It’s a tough sell, but so badly needed in Los Alamos. Back in the 70’s when many of those parking mandates were written into zoning codes, there used to be a phrase in the developer community “the person that dies with the most parking spaces wins”. It’s way past time to put that notion to rest.
Great article. I also appreciate you calling out the "greedy developers" trope. A major developer here in Austin said that, after the abolition of parking mandates, for most projects they would still build parking, but that they could now build the "market rate" of spots per unit, which was of course less than what the mandates required. The market rate also varies by location and project type: when Austin abolished mandates downtown years ago, offices and apartment developers continued to build parking, but hotels stopped. Now, residential buildings can also decouple parking from units, and I expect we'll continue to see divergence.
The decoupling is really important! And yeah, the greedy developers trope now drives me crazy, since I've become sensitized to it as an Explainer Of These Things. I'm sure I fell right into that trap, if I thought about it at all, before becoming a planning commissioner and learning how much received wisdom is just dead wrong.
Hi Ed, I'm so glad you asked this question, because it's super important to understand the relationship between parking, housing, density, and public transportation! Here's how it works -
It's actually a bottom-up process that starts with density, not a top-down decision to add more bus routes. Transit agencies need riders to justify frequent service, so step one is to get those riders *here.* Which means adding population—and, in particular, population density.
Currently, most of Los Alamos has only 5-7 housing units per acre. At that density, there just aren't enough potential riders within walking distance of bus stops to support frequent service. So buses come maybe once an hour, which is too infrequent for most people to rely on.
But when you reduce parking mandates, home builders can build more housing units on the same piece of land (since they don't have to dedicate so much space to parking). When you get up to 7-8 units per acre, you hit a tipping point where there are enough potential riders to support 15-minute bus service. At 15+ units per acre, you can support really frequent service.
It's like a virtuous cycle: Less mandated parking → more housing per acre → more potential transit riders → transit agencies can justify frequent service → people actually use transit instead of driving.
So you don't add frequent bus routes first and hope people use them. You create the conditions (density) that make frequent routes financially sustainable, then the frequent service naturally follows because there's real demand for it.
Does that make sense? The parking reform enables the density that enables the transit.
Thank you, yes, it makes sense in a chicken-egg sort of way. I was hoping there would be reasons to parallelize the efforts but that's probably wishful thinking. I see the value in focusing on narrow achievable (🤞) targets rather than going broad. Thanks again.
You're right that there could be a parallel approach - but what you're describing I would say is transit coming *before* population (build it and they will come), where a more parallel approach is to scale transit up with population (a few more people, a few more bus routes, keep going).
Cities can absorb debt to build transit infrastructure ahead of demand - it's called speculative investment. A city could bet that good transit nobody is yet using will attract development and eventually pay for itself through increased property taxes. But it's a gamble! Fiscally conservative planners and taxpayers often won't take it because:
1. You're asking residents to subsidize empty or nearly-empty buses for years. There's no guarantee the hoped-for development will actually materialize (we're kinda doing this tbh - the worst of all possible worlds where we subsidize the buses but keep the zoning rules that prevent population density, so that's - not great?)
2. If the density never comes, you're stuck with expensive-to-operate transit that few people use
A more sustainable model is unleashing some natural population growth (by getting rid of dumb exclusionary rules like parking mandates) then expanding transit to grow in parallel with that population growth. Each new apartment building, duplex, or townhouse adds potential riders, which justifies incrementally better service, which attracts more development - a virtuous cycle where ridership and service levels grow together.
It’s a tough sell, but so badly needed in Los Alamos. Back in the 70’s when many of those parking mandates were written into zoning codes, there used to be a phrase in the developer community “the person that dies with the most parking spaces wins”. It’s way past time to put that notion to rest.
Great article. I also appreciate you calling out the "greedy developers" trope. A major developer here in Austin said that, after the abolition of parking mandates, for most projects they would still build parking, but that they could now build the "market rate" of spots per unit, which was of course less than what the mandates required. The market rate also varies by location and project type: when Austin abolished mandates downtown years ago, offices and apartment developers continued to build parking, but hotels stopped. Now, residential buildings can also decouple parking from units, and I expect we'll continue to see divergence.
The decoupling is really important! And yeah, the greedy developers trope now drives me crazy, since I've become sensitized to it as an Explainer Of These Things. I'm sure I fell right into that trap, if I thought about it at all, before becoming a planning commissioner and learning how much received wisdom is just dead wrong.
Can we combine this (lower parking mandates) with more frequent bus routes?
Hi Ed, I'm so glad you asked this question, because it's super important to understand the relationship between parking, housing, density, and public transportation! Here's how it works -
It's actually a bottom-up process that starts with density, not a top-down decision to add more bus routes. Transit agencies need riders to justify frequent service, so step one is to get those riders *here.* Which means adding population—and, in particular, population density.
Currently, most of Los Alamos has only 5-7 housing units per acre. At that density, there just aren't enough potential riders within walking distance of bus stops to support frequent service. So buses come maybe once an hour, which is too infrequent for most people to rely on.
But when you reduce parking mandates, home builders can build more housing units on the same piece of land (since they don't have to dedicate so much space to parking). When you get up to 7-8 units per acre, you hit a tipping point where there are enough potential riders to support 15-minute bus service. At 15+ units per acre, you can support really frequent service.
It's like a virtuous cycle: Less mandated parking → more housing per acre → more potential transit riders → transit agencies can justify frequent service → people actually use transit instead of driving.
So you don't add frequent bus routes first and hope people use them. You create the conditions (density) that make frequent routes financially sustainable, then the frequent service naturally follows because there's real demand for it.
Does that make sense? The parking reform enables the density that enables the transit.
I wrote about this here: https://www.boomtownlosalamos.org/p/room-to-grow
And you can hear Julie talk about it herself here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpWG9gFP8Po
Thank you, yes, it makes sense in a chicken-egg sort of way. I was hoping there would be reasons to parallelize the efforts but that's probably wishful thinking. I see the value in focusing on narrow achievable (🤞) targets rather than going broad. Thanks again.
You're right that there could be a parallel approach - but what you're describing I would say is transit coming *before* population (build it and they will come), where a more parallel approach is to scale transit up with population (a few more people, a few more bus routes, keep going).
Cities can absorb debt to build transit infrastructure ahead of demand - it's called speculative investment. A city could bet that good transit nobody is yet using will attract development and eventually pay for itself through increased property taxes. But it's a gamble! Fiscally conservative planners and taxpayers often won't take it because:
1. You're asking residents to subsidize empty or nearly-empty buses for years. There's no guarantee the hoped-for development will actually materialize (we're kinda doing this tbh - the worst of all possible worlds where we subsidize the buses but keep the zoning rules that prevent population density, so that's - not great?)
2. If the density never comes, you're stuck with expensive-to-operate transit that few people use
A more sustainable model is unleashing some natural population growth (by getting rid of dumb exclusionary rules like parking mandates) then expanding transit to grow in parallel with that population growth. Each new apartment building, duplex, or townhouse adds potential riders, which justifies incrementally better service, which attracts more development - a virtuous cycle where ridership and service levels grow together.