an economic development tool

Posted on by Andrew Brown

Capital Bikeshare is doing more than moving people around on red bikes. It’s also helping sell houses and apartments and draw people to businesses.

The bike-sharing system, which has more than 175 docking stations across the District, Arlington and Alexandria, has become the latest tool to spur development and attract young people. Soon it will be coming to Montgomery County, and other communities are trying to bring it to their neighborhoods.

Craigslist showed 72 active housing listings touting proximity to bikeshare on Friday. It is featured on Airbnb as a perk for visiting tourists seeking to rent out locals’ homes. Wal-Mart is planning to add the docking stations to its stores coming to the District, according to bikeshare officials.

About eight in 10 bikeshare members who responded to an annual survey said they are more likely to patronize a business if it is accessible by bikeshare. Those riders are a coveted demographic. They tend to be higher educated, wealthier and younger — plus more likely to be male and white — than the general population. Stewart Schwartz, who runs the Coalition for Smarter Growth, noted the service attracts new and young residents who are looking for walkable places to live and work. They are likely to be innovators who will help spur the economy, he said.

Arlington County has viewed bikeshare as a economic development tool from the start, according to Chris Hamilton, who runs Arlington County commuter services. He said retailers, restaurants and shop owners want to be near the docking stations. “I think it’s helping our local economy,” he said.

The bikeshare stations were not always so coveted, though. A few years ago, neighbors near Lincoln Park in Capitol Hill fought against a docking station near them. But now, officials said, some developers are seeking them out.

Christopher Leinberger, a George Washington University professor and Brookings Institution fellow, said that Capital Bikeshare could become akin to cars and Metro in changing the dynamics of development around the region. Leinberger has studied the economic impact of Metrorail, which has spurred billions of dollars of development around the region in the past 37 years. “It could be that significant and yet it’s really cheap,” he said.

But bikeshare does not have the stability of Metro stations, noted Matt Klein, president of D.C. developer Akridge. Bikeshare docks are solar-powered, which has made them easy to install without needing to wire into the power grid. But that same ease of installation makes them easy to take away. By contrast, fixed rail Metro stations provide a predictable and unmovable piece of transportation infrastructure that can transport far more people than a 40-bike docking station, he said. Developers can build around a Metro station confident it will likely attract a permanent and steady flow of people.

Still, Klein said bikeshare is nice to have near Akridge projects. “It would fall more into an amenity category than important transportation infrastructure,” he said. “It may evolve into something more.”

Photo Courtesy of The Examiner

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14th Street: Past, Present, and Future

14th Street: Past, Present, and Future

Posted on by Andrew Brown

The Greater U Street area of 14th Street NW has witnessed dramatic change in just a few short years. Over 1000 housing units are under construction or newly built, about 85,000 square feet of retail space have been added, and dozens of restaurants have opened in the past few years. What makes this historic district such a magnet for new development? How has historic preservation and the arts district coexisted with dramatic redevelopment all along the corridor? What’s being done to preserve and build affordable housing? We heard about the story of the rapidly changing 14th Street NW corridor from the people who live and work here.

Testimony before the Hon. Muriel Bowser, Chair of the Committee on Economic Development and Housing re: FY 2014 Budget Oversight for DMPED and DHCD

Posted on by Andrew Brown

Please accept these comments on behalf of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. We are a regional organization based in the District of Columbia focused on ensuring transportation and development decisions are made with genuine community involvement and accommodate growth while revitalizing communities, providing more housing and travel choices, and conserving our natural and historic areas.

DMPED should recommit to leveraging public land dispositions for affordable housing

We are greatly disappointed in DMPED’s reduced expectations for affordable housing in new public land dispositions. Given the increasing challenge of housing affordable to our residents, we urge the Council to ensure DMPED recommit to leveraging public land dispositions for affordable housing, including for very low income households. In our 2012 report, Public Land for Public Good, we show that the District has and can do great things with its city-owned land. We are disappointed that DMPED is departing from the practice of the past decade to ask for 20-30 percent of affordable housing in public land dispositions affordable to households earning 30%, 50%, 60% and 80% Area Median Income (AMI). We are also surprised that the Mayor’s Housing Task Force dropped any recommendation to make the most of public land sales for affordable housing and sent this issue to the future study list.

Under DMPED’s current leadership, commitment to affordable housing in solicitations for public land dispositions has steeply declined. DMPED no longer asks for a specific percent of affordable housing or specific income levels. Instead, DMPED asks that proposals comply with or exceed the Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) law, which is already required for most residential development. IZ sets a minimum of 8-10 set aside at 50-80% AMI, with most income targeting at 80% AMI. To compensate, developments receive a 20% bonus density. Given the city can (and used to) leverage the value of its own land to subsidize housing, we should expect much more from public land deals. We recommend that DMPED restore the earlier practice of to asking for a 20-30% set aside with income targeting at the 30% AMI, 60% AMI and no more than 80% AMI income levels. (See tables 1 & 2 below).

This drop off in affordable housing in public land dispositions as a priority is particularly surprising given the attention the administration has put on renewing efforts to preserve and create more affordable housing. Public lands are an important tool for creating new affordable housing that the administration should not abandon now. We ask the council to ensure we are making the most of the unique opportunity to leverage the value of the District’s land to create more affordable housing through the public land disposition process. Public land disposition and development requests should clearly ask for and prioritize proposals that offer substantial amounts of affordable housing, including units affordable to those earning 30 percent AMI. As was the practice in the past, we ask that requests specify the city is seeking 20 percent to 30 percent of the total number of residential units affordable at 30 percent and 60 percent AMI for rentals, and up to 80 percent AMI for ownership. We suggest table 2, below, as a model. In addition, we ask that DMPED better coordinate with other agencies to pool resources to ensure the production of housing affordable at deeply affordable levels as a part of larger mixed income or all affordable development.

DHCD – support $100 million to affordable housing, ensure IZ & ADUs have support they need

Regarding DHCD’s budget, first and foremost, we want to express our support for the $100 million commitment to affordable housing, with $87 million going to the Housing Production Trust Fund. We commend the Mayor for this commitment and ask the Council to support this. These funds are critically important to addressing our city’s escalating housing prices that are burdening a large share of D.C. households with higher and higher housing costs.

Inclusionary Zoning & affordable dwelling unit management

IZ administration has experienced significant problems in the start up phase. DHCD has indicated that is making headway addressing these significant challenges. DHCD will propose revisions to overly cumbersome administrative regulations, which should improve the process. DHCD has worked with Office of Planning and the Zoning Commission to resolve conflicts with FHA mortgage lending standards. DHCD has solicited for additional assistance to implement IZ and Affordable Dwelling Unit (ADU) programs. These are all important steps to addressing the major administrative challenges IZ implementation has encountered. We remain concerned that the office responsible for administering IZ and ADUs is understaffed. We suggest that at a minimum, and new Capital City Fellow be added to their small team.

I want to thank Director Michael Kelly and his staff for their openness and responsiveness to us.

Thanks also to Chairman Bowser’s keen interest in ensure these programs work, and affordable housing opportunities are increased.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Cheryl Cort
Policy Director

Table 1
Table 2

How to fix parking: Price it right, and don’t play favorites

Posted on by acustis

Parking has been called third rail of local politics, and for good reason. At a panel Wednesday on “Getting Parking Right,” Nelson\Nygaard transportation planner Jeff Tumlin put it this way: “People hate the existing system, but they’ll also hate any changes you make to the rules. No matter what you do, people are going to be very upset with you.” Sam Zimbabwe, planning director for the District Department of Transportation, was also on the panel. From the look on his face, he knows that has his work cut out for him as the agency tries to bring some measure of rationality to the city’s tangle of parking regulations. We all want to be able to park wherever we want, for as long as we want, and we want it to be free. But we might as well wish for a world of free and infinitely available ice cream. We can’t have it, and we give up a lot by trying to get there.

Sustainable transportation consultant Jeff Tumlin presented in Richmond and DC

Posted on by acustis

I missed both presentations earlier this week by Jeff Tumlin, one of the nation’s leading sustainable transportation planners as a consultant at Nelson-Nygaard, and author of Sustainable Transportation Planning: Tools for Creating Vibrant, Healthy, and Resilient Communities. On Monday, he presented to the Partnership for Smart Growth in Richmond, to about 80 attendees, including a couple of City Council members and the city’s bike and pedestrian planner. The Richmond.com website, affiliated with the Richmond Times-Dispatch, published a thorough summary of the talk, “10 Things Every City Can Do for Sustainable Transportation.”

Getting Parking Right

Getting Parking Right

Posted on by acustis

Parking policy guru Jeff Tumlin will outline sixteen ways to tailor parking policies to meet parking demand while reducing some of the negative effects of current policies. D.C. Department of Transportation’s Associate Director Sam Zimbabwe will present the city’s latest thinking on how to take the lessons learned from around the country to craft parking policies that support community goals. Join us to learn about best practices and what D.C. government is planning to do to get parking right.

Testimony before the D.C. Historic Preservation Review Board, Support for McMillan Sand Filtration Plant Master Plan Update

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

Please accept our testimony on behalf of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. My organization works to ensure that transportation and development decisions in the Washington D.C. region accommodate growth while revitalizing communities, providing more housing and travel choices, and conserving our natural and historic areas.

We wish to express our support for the revised Master Plan for the McMillan Sand Filtration Plant proposal. The new plan takes an already thoughtful plan and provides additional open space and careful treatment of the unique historic resources of the site. The plan will restore and provide public access to key elements of the distinctive historic resources. This would not be possible without the redevelopment program that helps pay for the cost of the restoration.

We recognize that the expansion of park space on the site was in part driven by D.C. Water’s enhancement of stormwater management and flood mitigation efforts. The expanded park space, driven both by D.C. Water and public demand for a larger park, has traded off a significant loss of affordable housing for the space. This is a major disappointment and a loss of D.C.’s use of public lands to address the housing needs of many residents, especially at lower income levels of 60 percent of AMI and below.

Notwithstanding this significant loss, we recognize the important historic preservation, public space, housing, and commercial space contributions of the revised Master Plan. For decades, access to this large area was prohibited, creating a wide gap between surrounding activities and neighborhoods. The revised plan would make this historic resource featured in a major public park a citywide destination.  The Master Plan honors and replicates the historic landscape elements of the Olmsted Walk that have disappeared from the site. We agree with the staff comment that additional work should be done with DDOT to ensure that the Olmsted Walk connection to the sidewalk design is more than a standard sidewalk.  This might require some flexibility in DDOT’s design standards.

The plan appropriately focuses taller office buildings towards Michigan Avenue and tapers building heights and forms as the development moves south to meet rowhouse neighbors. The plan adds separation to the neighborhood to the south with a large public park. Large scale buildings are needed close to Michigan Avenue to give a sense of enclosure and connect to the Washington Hospital Center. Eventually, we hope these new buildings will encourage reconfiguration of the hospital complex to create more pedestrian-oriented designs.

Preservation of Cell 14 and recreation of the Olmstead Walk along North Capitol Street highlight the historic features of the site; however, they should be balanced with the need to support a better pedestrian environment along these busy streets by better connecting the pedestrian to adjacent uses on the site.

The plan for complementary new uses of retail, offices, and residential will strengthen the facing hospital complex and reconnect the site the city. These proposed uses are likely to build upon and amplify the contribution that current hospital center-related activities make to D.C.’s economy and employment base.  While the northern components of the plan better connect the site to its surroundings, the large park and recreated Olmsted Walk also allow the site to stand out as a distinctive and special place.

Overall, we support the revised master plan as a sensitive approach to preserving and making publically accessible this industrial architectural and public works heritage. The housing, retail, and office components help address the needs of a growing city and hospital district. Given that we have already lost a significant number of low income housing units planned in the first Master Plan, we ask that historic design guidance work with existing proposed levels of housing and commercial space, and not force further reductions.  While we would like to see significantly more affordable housing in this plan, the redevelopment plan does contribute to important community and citywide needs. The proposed plan for preservation and development is a compromise to enable the restoration of this distinctive historic resource.

Thank you for your consideration.

Cheryl Cort
Policy Director

D.C.-region smart-growth organization releases transit report

Posted on by Danny Levi

Earlier this week, the Coalition for Smarter Growth issued a report on the Washington, D.C. region’s public transportation, including a set of nine principles to guide long-term regional planning for the next generation of transit. The Coalition for Smarter Growth, a non-profit, works to promote smart growth in the Washington, D.C. region.

For those living or working in Washington, D.C., Maryland or Virginia who ever tried to travel to one of the three major area airports, work, or activities and errands without driving a car, they know that Metro serves as a backbone of our regional public transportation network, and they understand that this network includes numerous transit entities that cross local jurisdictional lines.

Relying in part on 2012 and 2013 reports on next-generation transit goals issued by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, respectively, the March 4, 2013 Coalition for Smarter Growth’s primer summarizes plans to grow the Metro system and to expand public transportation.

The report discusses six ongoing transit initiatives: Metrorail’s 23-mile Silver Line extension in Virginia; a new eight-line light-rail and streetcar network throughout D.C.; Metrorail’s Purple Line cross-county connection in Maryland; a new 5-mile streetcar service along a mixed-use corridor in Arlington and Fairfax Virginia; three rapid bus transportation corridors in Alexandria and Arlington, Virginia; and a 160-mile rapid bus transportation system in Montgomery County, Maryland.

The report, “Thinking Big Planning Smart,” states that its purpose “is to get you involved in creating a vision and plan for the new public transportation investments we need to link together our region’s ever-growing number of livable, walkable centers and neighborhoods.” The Coalition offers the 35-page report as a primer on the next generation of transit and a resource on already-planned regional transit proposals in progress.

As Aimee Custis, Communication Manager at the Coalition for Smarter Growth, wrote on the popular blog Greater Greater Washington, “[the] report is both a call to action and a baseline resource.”

Photo courtesy of Doug Canter.

Read the original story here >>

 

 

Why It May Soon Become Harder To Park In Some D.C. Neighborhoods

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

The District of Columbia’s Office of Planning is considering a proposal that would potentially reduce the number of available parking spaces in some neighborhoods.

Planning officials may submit a proposal this spring to the zoning commission eliminating the mandatory parking space minimums required for new development in transit-rich corridors and in downtown Washington. The idea squares with the vision of making the district less car-dependent and would let developers decide how many parking spaces are necessary based on market demand.

Opponents, however, say the plan denies the reality that roughly 70 percent of Washington-area commuters drive, and removing off-street parking requirements in apartment and office buildings would force motorists to circle city blocks looking for scarce spaces.

“This is a very dangerous proposal. We think it threatens the future of Washington, D.C.,” says Lon Anderson, the chief spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic, which represents motorists and advocates road construction as a solution for traffic congestion.

A city where a car isn’t a necessity

Thirty-nine percent of D.C. households are car-free. In some neighborhoods with access to public transit, more than 80 percent of households are car-free. Some recent developments wound up building too much parking to adhere to the mandatory minimums, including the D.C. USA shopping center in Columbia Heights, right next to a Metro station and busy bus corridor.

“The parking garage there is probably as twice as big as it needs to be, and the second level is basically not used, so the city has had to scramble to find another use for it,” says Cheryl Cort, the policy director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth and advocate of the zoning change.

Developers favor eliminating the mandatory parking minimums, because the construction of parking garages, especially underground, is enormously expensive. Each underground space adds $40,000 to $70,000 to a project’s cost, according to Harriet Tregoning, the director of D.C.’s Office of Planning, who is working on the overhaul of D.C.’s zoning code. It was last updated in 1958, when planners assumed the automobile would remain the mainstay of individual transportation.

“No matter how much mandatory parking we require in new buildings, if the landlord is going to charge you $200 per month to park in the building and the city is going to let you park on the street for $35 per year, you may very well decide… to park on the street,” Tregoning says. “Many developers are finding they have parking that they can’t get rid of, that they don’t know what to do with. That’s really a stranded asset.”

Parking-free building coming to Tenleytown

On the corner of Wisconsin Avenue NW and Brandywine Street NW stands what used to be a billiards hall. The property, just a block from the Tenleytown Metro station, has been an eye-sore for years. Douglas Development is expected to redevelop the site this year, turning it into a mixed-use retail and residential space with 40 apartment units and no on-site parking.

“When the Zoning Commission looked at this site and DDOT did some analysis, they found a lot of availability of both on-street parking and off-street parking. There are actually hundreds of parking spaces around this Metro station that go dark at night,” says Cheryl Cort, whose group contends the construction of parking spaces drives up housing costs an average 12.5 percent per unit. If developers can’t find a market for those parking spaces, they pass the costs onto tenants.

Douglas Development, which declined to comment on this story, received an exemption from the zoning commission to avoid the parking minimum at the Tenleytown property. Situated close to Metro and planning to market the apartments to car-free residents, the developers escaped having to build 20 spaces under the current regulations in the zone (C-2-A).

Douglas’s plan may look sensible given the conditions in the neighborhood, but AAA’s Anderson says it will cause problems.

“Are you going to have any visitors who might drive there to visit you? How about your mom and dad, are they going to be coming in? Do they live locally or are they going to be driving in? If so, where are they going to park?” says Anderson.

Fewer cars in D.C.’s future?

In its fight against the parking policy change, AAA is being joined by community activists, who claim their neighborhoods will be clogged by drivers looking for parking. Sue Hemberger, a 28-year District resident who does not own a car, says Tregoning’s proposal is too harsh. In her view, District officials are making car ownership a hassle.

“What I see us doing in the name of transit-oriented development is pushing people who won’t forgo car ownership off the edge of the transit grid,” Hemberger says. “I’m worried about the future of certain neighborhoods and I’m worried about the future of downtown.”

Anderson says D.C. is waging a “war on cars,” but Tregoning says changes to zoning regulations are not designed to make motorists’ lives miserable. On the contrary, the planning director anticipates the number of drivers in the district will grow but they will have enough options to do away with car ownership, like the car sharing services of Zipcar and Car2Go.

“How does your walking, biking, or taking transit affect his ability to drive, except to make it easier?” Tregoning says in response to Anderson. “The national average household spends 19 percent of income on transportation. In the District, in areas well-served by transit, our number is more like 9 percent of household income. So we happen to think lots of choices are a good thing.”

In 2012 the city of Portland, Oreg., commissioned a study (pdf) to look at the relationship between car ownership and new development, after apartment construction with little to no on-site parking in the city’s inner neighborhoods raised concerns about the potential for on-street parking congestion.

The study found “that 64 percent of residents are getting to work via a non-single-occupant vehicle. Almost a third (28 percent) of those surveyed belong to car-free households; however, cars are still the preferred mode of travel for many of the survey respondents.”

About two-thirds of the vehicle owners surveyed in Portland’s inner neighborhoods “park on the street without a permit and have to walk less than two minutes to reach their place of residence, and they spend only five minutes or less searching for a parking spot,” the study found.

To Hemberger, the Portland study’s key finding is that people don’t give up car ownership just because they commute to work via public transit. In a city like Washington, Hemberger says, there will not be enough street spot to accommodate new, car-owning residents.

Decision could come this spring

The Office of Planning will submit the proposed removal of parking minimums to the Zoning Commission later this month or early April, where it will go through the public process again before a final decision is made.

“We are a really unique city because we have an amazing number of transportation choices. Our citizens end up paying a lot less for transportation than the rest of the region,” Tregoning says. “I don’t understand why that would be considered a war on cars to try to give people choices, the very choices that actually take automobiles off the road to make it easier to park, to make it easier to drive with less congestion.”

Photo courtesy of Victoria Pickering on Flickr

Read the original article here >>

D.C. Considering Lifting Mandatory Parking Minimums

Posted on by Ted Van Houten

The District of Columbia’s Office of Planning is considering a proposal to potentially reduce the number of available parking spaces in some neighborhoods as new development attracts more residents and jobs. If successful, it will mark the first major change to the city’s zoning code since it was first adopted in 1958.

It’s part of a growing city attempt to reduce congestion by offering its residents alternatives to the automobile – from bikes to buses to making walking more attractive.

Planning officials may submit to the zoning commission this spring a proposal to eliminate the mandatory parking space minimums required in new development in transit-rich corridors and in downtown Washington.  The idea squares with the vision of making the district less car-dependent and would let developers decide how many parking spaces are necessary based on market demand.  However, opponents say the plan denies the reality that roughly 70 percent of Washington-area commuters drive and removing off-street parking requirements in apartment and office buildings would force motorists to circle city blocks looking for scarce spaces.

“This is a very dangerous proposal.  We think it threatens the future of Washington, D.C.,” says Lon Anderson, the chief spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic, which represents motorists and advocates road construction as a solution for traffic congestion.

A city where a car isn’t a necessity

Thirty-nine percent of D.C. households are car-free. In some neighborhoods with access to public transit, more than 80 percent of households are car-free.  Some recent developments wound up building too much parking to adhere to the mandatory minimums, including the D.C. USA shopping center in Columbia Heights, which is right next to a Metro station and busy bus corridor.

“The parking garage there is probably as twice as big as it needs to be, and the second level is basically not used so the city has had to scramble to find another use for it,” says Cheryl Cort, the policy director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth and advocate of the zoning change.

“Rather than having the government tell the private sector how many parking spaces to build, we think it’s better for the developer to figure out how it best wants to market those units,” Cort added.

Developers favor eliminating the mandatory parking minimums because the construction of parking garages, especially underground, is enormously expensive.  Each underground space adds $40,000 to $70,000 to a project’s cost, according to Harriet Tregoning, the director of D.C.’s Office of Planning, who is working on the overhaul of D.C.’s zoning code. The code was last updated in 1958 when planners assumed the automobile would remain the mainstay of individual transportation.

“No matter how much mandatory parking we require in new buildings, if the landlord is going to charge you $200 per month to park in the building and the city is going to let you park on the street for $35 per year, you may very well decide… to park on the street,” Tregoning says. “Many developers are finding they have parking that they can’t get rid of, that they don’t know what to do with.  That’s really a stranded asset.”

Parking-free building coming to Tenleytown

On the corner of Wisconsin Avenue NW and Brandywine Street NW stands what used to be a billiards hall. The property, just a block from the Tenleytown Metro station, has been an eyesore for years. Douglas Development is expected to redevelop the site this year, turning it into a mixed-use retail and residential space with 40 apartment units and no on-site parking.

“When the Zoning Commission looked at this site and DDOT did some analysis, they found a lot of availability of both on-street parking and off-street parking.  There are actually hundreds of parking spaces around this Metro station that go dark at night,” says Cheryl Cort, whose group contends the construction of parking spaces drives up housing costs an average 12.5 percent per unit. If developers can’t find a market for those parking spaces, they pass the costs onto tenants.

Douglas Development, which declined to comment on this story, received an exemption from the zoning commission to avoid the parking minimum at the Tenleytown property. Situated close to Metro and planning to market the apartments to car-free residents, the developers escaped having to build 20 spaces under the current regulations in the zone (C-2-A).

Douglas’s plan may look sensible given the conditions in the neighborhood, but AAA’s Anderson says it will cause problems.

“Are you going to have any visitors who might drive there to visit you?  How about your mom and dad, are they going to be coming in? Do they live locally or are they going to be driving in? If so, where are they going to park?” says Anderson, who says the past three years have seen 16,000 new car registrations in Washington.

Fewer cars in D.C.’s future?

In its fight against the parking policy change, AAA is being joined by community activists who claim their neighborhoods will be clogged by drivers looking for parking. Sue Hemberger, a 28-year district resident who does not own a car, says Tregoning’s proposal is too harsh. In her view, district officials are making car ownership a hassle.

“What I see us doing in the name of transit-oriented development is pushing people who won’t forgo car ownership off the edge of the transit grid,” Hemberger says. “I’m worried about the future of certain neighborhoods and I’m worried about the future of downtown.”

Anderson says D.C. is waging a “war on cars,” but Tregoning says changes to zoning regulations are not designed to make motorists’ lives miserable.  On the contrary, the planning director anticipates the number of drivers in the district will grow but they will have enough options to do away with car ownership, like the car sharing services of Zipcar and Car2Go.

“How does your walking, biking, or taking transit affect his ability to drive, accept to make it easier?” Tregoning says in response to Anderson. “The national average household spends 19 percent of income on transportation. In the district, in areas well-served by transit, our number is more like 9 percent of household income. So we happen to think lots of choices are a good thing.”

In 2012 the city of Portland, Oregon, commissioned a study to look at the relationship between car ownership and new development, after apartment construction with little to no on-site parking in the city’s inner neighborhoods raised concerns about the potential for on-street parking congestion.

The study found “that 64 percent of residents are getting to work via a non-single-occupant vehicle. Almost a third (28 percent) of those surveyed belong to car-free households; however, cars are still the preferred mode of travel for many of the survey respondents.”

About two-thirds of the vehicle owners surveyed in Portland’s inner neighborhoods “park on the street without a permit and have to walk less than two minutes to reach their place of residence, and they spend only five minutes or less searching for a parking spot,” the study found.

To Hemberger, the Portland study’s key finding is that people don’t give up car ownership just because they commute to work via public transit.  In a city like Washington, Hemberger says, there will not be enough street spot to accommodate new, car-owning residents.

Decision could come this spring

The Office of Planning will submit the proposed removal of parking minimums to the Zoning Commission later this month or early April, where it will go through the public process again before a final decision is made.

“We are a really unique city because we have an amazing number of transportation choices. Our citizens end up paying a lot less for transportation than the rest of the region,” Tregoning says. “I don’t understand why that would be considered a war on cars to try to give people choices, the very choices that actually take automobiles off the road to make it easier to park, to make it easier to drive with less congestion.”

Photo courtesy of vpickering on Flickr

Read the original article here >>