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Posted May 30, 2009, 3:51 AM
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Ferris Wheel Hater
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Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 8,371
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Huge news for those in the industry. City council is looking at reducing parking requirements by a sizable amount and providing more options to developers. I've condensed most of it but there is still a bit to read, I've also included a link for those that want to read the whole thing. Cheers
Quote:
In addition to the changes to the Parking By-law for non-residential uses, staff are also proposing changes to the By-law for residential uses Downtown. These changes reflect Council policy of reviewing residential parking standards on an on-going basis to ensure they encourage lower levels of car use and ownership with the objective of promoting walking, cycling and transit, ahead of cars. The new standard lowers the Downtown standard by up to 65% and the Downtown South standard by more than 50%. The changes proposed are summarized as follows:
• Reduced and simplified residential parking requirements including a maximum for all Downtown peninsula residential uses;
• Increased incentive to provide car share vehicles and spaces for new residential developments;
• Provision to allow payment-in-lieu for residential in the heritage areas; and • Provision to allow pay-in-lieu funds to be directed to a fund to support walking and cycling downtown.
Staff are also proposing a reduced non-residential standard in the Central Broadway C-3A and Mount Pleasant industrial I-1 areas in order to reflect increasing transit service.
DISCUSSION
Downtown Commercial
The City has strong parking and transportation policies which recognize the importance of the control of non-residential parking supply in creating a liveable, sustainabe, and economically viable Downtown. The cap on commuter parking spaces Downtown has been one of the contributing factors to reduced vehicle trips and increased use of transit, walking, and bicycling. While overall trips have increased by 23% over the past 10 years, vehicle trips to Downtown have decreased by 7%. New policies in the City, such as the Metro Core Jobs and Economy results for the Downtown recently approved by Council, will accommodate future growth of commercial development. If this continues under the current Parking By-law, we will see an increase in overall parking supply, counter to our transportation and sustainability goals.
Currently the City has three main parking standard zones Downtown, plus a number of smaller areas with different standards as shown in Table 1. The standards for each zone were historically based on the relative level of transit accessibility of the particular area. This report proposes that the different non-residential parking standards be reduced and replaced with one maximum and one minimum standard. Calculation of the new standard is driven by the increases in commercial floor area projected through the Metro Core study. Between 2006 and 2031, the study projected an increase of 400,000 m2 to 930,000 m2 of gross floor area. In combination with this, it is projected that up to 5770 commuter parking spaces will be deleted from the inventory Downtown as old surface parking lots or parkades are displaced by new commercial spaces. In order to replace the parking and ensure that no additional parking is constructed, the maximum parking that can be allowed is 1 space for every 115 m2 of new commercial floor area (see Table 1). This number is a direct calculation of the projected average floor area increase divided by the lost parking spaces. Not only will this ensure that there remains a cap on parking, it will also provide an incremental decrease in parking for the different areas of Downtown. As stated above, the other goal of the new standard is to amalgamate all of the existing standards parking, the minimum standard is set based on a goal of further reducing employee vehicle trips Downtown. Using estimates of floor space per worker (number of employees per square meter according to the Metro Core study), the maximum parking standard will provide one parking space for every 3.5 to 4 employees whereas minimum standard proposed will provide one parking space for every 4.5 to 5 employees. In comparison, the current standards provide a range of one space for every 2.5 to 3.5 employees. The minimum commercial standard proposed will facilitate sustainable leadership in commercial developments while still providing for minimal employee needs.
However, some concern has been expressed that Downtown may not have adequate parking to serve all the different needs. In particular, concern has been raised about the adequacy of transient (short stay) parking for retail and entertainment uses. In response to these concerns, staff have reviewed both retail and entertainment uses, as well as institutional uses.
Retail, entertainment and institutional uses generally rely on transient parking, made up of the spaces provided Downtown that are surplus to the employees’ needs or are available once the employees no longer need them (after hours). The peak time for employee parking is at mid-day while the peak time for the transient uses is at 4 pm. It has also been observed that the large demand on parking spaces during entertainment event times is accommodated by the empty parking spaces left behind at the end of the traditional week day or on weekends. The sharing of parking spaces at different times of the day is further helped by an increase in mixed use buildings, allowing parking to be shared within individual buildings as well as the downtown as a whole. Considering all these factors, a separate parking standard for different uses is not needed at this time. The non-residential parking standards proposed in this report are set at levels that are designed to ensure that there remains zero growth in employee (commuter) parking spaces. The reduced standards will meet Council’s transportation and sustainability policy objectives and the challenges of the future, while supporting continued growth of commercial development.
Downtown Residential Uses (Including Incentive for Car-Share)
In addition to the reduced Parking By-law requirement for non-residential uses, staff are also proposing reductions to the Parking By-law standards for residential uses Downtown. There has not been a major update to the residential parking standards downtown in over 20 years despite the significant population increase and land use changes that have happened during that time. Recent rezonings or Director of Planning building approvals, both area wide and site specific, have instead relied upon customized standards, negotiated with staff having regard to Council’s sustainability objectives, that generally result in a reduction in the parking standard on a case-by-case basis. This approach is both time-consuming and inefficient. The standard should instead be updated to better reflect the reduced reliance on automobiles downtown. Past and current analysis suggests that residential parking supply is not as directly linked to vehicle trip generation as non-residential supply, although this may change over time. Implementing strong controls on residential parking supply may not necessarily have a significant impact on reducing vehicle trip generation, as the number of vehicle trips from a residence is more directly determined or influenced by land use, density, the quality of other modes and the quality of urban design. To illustrate this, there has been a large increase in Downtown residents, with most having access to at least one parking space, and yet the vehicle mode share for trips within Downtown has decreased. Nevertheless, residential parking supply may have an impact on affordability of residential units and reduced residential standards can lead to reductions in the cost to own or rent housing. In particular, the cost of building parking in rental units can have a greater impact on housing affordability.
Parking in rental buildings will be examined further as part of the Short Term Incentive for Rental (STIR) program being reported to Council in a separate report. Further, the reduction of parking spaces constructed would have significant environmental benefits relating to reduced energy and GHG emissions from materials and construction. It is also possible that as factors continue to change, a more direct connection between parking spaces provided and car ownership may be seen. The City has a policy of periodically reviewing residential parking standards to ensure they are encouraging lower levels of car ownership with the objective of promoting walking, cycling and transit ahead of cars. Although the intent is to reduce not only car use, but ownership over time, it is recognized that currently many Downtown residents still own cars, even when their use is infrequent. This may change over time, facilitated through various City initiatives such as “unbundling” parking space ownership from housing unit ownership. In the meantime, however, parking for residents to store their vehicle when it is not in use can have a neighbourhood impact if sufficient parking is not provided for on-site and if other methods of discouraging street parking are not in place.One recently made change to the By-law allows developments that provide a car-share space and an accompanying vehicle are given a credit of 3 spaces towards building the required number of parking spaces. Supporting shared vehicles is a City policy and is a complement to other sustainable modes of transportation. Shared vehicle companies provide a membership program intended to offer an alternative to car ownership under which persons or entities that become members are permitted to use vehicles from a fleet on an hourly basis. In order to further encourage this practice, staff are recommending that the credit be increased from 3 to 5 spaces. The parking space and shared vehicle must be managed by a shared vehicle organization and the parking space would be assigned by the strata on a monthly contract basis. The standard proposed in this report balances all of the factors described above. The proposed new residential standard lowers the general Downtown standard by more than 65% and the Downtown South standard by more than 50%. The new standard also proposes a maximum to the number of parking spaces that can be built and combines all of Downtown into one area similar to the non-residential standard. As illustrated in Table 3, the new standard sets a parking space maximum that is just slightly below average car ownership rates in order to balance the needs of residents with the City policy of lowering parking standards.
EasyPark’s Transient Parking Study
Concurrent with the City’s review of parking, EasyPark commissioned a study of transient parking needs Downtown (“Downtown Vancouver Transient Parking Study” provided by Bunt and Associates Engineering Ltd. with the Mustel Group Market Research). The EasyPark study complements the City work, and provides important information about the public’s and business’s perceptions about Downtown parking and its availability. A copy of this report is available through EasyPark.
EasyPark’s study on transient parking has a number of important observations and conclusions based on a count of parking supply and observed occupancy Downtown:
• There are approximately 27,500 off-street commercial public transient parking spaces and 6,500, mostly metered, street parking spaces Downtown, with 67% of the transient parking spaces occupied during the peak daytime period. This leaves potentially over 11,000 available parking spaces at the observed daytime peak periods.
• During weekends and evenings there is a greater availability of parking, even though there are fewer parkades open to the public.
Despite the data summarized above, the report also included a public opinion survey that summarized public and business perceptions that, “Both the public and Downtown businesses feel that the supply of short-term parking is insufficient for their needs and is a deterrent to traveling Downtown …”. The survey also observed that:
• The majority (65%) of Metro Vancouver adults travel Downtown at least once a month with 4 out of 5 of these trips not work related;
• The perception of parking availability is important in vehicle trip determination;
• 43% indicate they travel Downtown less often than 5 years ago with 10% of these due to insufficient parking, and 21% due to traffic concerns;
• Street parking is highly used and is generally the first choice of most transient parkers; and
• 9% to 29% of vehicle drivers would definitely or probably change from driving with most, 91% choosing transit as an alternative.
Based on the data collected through the parking count, as well as from the public opinion survey, the report recommends that:
• Although there are some localized areas where the parking supply is stressed, there is no current need for additional transient parking Downtown;
• Downtown will continue to have enough transient parking up to the point when approximately 6.2 million square ft. of new development is added to the Downtown commercial office space supply. This is in approximately 20 years based on the Metro Core study average projections;
• In the longer term, based on the upper end projected increase of 10 million square ft. of Downtown commercial development, up to 1385 new public transient parking spaces should be constructed to ensure adequate parking for this potential future need;
• On-street: extend the hours for metered parking to deter evening resident parking, and continue to use market pricing to ensure street parking availability;
• Off-street: EasyPark could reduce the allocation of monthly parking, and adjust day parking rates to reduce all day employee parking in parking stressed areas; and
• The areas particularly noted for increased transient supply are the Downtown core and Gastown.
Although the report recommends that additional transient spaces may be needed in the longer term (2031), staff believe reductions in automobile use into Downtown will continue leading to an even lower need for parking. The study notes that up to 29% of those surveyed were likely to shift from private vehicle use even though the proposed future parking need was based on a conservative 10% shift. A large expansion of transit through Canada Line, new SkyTrain cars, and an added SeaBus will support this shift from private vehicle use. Added transient parking Downtown, at this time, would detract from the City’s zero road capacity growth and emphasis on walking, cycling and transit. However, City staff will continue to monitor and periodically report to Council with updated parking standards should any future need for additional parking arise as contemplated in the conclusions in the EasyPark report.
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Source
http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20090602/documents/ttra7.pdf
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