I’m on the University Area Commission‘s Zoning Committee. We’re reviewing the City of Columbus’ Draft University District Plan. The Plan itself is neither policy nor law; it’s a set of recommendations reflecting, ostensibly, aspirations for the District. Yet, because the Plan will inform and doubtless be used as justification for policy and practice in the foreseeable future, there’s a lot at stake in getting it “right.” The City’s Planning Division has put who-knows-how-many hours into developing it, holding public forums, collecting and analyzing community input, and putting up with tough questions and sometimes outright ignorance and confusion from constituents (plenty from me).
Parking is a central and constant concern and struggle.
On one hand, some of us recognize the inevitable decline of the solo automobile. Why demand all that parking for a sunsetting technology? On the other hand, for many of the Area’s residents, particularly those age 18-22, going car-free doesn’t have much appeal. A car is a way to get home on the weekends even if it’s not driven during the week. What’s more, a car is a symbol of autonomy for many burgeoning young adults who only recently got their driver’s license and, perhaps more recently still, freedom from having to ask to borrow the family car. These students also overwhelmingly rent, and do so in the densest part of the city (really! — the University Area is the densest part of Columbus).
Aside: Parking requirements are set for businesses depending on use, and for residences either by bedroom or by unit. Neither residential categorization works very well.
Calculating by bedroom doesn’t consider the flexibility with which students, especially undergraduates, often define what constitutes a ‘bedroom.’ I remember renting a 3-bedroom apartment on Northwood where we managed to fit eight people through creative redefinition of a living room and attic as ‘bedrooms.’ We only had two parking spaces in back, so our cars spilled out onto the street. What’s more, stuffing eight people in a 3-bedroom was the only way we could afford to pay the rent, and our landlord performed exactly zero enforcement or surveillance of our dangerous overpacking (inadequate egress in the attic; blocking the front door so the ad hoc “bedroom” could have some privacy). This happens all over the Area. While parking congestion isn’t as severe in the Short North / Victorian Village, it’s pretty bad and appears to be getting worse, gas prices and “car-sharing” notwithstanding.
Calculating by unit isn’t much better, as 4- and 5-bedroom apartments are common all over the area. The majority of bedrooms in the Area belong to these units (citation needed!).
Property owners aren’t paying extra for those extra cars on the street, so the liability is socialized. This is a sort of market failure, since we’re living in a neither 100% socialized commons nor a 100% privatized libertarian paradise. In any case, students are more likely to be able-bodied, less likely to have children or other dependents who need to be shuttled, and don’t have the same need to commute outside the area, so it’s generally less costly for them, compared with other Area residents, to park a few blocks away.
This is where some policy could help prevent private interests from socializing their liabilities: Easy, just require lots of on-site parking for all those cars. Problem solved!
That means paving backyards to accommodate all those cars. It also probably means double-stacked parking, which many in the landlording business acknowledge doesn’t work very well. So, requiring ‘adequate’ parking for all those cars means creating a ton of runoff and turning plants into hardscape with a lot of embodied energy. There are some ways to mitigate this, eg through permeable (AKA pervious) pavement, but you can’t just put parkable material directly on soil. There’s got to be some compaction that’ll disrupt percolation and encourage runoff relative to the soil that was there before. These decisions aren’t easily reversed; it takes between decades and centuries to build an inch of soil, and compaction has long-lasting and sometimes compounding effects. Plus, the University District’s in a floodplain with a high water table.
Maybe it’s not such a problem — won’t all that parking pressure just cause people to give up their cars, because it’s too much hassle to own one? Maybe so, but student renters’ demand for cars may be far less elastic than other demographics. And, what about those who really need a car — working where our middling public transit system won’t reach, experiencing chronic limited mobility, having kids to schlep around, etc.?
In fact, I expect that at a neighborhood level these parking issues will ultimately self-resolve through increased cost of driving and parking, and — again, at a neighborhood level — I’m all for it. The problem is that the new equilibrium will be reached by displacing those whom we might think have more justification to drive (can we say that driving a solo auto is ever justified, given its multifarious costs? Let’s say Yes for now, to continue the conversation…). All sorts of neighborhood change looks great if you ignore migration and pretend that it’s change-in-place rather than change through displacement, individual-level rather than compositional change.
Some have predicted that the ‘Sophomore Rule,’ combined with the increased housing density proposed along High St and Lane Ave (per the draft Plan, but also manifest in ongoing and proposed construction projects), will de-densify surrounding neighborhoods and reduce parking pressure. This ignores the various ways in which a housing vacuum might be filled: perhaps by students currently living outside the Area, perhaps by other renters with a similar tolerance for people-packing and/or with a similar automobile dependence. In fact, increased density along the High/Lane corridors could exacerbate parking issues if the people who move into those units bring cars in large numbers: The proposed parking space : housing ratio is significantly lower than elsewhere in the Area, and — again — residents may be willing to park their car blocks away.
Were it not for the particular salience of individual autos for (some, not all) young adults, we could try to provide alternatives that reduce automobile dependence — Build it and They Will Ride. Unfortunately, Columbus’ City Council did not favor protected bike lanes on the Summit St and N 4th St corridors and COTA is sensibly, if a little tragically, embracing a utilitarian (in the Mill sense) strategy of focusing on arteries. Car rental such as Car2Go will not address the “car on the weekend” demand and is too costly for trips to the suburbs to see a movie or go shopping, and a high proportion of the area’s residents aren’t in the stage of their life course where going car-free is a particularly attractive option.
This post deserves a concluding paragraph, but I don’t have much of one to offer. Emerging from the countless hours of meetings and debate on the topic is a story of how diverse wants and tolerances are hard to reconcile out in public space; about the ability of private interests to socialize their liabilities as they keep their profits close; and how cost-based mechanisms to discourage automobile ownership can’t be expected to have uniform consequences when there are heterogeneous elasticities.