TO: CITY COUNCIL FROM: Mayor Liccardo
Vice Mayor Jones
Councilmember Peralez
Councilmember Carrasco
Councilmember Foley
SUBJECT: Parking/TDM Ordinance Update DATE: June 10, 2022
Approved Date
RECOMMENDATION
Approve staff’s recommendation for elimination of parking minima citywide, with the following additional direction:
1. Craft a Transportation Demand Management (TDM) ordinance and set of measures that appear clear, transparent, cost-effective, easy to implement, and equitable. The subsequent TDM program should have the capacity for project monitoring, enforcement, evaluation and if necessary, recalibration.
2. Accelerate the implementation of changes such that the City:
a. Ensures that it no longer halts the approval of the relocation of any business in San Jose due to mandatory parking minimum, where the business owner has satisfied themselves that available parking suffices;
b. Enables the development of affordable and multifamily housing.
3. Return to the City Council with a final ordinance prior to the end of 2022.
BACKGROUND
This proposed change to our parking ordinance does not remove parking spaces. It allows builders to right-size their parking to the needs of the tenants, and requires them to incorporate traffic demand management (TDM) plans into their projects. By any measure, we have plenty of parking in San José, with nearly two parking spaces for every person in the city, and an average of six parking COUNCIL AGENDA: 6/14/22
ITEM: 10.3
spaces for every household citywide. We know too well that free parking isn’t free – either in the cost of construction, of renting housing, or to our environment.
San José has adopted ambitious climate goals through our Climate Smart San José plan. To become a carbon-neutral city by 2030, we must dramatically reduce the carbon emissions from our transportation sector, the source of the majority of those emissions. We must refashion a city built for the automobile into a city built for people.
As many experts have concluded, that transition starts with parking. Many cities have already eliminated parking mandates in favor of a demand-driven parking strategy with clear and cost- effective TDM measures (i.e., subsidized transit passes, protected bike lanes, car share vehicles, etc.) that provide for more equitable outcomes. This hardly amounts to a policy frontier, and places San Jose among more than 200 cities that have reduced or eliminated parking minima.
As the cost of an underground parking stall now exceeds $100K per space, minimum parking requirements only inflate construction costs to the point of infeasibility, exacerbating our housing crisis.
While we appreciate the alternatives staff provided, the citywide removal of parking mandates provides a more simple, predictable approach. Moreover, we lack the staff resources to take multiple bites at this apple—we only have the funding to do so today for this parking update because of support by the Bloomberg/ NRDC American Cities Climate Challenge.
Staff has invested enormously in community engagement in this effort over the past two and a half years. Outreach began with an Urban Land Use Institute Technical Assistance Panel presentation to the Planning Commission at a Special Study Session on January 29, 2020. Since then, more than 30 separate events, engaging 1,300 attendees have ranged from webinars hosted by the City’s nonprofit partners like SPUR and the Greenbelt Alliance to engagement events with neighborhood groups, Latinos United for a New America (LUNA), and local developers. Additional outreach was made to Latinos United for a New America (LUNA), Delmas Park, Si Se Puede, ARUVA, Spartan Keyes, Tropicana Posada, Roosevelt Park, and several other neighborhoods
We could not have reached this point without the outstanding partnership that San José staff has maintained with Bloomberg Philanthropies NRDC, Delivery Associates, Catalyze SV, and other community-based non-profits like SPUR, Greenbelt Alliance, LUNA, Friends of Caltrain, Transform, Save the Bay, SV@Home, National Resources Defense Council, Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition, Urban Environmentalists, Veggielution, California YIMBY, Housing Action Coalition, and others through the American Cities Climate Challenge. Our city set out to accelerate our climate action work, and we have done just that. City staff in PBCE, DOT, and ESD have remained committed — throughout the pandemic — to this important work. We specifically want to thank Rosalynn Hughey, Kerrie Romanow, John Ristow, Chris Burton, Michael Brilliot, Jessica Zenk, Julie Benabente, Ramses Madou, Martina Davis, Ed Schreiner, Wilson Tam, Jared Hart, Ken Davies, Emily Breslin, Kimi Narita, Amanda Eaken, Elizabeth Stampe and Elena Olmedo for furthering San José’s climate leadership among cities globally.
The signers of this memorandum have not had, and will not have, any private conversation with any other member of the City Council, or that member’s staff, concerning any action discussed in the memorandum, and that each signer’s staff members have not had, and have been instructed not to have, any such conversation with any other member of the City Council or that member's staff.