Newsletter of the
Preservation Coalition of Erie County (Home Page)

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October 1995

Stop Whining About Parking,
New City Plan Better
By Timothy Tielman

A new parking plan, instituted by the Masiello Administration recently, is good news for preservation. The plan, by increasing on-street meter rates, would lessen parking pressure on short-term spaces, thereby lessening the demand for parking spaces gained through building demolition while making downtown businesses more accessible to those on ‘single purpose missions.’ A chief complaint about parking is not its cash cost, but rather its availability.

Some howled, but the new rates, 25¢ for 15 minutes, is less than a first class stamp. Yet some still have very little confidence that the benefit gained from downtown is worth that cost. Cities like Kalamazoo, where there ain’t much there there, tend to go the free parking route. That is self-defeating. Cities with confidence or a market-driven approach, take a different tack.

Cleveland, to pick a city Buffalonians seem to think fondly of at the moment, earlier this year passed an ordinance restricting additional parking in the CBD. According to the National Trust, the ordinance effectively removes the incentive for parking lot operators to purchase and demolish buildings for parking.

The Cleveland planning department initiated the legislation after reviewing similar ordinances across the country, including Portland, San Francisco, and Cambridge. Manhattan and Boston similarly regulate the maximum amount of parking that can be built (Buffalo mandates minimum parking levels, based on square footage and use).

The Cleveland ordinance defines its purpose as being to “preserve the urban architectural character” of downtown and to “reduce auto emissions and traffic congestion in the downtown area by discouraging the creation of additional parking.”

Kathleen Crowther, the executive director of the Cleveland Restoration Society said, “From the city's point of view, the ordinance is a clear recognition that parking lots do not contribute to the vitality of the city. They remove opportunity, encourage suburbanites to run back home at the end of the day, and erode the streetscape.”

One seldom hears those arguments in Buffalo, where research tends to stop at the ‘well, so-and-so-said-parking-is-too-expensive’- stage. A sophisticated cost/benefit analysis based on facts rather than reported feelings, has never been done. At least the city recognizes the parking market is highly fragmented, which the new city policy attempts to address.

Even when parking is free, such as at the former Seneca Mall, the Rainbow Centre in Niagara Falls, the Thruway and Como malls, etc. there is no guarantee people will come.

Yet, midtown Manhattan ($17 an hour—“not bad” said a recent German tourist) is jammed and expensive. Clearly something beyond out-of-pocket cost is going on here. The key is benefit. In many cases, it is zero-sum: the more you increase parking, the less amenity there is.

Automobile warehousing is a destructive land use and should be confined to the edges of a downtown–at least two blocks from Main Street. That way, you get more people walking about, too, which has multiple benefits (and is why planners tend to frown on overhead bridges connecting buildings to parking ramps and each other—it takes people off the street). Beyond that, there are environmental issues, which must be addressed.

All in all, one suspects the cities to emulate are Boston, San Francisco, and Portland, rather than Kalamazoo. Do we really want to be Kalamazoo?