The city council in Austin, Texas recently proposed something that could seem like political Kryptonite: getting rid of parking minimums.
Those are the rules that dictate how much off-street parking developers must provide — as in, a certain number of spaces for every apartment and business.
Around the country, cities are throwing out their own parking requirements – hoping to end up with less parking, more affordable housing, better transit, and walkable neighborhoods.
I’m not saying don’t try things. I’m saying better effort would be spent on building tram or buslines or whatever. Build the alternative and things will sort out.
It sounds like in the restaurant example they just externalized the problem, and street parking is dispersed, even if you aren’t noticing it. That’s fine in one occurrence, but if all places had this policy, and no alternative transit is implemented, then street parking will be a nightmare and no one has really benefited but the builder.
The restaurant is near a popular bike path, and nestled in a neighborhood in walking distance of hundreds of houses. The city also redesigned its bus routes over this past summer to improve service. It’s also building BRT lines, which will open next year. But even if that were not the case, street parking isn’t a problem that needs to be mitigated, no? It’s a public resource deliberately built for that purpose, using tax money. If anything, more parking on the street means better utilizing existing city infrastructure. (Else, why did we build it?)