Parking Parking Parking!

We must talk about your parking regulations. In fact, we must mock them.

In no other area of life do head spins quicker, and people’s opinions take on truly bizarre forms, than we we talk about parking. I get it, we are a culture obsessed with driving and parking. It’s part of nearly adult’s daily routine. In this episode, Tony Jordan of the Parking Reform Network and I have some fun with it, while also diving into the nitty-gritty of how to make change in your community.

As a bonus, Tony describes some of the most bizarre, and most hilarious parking requirements he’s run across.

Here’s a link to Donald Shoup’s article, “Roughly Right or Precisely Wrong.”

Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin’s Substack page.

Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you’d like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.

Intro: “Why Be Friends”

Outro: “Fairweather Friend”

Transcript:

Kevin K (00:00.92) Welcome back to the Missy City podcast. This is Kevin Klinkenberg. Today we're going to talk about everybody's favorite topic, parking. The bane of my existence for most of my professional career, but we've got Tony Jordan here with us today from the Parking Reform Network. And I'm really looking forward to this conversation so we can get into the weeds a little bit on what's actually an incredibly important topic. So Tony, welcome. Tony Jordan (00:28.617) Thanks so much. Happy to be here. Kevin K (00:31.064) Well, it's a pleasure to have you. I ran into you in Cincinnati at the Strong Towns National Gathering and seeing you and we were chatting over a couple of beers and it just seemed like, you know, as soon as we start talking, it feels like, well, this probably should be a podcast. You know, we should spend more time getting into things. So I'm grateful you were able to make some time to be able to join. Tony, before we go too far, why don't we tell me what is the Parking Reform Network and how... How long has it been around? Tony Jordan (01:03.081) the parking reform network is a, 501 C three organization that was founded, founded in the spring of 2019 and we launched in March of 2020. and it, yeah, it was actually okay for organizing a national organization because everything moved online. Like we, we, people were much more amenable to slacking and, using zoom calls, but we, the idea behind. Kevin K (01:16.92) Good timing. Tony Jordan (01:33.641) The need I saw, I had been doing parking reform locally in Portland, Oregon, where I'm from, or where I live, for years, helping to get rid of parking mandates that had been added back in and removing them entirely from the city and worked on upzoning projects too. And the whole while I really felt like one of the things that was missing in advancing parking reform was, having an advocacy organization and a community that really was helping to educate the public and advance these policies. The practitioners and the city council even often knew that these policies were bad, the existing ones, but the public support wasn't there. So founding the Parking Inform Network, it's a community of practitioners, academics, activists, policymakers who... We exist to kind of build a community and a movement around educating the public about parking policy and accelerating reforms. And we do that through a number of research and outreach and advocacy avenues. Kevin K (02:47.352) That's cool. So how did you, what was your background then getting into this? Were you in planning or transportation or talk a little bit about like how you came to this, to this spot. Tony Jordan (02:57.641) Yeah, I mean, I grew up in Los Angeles in San Pedro, the port of LA, and went to school at Santa Cruz and got a politics degree. And then I moved up to Portland and I mostly worked in tech for most of my career, web design, backend, server services programming. And I also, but I also did a couple, I worked at a couple of jobs as a labor organizer. So my background was not at all in planning. I got rid of my car. We got rid of our household's car in 2008. I had a two year old. We had another child in 2010. And I feel like that kind of primed the pump. I started looking around transportation a little differently. And then in 2010, I read a blog post very randomly on a website called Metafilter that was about the high cost of reparking, about Professor Shoup's book that had come out years before. And I am the kind of person, if I hear something interesting, I'll go look up the Wikipedia or I'll look into it. And so I got the book on inner library loan and started reading it. And I was just like, my mind was blown. Shoop has asked me, you know, one time, what did you think when you read the book? And I was like, man, I felt like I was eating a hamburger and reading the jungle. Like it was really like, what is going on? You look once you your eyes are open to this, you look around. I live across the street from a parking lot. I worked overlooking a parking lot and I just like your. to understand why, how much these things cost and then why they're there was just like, why doesn't everyone know this? I looked at my own zoning code in Portland and actually at the time Portland was a pretty, was pretty Vanguard city. We had no parking mandates on our corridors, on our bus, our frequent service corridors that had passed in 2002 kind of to little fanfare. And, but then a couple of years later, In 2012, all of a sudden, they started building apartments on a couple of these corridors. Division Street was one, North Williams. And they were building like 30, 40, 50 apartments in a building with no parking. And they were leasing up. And then someone proposed someone got permitted at 81 unit building on the street with no parking and the neighborhood just went nuts. And they started petitioning the city council to add parking mandates back. Tony Jordan (05:18.633) And so there was a pro they started considering this and I said, Hey, I just read this book a couple of years ago and I started going to city council and I met people who were interested, but they weren't really very organized. And so I started just like creating a mailing list and, and, you know, we lost, they actually added parking mandates back in, but that kind of got me totally started. That was when I first reached out to professor Shoop. He wrote an op ed. And I started just that, that really kicked off. the fuel of like, okay, we need to be better organized on this and next time we're not gonna lose. Kevin K (05:52.152) Interesting. So if I could go back like you said in 2008, you got rid of your car. What prompted you all to, and you had a two -year -old. So what, do you like hate America so much you decided to get rid of your cars? What was that all about? Tony Jordan (06:06.665) You know, the check engine light went on and I took it into, I just afford focus 2004 focus second car ever owned. I took it to the dealer and I mean not to the dealer to the repair shop and they thought, this is the transmission. I thought, man, that transmission on that car has always been weird. Sure. And they, it was going to be $2 ,000. And, and I said, okay. And then they called me back and said, you know, it's not the transmission. We looked at it. Like we haven't charged you anything, but we think it's the computer maybe. So here. Kevin K (06:10.104) Ha ha ha. Tony Jordan (06:36.233) put this little dongle on and drive around for a week. And I said, how much does the computer cost? And they said, $2 ,000. And I was like, okay. And then I drove around and they came back and they said, nah, it's not the computer. We think it's this. How much is that? And I was like, they said engine or something, engine rebuild. And I was like, $2 ,000. And I was just like, man, if I pay for this to get fixed, I obviously expect that either the computer or the transmission will break next. And that will, so I just thought like, this is going to be a never ending money pit. So I told my wife and I discussed it and we had. We lived in Portland, we lived near Transit, I had a bike, we lived near Zipcar, right? Zipcar, it was kind of in the center of Zipcar. And so we said, let's put the car in the garage and just try six months without driving it. And we did. And then at the end of six months, I sold it to the dealer for $2 ,000. And so I was up $4 ,000. And then I never really looked back at buying a... Kevin K (07:22.52) What a cool idea. Kevin K (07:34.936) And that's just, hey, I really like, I mean, that's a great way to just like, let's test it out. Let's see if we can handle it for a while. And so then in terms of like having small children, I know myself having small children, it's not the easiest thing in the world because it's just, you know, there are so many things that you might want to take your kids to that you just need a car to get around. How did you manage that? Tony Jordan (07:55.945) I mean, some of it, we just didn't do as many things. My son took offense to this when I told him when he was older, but I said, one of the nice things was it does kind of make some decisions for you. It simplifies your life. So you're probably only gonna go to one birthday party in a weekend unless they're very close to one another, right? Like, or in a day, right? So some of it, initially we used Zipcar quite a bit and... Kevin K (08:15.608) God, that sounds magical. Tony Jordan (08:24.489) you know, tapered that off over time. And obviously with small, small kids, it's a little bit harder, but we know we carried the kids on our carriers. We never did, you know, when they got a little older, I had a bike trailer I would take to preschool. But it does, you know, you kind of adjust your life over time. It's not, it's not easy. I feel like we are a bit of like, you know, first adopters, still people who are voluntarily living in solidarity with people who can't drive. or can't own vehicles, right? Those people exist in our communities. And so, you know, I experience a lot of the same frustrations voluntarily, but I also have the capacity to try and, you know, argue for it. So, I mean, I think that, you know, my kids do sports or my daughter dances, my son does ultimate frisbee and other things, and he rides his bike to work now at Trader Joe's, and they take the bus, and they're just very independent. And I'm sure there are, you know, opportunities that... we can't do, but I mean, that's kind of life. You make decisions and in exchange, they really are, you know, they know how to get around. And I think they're gonna, I think it's gonna really give them a good leg up when they get to, you know, college or, you know, as the world has to adapt and reduce car dependency, you know, it's not gonna be as painful for them, I think, as you make these changes. Kevin K (09:51.224) How do you know, do you notice much of a difference then between like them and their friends and just other families that they, that you might run around with and like just their own habits and behaviors in that regard? Tony Jordan (10:01.769) Yeah, I mean, a lot of even though we live in a place that's pretty walkable, like obviously a lot of the other parents do drive frequently. I don't begrudge them that. My children get rides with other parents sometimes, too. I mean, we're you know, I don't think we'll offer to pay sometimes. Or, you know, like it's it's not like we're trying to be complete moochers or freeloaders on this. But, you know, like I think it on one hand, like my daughter, When she started middle school, other parents were often driving and we said, hey, we're not going to drive, so let's get our kids riding the bikes. And so our kids had their own mini bike group. And then as she didn't want to ride as much anymore, she would take the bus and other kids would learn to take the bus with her. So there is, I think, by just living a lifestyle that is less car dependent, sometimes I think people find it grating, like, these holier than thou. anti -car people, but at the same time, like it is an example. Like you can see it being done and other kids do it. My son now is 17. So he, you know, some of his friends are getting driver's licenses, but a lot of them aren't. One of the bigger conflicts is he's in film class and a lot of film is done. Well, not only logging, lugging gear around, but obviously, but it's a very common set piece, right? Is to be in a car or driving a car from point A to point B and Kevin K (11:28.248) Hmm. Tony Jordan (11:30.313) So one of his frustrations is he doesn't have a card to do these film transitions, you know, but it's, you know, I think it's worked out mostly okay. Kevin K (11:39.512) Have you ever tried to like quantify, you know, like how much money this has saved you over the years? Tony Jordan (11:47.337) I mean, I have not, other than the initial calculus I did where it was like, I'm up $4 ,000 on, and I can use that for zip car or whatever. I mean, I know it does. It definitely, I don't, I'm not the best budgeter, honestly. So I don't keep a spreadsheet, but I mean, the fact that we haven't owned a car for these years has definitely, you know, we take cheaper modes. And to some degree you do less, you do just do less stuff and that. Kevin K (12:04.26) Yeah. Tony Jordan (12:16.873) you know, simplifies your life and makes it a little bit cheaper. Kevin K (12:21.912) Yeah, I mean, I promise I'll get off on other topics, but I just find it's interesting when people are able to live in a way that we're told you can't live. So have you found that not having the car has opened up ways for you to spend money on other things in your life that maybe you wouldn't have been able to do otherwise? Tony Jordan (12:25.705) No problem. Tony Jordan (12:45.289) once again, I don't sure specifically like how much it impacts that. I mean, obviously the cost of buying some nice bikes is, you know, still much cheaper than, than spending on a car or the gas. I still have to pay for insurance. I mean, I still voluntarily pay for insurance. I don't have to, but I have a non -name donor policy, which is kind of expensive. you know, I think more, it just, it just, I find it is a much. more, it's a much more peaceful and relaxing way to live in most times. Like driving is so stressful, especially if you live in a larger city. Like it's, at least to me, it's scary. You, you, if you think about it, it's not like you're kind of making life difficult for everyone else who's not in your car at the expense of your convenience for the most part. And so I just find the ability to not have to like one of the best dividend is I never have to worry about like, you know, like that responsibility or that pressure or that inconvenience. If I'm on the bus, even if it's in traffic, I can be on my phone or be talking to who I'm with and not be worrying about piloting. Kevin K (14:00.408) Yeah, and you don't have to sweat finding a place to park wherever you're going. So that's kind of a nice thing. So then were you working in tech pretty much all the way up through the beginning of forming the Parking Reform Network? Tony Jordan (14:03.209) Exactly, yeah. Tony Jordan (14:14.025) Yeah, I mean, mostly, even when I worked for, so I worked two times for unions. I worked for the University of California, professional technical employees before I moved up to Portland. And then I worked for AFT organizing nurses. In both those jobs, I still often did the backend database or the website. And then I spent the 13 years before that working at a company that did online admissions applications. So yeah, I was mostly in. Kevin K (14:19.256) Okay. Kevin K (14:38.52) Okay, that's really cool. So then when you formed this nonprofit, who else kind of formed it with you or was this pretty much like you're taking this initiative on or were there others that really said they wanted to jump on board with you? Tony Jordan (14:51.561) I had been in discussions. So Portland has a great advocacy scene. So I had initially formed or after where I left off the story about the losing and parking mandates coming back. A couple of years after that, I started an organization called well, initially it was called Portland Shoopistas and then at Shoop's suggestion, we changed it to Portlanders for Parking Reform. And that was kind of just a low, I had a blog, a website, a newsletter, you know, an advocacy org that worked in partnership. Kevin K (15:02.488) Yeah, yeah. Tony Jordan (15:19.657) with other coalitions to just kind of like keep an eye on what was happening with various, you know, on street and off street parking policies in Portland and in the region and, you know, organize testimony and events and just kind of build awareness. So in that process, I worked with many. Portland has just, you know, freeway fighter this year. We have, you know, housing activists. It's a great scene. Michael Anderson from Sightline Institute and I had been talking about the concept of he proposed we should have a green lane project, which was a project of people for bikes to propose protected bike lanes. He said, you know, we should have, there should be some sort of project for parking similar. Like the idea was like, maybe get a cohort of cities together and take them on a discovery trip. And then they pledged to go review their parking code. And so we had pitched, he helped pitch that around to a couple of places and no one was really interested in hosting a similar project. that kind of consensus was it's hard to fundraise for parking reform, which is true. And so a couple of years later, I was in Chicago speaking at the Parking Industry Expo with these two women, Jane Wilberding and Lindsay Bailey. And... we kind of started hatching a concept around like, you know, like what, how do we, like, what would be a larger organization or, you know, a movement around this. And then I went to APA in San Francisco in 2019, Shoop was talking and there was, you know, a bunch of parking people there. And we met another student, we met a recent grad, Mike Kwan, who had graduated from Santa Cruz and now lives in DC. And so I said, you know, I asked, basically we were out at, at, at dinner with Patrick Sigmund, who is the original Chupista. And kind of we're just talking about like, you know, I think there just should need there needs to be something there needs to be an organization that is focused holistically on parking reform, not just the mandates of the on street management. And and really, I wanted to bring this organizing capacity. So we agreed you need three, you need four people to start a nonprofit organization. And so Mike and Jane and Lindsay were the. Tony Jordan (17:44.073) three original board members and it took a couple months to get the certifications and then set up a website. And then, you know, we went public with it in March and started bringing more people on March, 2020. I mean, yeah. Kevin K (17:57.08) That's terrific. That's terrific. So obviously, one of the big pushes has been in the parking reform world has been to remove or reduce minimum parking mandates. As you've talked about these things, what are the arguments that you are using or you see other people using that are most successful in sort of moving the needle related to that issue? Tony Jordan (18:23.305) I think the problem we've had is largely just lack of information, low information about what these mandates are, what we're talking about. So what are we talking about? We're talking about rules from the seventies, sixties, fifties that are anachronistic and completely based on nothing that are these like, Sorry, hold on. Just one second. Kevin K (18:57.048) No problem. Tony Jordan (19:12.297) I might need to take a redo on that section in one second. Kevin K (19:14.552) No, it's fine. Go ahead. Kevin K (19:24.504) All right, so talk about the most effective arguments. Tony Jordan (19:25.481) Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what we're talking about are these anachronistic rules that are based on nonsense from the 70s. But, yes, and we're talking about just getting rid of these mandates and not eliminating existing parking, you know, generally not severely restricting the ability of people to build parking in their new developments or with their businesses. But I think the other key is really showing people like, how much parking costs, how much space it takes up, what are the other impacts on things they care about, fiscal viability of their cities, the tax -based stuff, water runoff management or urban flooding and pollution, urban heat effects, just walkability, all these things come back to these rules. And what I found really effective lately is to just, you present that information, but in the context of, you know, I'll go look at, for example, bowling alleys. I'll draw a circle of a hundred miles around a city and find examples of bowling alley parking requirements, which are hilarious in themselves because it kind of shows you when they were written. And you'll find one per lane, two per lane, three per lane, four per lane, five per lane, six per lane, seven per lane, right? In just like an area around. And so it's like, what could be the difference between a bowler in this city? where they require two per lane and this one was seven or funeral homes. Like you'll, I, it's not uncommon to see one city require one parking space for 50 square feet, which is a pretty high requirement. You're talking the parking lot is going to need to be six to eight times bigger than the funeral home. And then another place will, will require only one per 500. So that's like a, you know, or, you know, like that's a pretty large difference. You know, 10, we'll find 10 to 12 times difference in. a city that's just 50 miles from another city. And I think that when people see that, that contrast, it really undermines the faith in like, why do these numbers exist? And their first reaction is, well, maybe we can just fix them. And you're like, no, like you can't, like just X them out and get working on the real work that it takes to repair your city, right? The parking mandates is just like... Tony Jordan (21:48.713) That's just clearing a hurdle. It doesn't actually change anything. That requires a developer -friendly zoning code, or it requires transportation management on the ground. But you're never going to get anywhere if these rules exist. Kevin K (22:06.072) Yeah, I was thinking about, and I think we may have talked briefly about this, but obviously, you know, Shoop's book, The High Cost of Free Parking is kind of like the gold standard for the field. It's a really, it's an incredible book. But I remember years before that, he wrote this little magazine article called Roughly Right or Precisely Wrong, which was maybe like three or four pages. But just that alone was such a devastating takedown of the stupidity of most minimum parking requirements and where they come from. And it's always wild to me that people think that those requirements are actually based in something real. Tony Jordan (22:48.169) Yeah, I mean, I have a slide that's called roughly right, precisely wrong based on that same concept. And it highlights this poor little town in Georgia, Woodbury, Georgia, that is really very small. And they have so many land uses with parking requirements and they have like, they're specific to two significant figures for things like, you know, hospital employees, like 1 .26 or 1 .72 for students. And then this place has two requirements. Like they have a separate land use requirement for parking for a hella port and a hella stop. Two, like it's different. Hell if I know what the difference is, right? And it's like, I like you point these out or North Carolina, when we went to CNU last year, we were looking at North Carolina cities because it was in, you know, it was in Charlotte. And there's all these parking requirements in cities in North Carolina for drive -in movie theaters. Like, and they literally are like, Kevin K (23:23.992) What is that? What the hell is that? Tony Jordan (23:46.569) one per speaker box. So it's like you're like telling a drive -in movie theater, which once again, no one's building them, that they have to have a parking space for every park. Like what is going on? One of my favorites is in Dallas, there is a parking requirement for sewage treatment plants. And it's one parking space per million gallons of capacity at the sewage treatment facility, which, and if you look at, Kevin K (24:12.264) my god. Tony Jordan (24:14.409) There's a sewage treatment facility. If you look at it on Google, it has this gigantic parking lot and there's like 20 cars in it because it's like it has like 300 million gallon capacity. So the parking lot is and this is the city telling it's who builds a sewage treatment plant, right? Like the city. But a water treatment plant in Dallas, like for drinking water, only requires two parking spaces. And you look at the you look at a satellite picture of the parking of the water treatment plant and there's like 20 spaces they didn't just build two. They built what they needed. Right. And so like this is really it's like. Kevin K (24:27.032) Yeah, no kidding. Tony Jordan (24:44.009) why are cities even saddling themselves with these requirements? It's insanity, right? Like something really went wrong in, you know, what in the urban planning profession and it just is kind of, we're trying to stop the bleeding and, you know, yeah. Kevin K (25:02.616) Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just hilarious, some of this stuff. When you detach yourself from it and you're just like, it's so, some of it's just so utterly ridiculous. But I think there's something you said that was really important there, which is like, you know, you're really, you're trying to just go about the business of like clearing a hurdle. So like you're not trying to say this is going to solve every problem. But what this is doing, you're trying to remove an impediment to. especially to more like walkable urban style development that really prevents a lot of good things from happening in cities all over the country. Tony Jordan (25:40.649) Right. I mean, it's it. I use an analogy sometimes like if you want to grow a garden, the garden in this case being like a walkable community, you can't go throw, you know, vegetable seeds in your lawn and expect it to work. You've got to remove the rocks and the weeds in the grass first. That's getting that's your parking mandate removal is just prepping the zone. You still have to do all the other stuff. You have to, you know, create the zoning code and you have to. manage on street parking so that it doesn't create spillover or whatever. So it's really a first step. The other great thing is that it's not just housing, right? Like this is a policy, one of the reasons I work on it. I can hardly find a better way to spend my time than one policy area that works on housing, transportation and climate, right? Like it's a piece of, if you have a climate action plan, it's not gonna work. with parking mandates. If you have a transportation plan to build more transit or get people to use other modes, it's not going to work if you have parking mandates. If you have a housing plan, it's not going to work if you have parking mandates. So this one thing, it doesn't fix everything, but it unlocks and makes your other plans actually gives them a fighting chance at success. Kevin K (26:58.2) So then how do you respond to, I mean, I can probably, I'm probably going to test like some of the arguments that people, that I hear all the time and I'm sure you hear them all the time too. but I'm just curious and it's good for the audience to kind of hear how you think about these things. But you know, one thing that I certainly hear a lot is, well, you can eliminate that, but people, people are still going to drive. So what's the point? You know, we live in a big city in a big region that's spread out and people, people drive. That's what they do. So, you know, that, and that seems to me like that's a common. objection that people have to removing some of those standards. Tony Jordan (27:31.561) Right, well, I mean, it's kind of ironic because your arguments are either it's not going to have an impact or it's going to be a disaster and it can't be both at the same time, right? So I think that's true. And to that I say, yes, the world is currently, most of our country is built for people who want to drive. And so on one hand, that should be comforting to the person who's worried about. I've got kids and I don't want to take them on the bus or, you know, my grandma likes to shop at this Walmart. Like the Walmart's still going to be there unless they just close it and build a bigger Walmart farther away, right? Like, I mean, they're still going to, these places still exist that people will drive to. Your house still has a parking space. So no one's asking you to change. We know that there's intense demand for a different way to live. That's why walkable communities are very expensive because... people want, there's not enough of them and people want to live in them. So I think like this just, it makes it possible to build these places. And then we'll see whether it's just consumer preference shows that, you know, people see these places and they want to move into them and we can build more of them or retrofit more of our communities to be like this way. Or frankly, there's a distinct possibility that we will be forced to make some decisions about not driving as much, you know, based on, you know, climate or just geometry issues of traffic. So like one way or the other, I think we have to come up with a solution. And this is, you know, it's just stop digging. First, the first thing is stop digging. And these parking mandates are just requiring everyone to dig the hole a little bit deeper every time they start a business or build a building. And, you know, so that's, I think that's one argument is, you know, well, if the demand is not there, then what do we have to lose by trying, you know, like these. the rules are just in the way of even trying to provide that thing that people seem to want. Kevin K (29:32.696) So another thing that I hear a lot, especially this is much more so like in urban communities, this is where these issues really come up more often anyway. You don't really find a ton of this discussion in a lot of our suburban communities. But I mean, there's some of that, but not a lot. But like in the parts of town where I live in the more urban part of Kansas City, one of the really common objections, let's say there's a large new apartment proposal or there's a commercial. There's a business that wants to go in and if they want to have no parking or very little parking, one of the objections as well, people are still going to drive and all they're going to do is they're just going to park up all the streets in front of my house in the neighborhood nearby. And they're just going to spill over into that. So you're really just making my life more miserable by taking parking away from our streets. Tony Jordan (30:25.449) Mm hmm. Yes. This is the spillover issue can be real, right? I mean, obviously, if you have successful businesses that have parking and they attract more people, since we know these numbers are incorrect, right? There's nothing that says a restaurant, the minimum ratio is actually providing enough parking for the customers or not. Right. I mean, so there's spillover anyway. But, you know, so there's one I would say. The. The solution to that is cities need to mind their own business when it comes to parking. They own the curb. The community owns the curb. It's a public asset or liability, depending on how you look at it. And, and, you know, if sure, if it's free or underpriced, then people will take advantage of that. So manager, you know, the city also knows when permits are coming in for new businesses or for new buildings and should be able to pretty readily anticipate that demand might increase in an area. and create a permit district or a meter district or some other management, which are great because they actually can return revenue to the community to help, you know, make things more walkable with more lighting or crosswalks and help people actually get to these places in other ways. I think that it's also what this gets to me really interesting is just like, I'm often asked like who opposes these reforms and why, and, and it's incumbents, right? Like incumbents, people who, already are using the business that doesn't have enough parking supposedly, right? Like if, hey, you want these ratios because supposedly they provide enough parking. So if you support them, provide the ratio for your own business, and then you don't have a problem. But no, you're using the on -street parking. You're using the asset, and you're worried that another business is going to come in and attract more customers than you do. That's a business issue. Or you know, you... want to park on the street, you know, or you're develop, you know, you're using the asset already that exists, you're using this thing. And so you want to moat. I think one of the things people think developers fund this work. and I wish they did, but the fact is, I don't think current, the developers that are making a lot of money or building a lot of projects, they usually are, they've evolved to exist in the ecosystem that includes parking. Tony Jordan (32:44.265) Do they really necessarily want someone else coming in that's got a more nimble business model that's going to compete with their buildings? I don't know. I think that's one of the reasons why some of this has taken longer is like, you know, you're competing with a status quo and everyone who exists, they've evolved to operate in status quo. And this is a disruptive change potentially. This could change, you know, how your main street works. And so I think there's a natural pushback there, but the... You know, the solutions are easy. We know how to manage parking. So like, if that's really your concern is just that there might be congestion on the curb. Well, we've got a solution for that, right? It's, yeah. Kevin K (33:27.96) Yeah, it's funny because I think about like my own neighborhood, which was largely built in the first two decades of the 20th century. And so it has that sort of a neighborhood main street and that there's a portion of the main street that is built with sort of classic American early 20th century buildings, you know, right up to the sidewalk, very popular. numbers of restaurants and everything else. And it's a really popular little area. And it's been popular for years and years. But on that same exact street, like if you wanted to build a new restaurant, the zoning would require a minimum of 10 spaces per thousand square feet, which would make it completely impossible to actually build what's there today. And there's this really funny disconnect that. we've talked about forever, which is we have these places that people obviously really love for very human reasons. It's great to be in a place where you can just like walk around and see other people and you can sit at a table and just enjoy the street life and activity. And so these places are extremely popular in most places where they exist, yet our rules and regulations don't allow you to build it again. Tony Jordan (34:52.137) Right. Yeah, I think, yeah, it's true. I show a picture of, you know, like of Main Street. I have a slide where I show a picture of Main Street and then just a shopping center. And like you can't this isn't I am not the first person to do this, but you count up the number of businesses in there and they're roughly the same number of businesses in a big shopping center as opposed to like one block of a Main Street. Of course, the bigger businesses are bigger, but partly that's because they have to they have to support because we don't allow. We don't allow localized commerce either. I mean, that's a whole big part is there's a lot of the talk is around residential parking requirements and allowing more infill housing, but we need a lot more infill commercial too, right? I mean, my friend Neil Heller, you know, with his accessory commercial units, like, why don't we allow these, like, if you think about trip reduction, cities will spend so much money to try and get someone to take the bus to go get their hair done, where if you allow someone to open a hair, you know, just. Kevin K (35:35.64) Yeah, yeah. Tony Jordan (35:50.857) do hair in their basement or in their garage, you know, legally or open a little storefront, the person might just walk or ride a bike to that. You're reducing the trip for free. Kevin K (36:01.528) it out. So what is what's going on then? One of the things that you all do is you track what's happening nationally in terms of parking reform state by state. What are some of the most encouraging things that are happening across the country that you're seeing? Tony Jordan (36:16.041) Well, for one, I think we're just seeing more and more cities get rid of their parking mandates entirely or do large scale reforms. This is obviously, you know, just a drop in the bucket. Municipal, you know, we've got I think I was just looking at it yesterday and we're right around. There's like 70 or 71 cities that we know of in the United States that have gotten rid of their parking mandates citywide for all uses. Most recently, Tualatin, Oregon, I think was the most recent. when we've added to the list. So that's great because it shows other places that they can do it. It shows that the sky's not falling, there's momentum behind this, these cities are, you know, someone will say, well, we have, I was in La Crosse, I was talking to people in La Crosse, they said, well, we have snow. I said, well, you can talk to the people in Duluth or the people in Anchorage. They also have snow. You know, so there's, we're getting more and more comps. We finally just got a city in the center of the country in Colorado, like, you know, Longmont, Colorado just did it, so it's. Kevin K (37:13.08) Okay, good. Tony Jordan (37:13.705) It's great to see that momentum, because I think it emboldens people. And then that starts to trickle up into the statewide and regional planning areas where we're seeing the conversation start in, you know, Minnesota. They had people over parking act, which proposed to eliminate mandates statewide. Oregon has pretty strong reforms that are requiring. That's why we have so many cities with no parking mandates, because the state's kind of making requiring cities to make a choice between getting rid of their mandates or managing their off street parking. So I think that the encouraging thing is that the conversation is moving forward. The solutions are much less incremental at this point. There's a recognition that like we don't have time to mess around, you know, checking every couple of years. It takes so long to build things is one thing. It's like, you know, I tell people, it's like, you know, you're not going to see the impact of this for years. We don't have time to wait. So that's, I think that just the general awareness, all of these reforms then. create buzz or opportunity for buzz. And so just, you know, every time someone hears about this, there's an opportunity for another Tony Jordan to get hooked on the topic and get active in their local community. So like, you know, you hear about the city next door and maybe you're going to go down to planning commission next and start banging the drum around parking reform. Kevin K (38:35.672) What are some of the larger cities that have done dramatic reform? Tony Jordan (38:40.201) The largest in the US is Austin, which did it last year. In North America, Mexico City has no mandates. Toronto, Edmonton, Montreal is about to do so. San Francisco, in the United States, you got San Francisco. I'm trying to think of who's on the, St. Paul in Minneapolis. San Jose was, is a, is a large city that's done it. Portland has no parking mandates and Portland, because of our statewide rules, many of our suburbs are also starting to have no mandates. So we're starting to build a metro area that we'll have, which I think will be very useful to see how that interplays. Cause that's one thing, you know, Dallas could get rid of the parking mandates tomorrow, but you know, the Dallas Fort Worth metro area is such, or Los Angeles, you know, there's so many other cities that are requiring it and cars don't. car demand doesn't stop at the city border, right? So there's a bit of where everyone kind of needs to make a commitment together, you know, to not like, you can get rid of parking mandates in your downtown, but if all of your surrounding community is car dependent, it's going to be very hard to redevelop parking lots in your downtown because the demand is just going to be there. So I think like, you know, we're starting to, these larger areas will, will, will be helpful, but I, but it's also great to have smaller cities get rid of mandates too, because. That's the majority of cities in the United States are smaller places that aren't megopolises. Kevin K (40:13.56) Are you able to track like winds that come from the policy change at all, like in terms of maybe development activity, other stuff that would have happened, would not have happened without the reform? Tony Jordan (40:26.161) Starting to, so some of our partners like Sightline, Katie Gould at Sightline who covers parking the best. She covers this in the Northwest and in some other places. We just actually are, we have a blog post that's about to come out tomorrow based on a Twitter thread where someone was highlighting changes in Anchorage. One of the issue here is, you know, many of these, I mean, when we talk about 70 cities, There were about 15 cities at the end of 2020 in the United States, maybe 13, maybe it's 13, somewhere, you know, not many more than 10 that had gotten rid of their mandates citywide. So we've, you know, had about 55 cities do this reform just in the last four years. Seeing what happens, I mean, there are, Katie Gould has shown some great examples of, you know, projects that, you know, immediately when the reform has gone in. will go in and submit a redesign that doesn't punch a hole through the middle of the building to access the parking lot or adds a certain number of apartments or homes. There was great examples out of Fayetteville, right? When Fayetteville was an early adopter of no commercial mandates, they need to catch up on the residential side. But, you know, where buildings were getting reused all of a sudden that had been vacant for many years. So that's going to be, we're trying to track that. We're a small and growing organization and so capacity to do that. But, Those stories are the critical ones, I think, to show people the benefit of doing this. Kevin K (42:02.584) What about anecdotally from Portland, which you're most familiar with, where you didn't have mandates and you did have mandates and then you went back to not having mandates? Have you seen some good wins there? Tony Jordan (42:13.897) Well, I mean, in a way, the best example from Portland is in the opposite direction, right? We had, as I mentioned, buildings going up on this division street that had 30, 40, 50 apartments. They were very numbers, right? You look at the permits, the number of apartments being built, and they were all over the place between 30 and 80, right? What we did in Portland was we instituted a When they took a step back, they said, okay, you can build up to 30 units with no parking. But if you build 31, you have to have a 0 .2 parking ratio, one for every five apartments, which is relatively low, but it was retroactive to the whole building. So you had no parking to 30 units. And then the 31st apartment, you had to have six parking spaces on site. And what did we see? No one's gonna study on this, but I looked back, you know, you saw a haircut. All of a sudden, a bunch of apartments had exactly. 30 units. I think this marginal impact, it's harder to quantify, but I think honestly, the biggest thing is if you think of every apartment that's been built in the United States over the last 70 years, and you know, they might still, even if you say they built the exact same amount of parking that exists right now, if developers were allowed to just max out what was practical apartment -wise on that site with that same amount of parking, we'd have 10, 20, you know, five to 20 new apartments. in every apartment building in the United States. We would have no housing crisis if we had just let that happen, even with parking being built. So I think those marginal increases where you're just adding five or 10 apartments in a building that would have had a lower number because they couldn't meet the parking requirement, that's kind of the invisible benefit, I think, that is harder to quantify but is already, I'm sure, taking place, right? Cities with no mandates. They still build with parking, but they build a bit more housing. And that's, you know, that's important, you know, is to build. And then over time, maybe they start building a lot more housing and a lot less parking. But initially right away, you know, you might just add two or three more units because you can, or you might add bedrooms on the units because a lot of times the parking requirements are based on bedrooms. So you're going to build studios because they have a lower parking requirement. You know, I mean, I know there's many factors to layouts, but that's one of them sometimes. Kevin K (44:41.752) Yeah, it seems like it's probably a classic like hockey stick, you know, adjustment curve where it'd be really slow and minimal for a number of years potentially, or just kind of modest. But then there comes a point where there's an inflection and other things, other things that don't really work well right now, you know, like better public transit, better bike, but just better alternative transportation all of a sudden starts to work more. And, and you probably get more things that are within a walking distance that you didn't have before. What do you say to people who say, well, you know, the parking requirements really don't matter because the investors, the lenders are going to require a certain amount anyway. And that's really where the stumbling block is. What do you, what do you say to that argument? Tony Jordan (45:28.585) I mean, I think if we're talking about apartments with zero parking, sure. I mean, I think that's, you know, it took, it took 10 years for Portland to find a developer who was willing to build a large, a mid -size apartment building with no parking. Once they did and it rented, then the investors were very happy to do it. So some of it is just the market's not proven. This is what I mentioned before, the inertia of, of just these people have business models. They have relationships with bankers, they have funding streams, people understand the product and so they know what to invest in. You're trying to change that. To build an apartment building with much less parking requires not just the developer but brokers. There's a lot of players that have to align. So in a way, yes. Now the fact is that we can't even start working on fixing those other problems that the parking mandate still exists. So like, if you know, like it's absolutely worth it. They're just overhead on your city too. I mean, like they just cause city staff spend time on this that they could be spending approving other permits. So like get rid of them and you know, if nothing changes, then nothing changed. But if we are actually then can, can be successful in, you know, I think a lot of the work like incremental development Alliance or other people who are, you know, trying to, you know, there's a whole set of education and building capacity for building these kinds, remembering how to build these kinds of communities. And so that's going to take a little while to build that capacity. But if we haven't prepped the garden, once again, that can't take root. That can't happen. Kevin K (47:12.792) You know, it's always so funny also when I think about like the politics of some of these things and the politics of this issue. I mean, you're talking about something which is essentially removing a requirement from your local government, which is typically thought of as like a conservative political approach. And yet almost all the reform happening is in blue states and blue cities, which is just kind of bizarre. I always think about it, it shows how upside down a lot of people's thinking is in regards to these issues. So, I mean, that being said, obviously, you know, a lot of the places you've mentioned, you know, are pretty dyed in the wool blue places politically. What are you seeing as any kind of positive trend in more like conservative or red states as well? Tony Jordan (48:08.553) It surely is confusing, right? Why some people would support these regulations. I think there's a bit of just team opposition that goes into this. Whoever proposes the policy first might receive opposition. Yeah, I think some of the reason why these ref