parking – RI Future

March 24, 2015

Support modern streets in downtown Providence

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Providence needs modern bike infrastructure, but private interests stand in its way.

Regency Plaza Apartments and the Providence “Dunk” Convention Center should not get to decide what happens to Providence’s streets. We should.

Sign the petition: Broadway and Sabin St. should get modern design standards to improve conditions for all users.

Regency Plaza would like part of Broadway to be “abandoned” to allow for further development. New apartments in downtown would be great for the city, but with a footprint that is mostly surface parking, there’s no reason for Regency Plaza to take more land from the city’s rights-of-way. It should make better use of what it has.

The Providence Convention Center has blocked any changes to its front street, Sabin St. Sabin is essentially the same street as Broadway, leading up to where the name changes over. Sabin’s geometry is extremely wide, allowing for high speeds punctuated only by traffic jams. Bike infrastructure makes streets safer and helps to reduce city congestion.

We would like Jorge Elorza to act administratively or in concert with City Council to preserve these streets as public rights-of-way, and to modernize their design.

Please sign our petition, and share it far-and-wide (not too far, though, we only need Rhode Islanders.).

Sign the petition: Broadway and Sabin St. should get modern design standards to improve conditions for all users.

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November 24, 2014November 25, 2014

Seth Yurdin: Parking tax ‘great idea for downtown’

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“The parking tax would be a great idea for downtown,” was Providence City Councilor Seth Yurdin’s “initial response” when I asked him about it at a recent Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Commission.

But he also said he’d need more information before knowing if it would be the right tool for Providence. He said he worries it might be regressive. Our conversation was informal. I didn’t identify myself as a blogger/journalist, but I did introduce myself as, and was referenced several times during the meeting, as a transportation advocate.

Anything that would stop land-banking in Downcity is a good idea, Yurdin said. Land-banking is the process of demolishing buildings and using the vacant land as commercial parking lots in order to take advantage of the way the city’s tax code works: a parking lot owner can claim their lot isn’t worth much, while charging an arm and a leg to bring excess cars into the city.

Support from Yurdin is important because his ward covers the areas of the city that have the lion’s share of commercial parking lots: Downcity and College Hill. A tax on commercial lots, either by revenue or per spot, would be the most likely form that a parking tax would take.

Yurdin said he had “equity concerns” about extending a parking tax beyond downtown, although I think we should push him on the City Council to allow lots located in College Hill to be taxed as well. I feel strongly that colleges shouldn’t get a special status for their parking lots. (For the record, taxing parking is not regressive, although the federal parking tax benefit–essentially the opposite of a parking tax–is). Splitting the difference with Yurdin and taxing only wealthy areas of the city would be fine with me, though, especially since those roughly correspond to the most transit-served job centers in the state.

Yurdin wondered aloud whether a tax rebate on property taxes would actually lead to more affordable housing in the city (“What landlord have you ever heard of who gives you a break on your rent because his taxes go down?” –Touché, Mr. Yurdin). This has had me thinking pretty hard for a response. Charging a higher tax on rental properties indisputably leads those properties to be less plentiful and more expensive than they might otherwise be, but correcting the supply issues caused by bad city policies would take time. Who’s to say one’s landlord isn’t happy to pass on extra taxes when they come his way, but doesn’t care to do the reverse? It’s a quandary. In the long-term, removing exclusionary zoning would tend to put landlords in competition, but we should want tenants to get their money now.

A conversation should be had about how to split revenues in a way that is fair and actually results in tenants getting a fair share. One proposal worth exploring would be to have the city cut a check to tenants directly, rather than having their landlord serve as an intermediary. I haven’t researched how easily that could actually be administered, though. Another option would be to cut the tenants’ tax, but focus initial returns as a credit towards building repairs that can’t just spent away. I like the idea of lowering property taxes because I value infill and affordable housing as priorities, and because I think these goals elegantly replace tax base just as quickly as the city loses parking revenue, but I’ve also discussed the idea of trading a parking tax for part of the city’s car excise tax, and debatably that could be bargained over to achieve equity goals as well.

Seeing the city tackle either the quality or cost of housing would great.

More on A Parking Tax for Providence.

January 16, 2014

Horse-trading, parking and Raimondo

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With Gina Raimondo taking such an unexpected turn to the left, there’s a whole lot that’s up in the air for the governor’s race.

Many voices on Rhode Island Future have covered the importance of Raimondo’s signature issue, pension reform. Having a public school secretary as a mother, I’ve never been particularly keen for these types of “reforms”, but I’ve always felt that the best course of action was to grant people one disagrees with the benefit of the doubt. Raimondo seems to be working very hard to prove to us that her reforms did not result from a disdain for workers, but rather a commitment to fiscal restraint.

Very well, let’s have her prove it.

RIDOT may end up investing $30,000-50,000 per parking spot in a parking garage for the Garrahy Judicial Complex. This is a very bad investment. Downcity is covered in parking.

Option 1: The No-Build Option.

My top preference would be not to build this garage with state money. I think that Raimondo can capture the hearts of progressives by finding a better use for the state funding, or she go whole-hog on the fiscal conservative thing and shelve the spending and/or give the taxpayers some of their money back. Honestly, I’d be reasonably happy with either. At least we’re not building a parking structure with state money.

If she wants to double down on her investment strategy for schools, $50,000 is more than a starting teachers’ salary in Providence. There are also plenty of schools that need renovations. I had the luck to work for a year with Americorps at Nathan Bishop Middle School, but the vast majority of Providence’s public schools are in nowhere near the shining shape of that building. And I’m sure plenty of other school districts (Central Falls, Woonsocket, Pawtucket) would have good uses for that money too.

Option 2: Build Something Good.

I also think it would be a good idea to take a page from other cities, and build a marketplace with apartments and offices above it to serve as a bus hub. The “compromise” position on the parking garage is supposed to be to put a bus hub on the first floor, but who wants to take the bus to a parking garage (and who wants to park at a bus hub?). I’ve outlined some examples here.

Option 3: The Benefit of the Doubt

The strongest presentation of the argument for state investment in a parking garage is that it will help us consolidate that huge expanse of surface parking into a vertical structure. This has some merits.

The only way the garage makes sense as a state investment is if it comes with considerable strings. Here are mine:

1. The state can invest the money upfront if it charges the full market value for parking in order to recoup costs, and continues to charge market value to upkeep and maintain the garage after the principal is paid.

2. The parking garage only deserves public money on the merit that it’s an ecological measure to consolidate parking. Therefore, the parking garage must be parking neutral. This means that any spots added by the garage have to be canceled out by surface spots removed. Since removing a surface lot generally means building something on it, and since building can’t just be ordered to happen at the drop of a hat, the state must require garage builders to pay for bonds to maintain greenery on the surface lots until something can be built. This already has precedence in the popularity of Grant’s Block as a no-car space that might have been used for parking. It also has policy precedents in Salt Lake City, Utah, where the city has such requirements for empty lots from demolitions.

3. The garage must have business spaces on the bottom floors. It might be a nice twist to charge slightly above market value for parking in order to offer lower rent to the tenants.

4. If there are any additional spaces needed to be taken beyond the surface lots in Downcity in order to reach parking neutrality, then I would propose taking some from some streets in order to make protected bike lanes with a planted median. These will help reduce the demand for parking, thus making the garage a better investment for those who do use it, and will also green our city by making biking an option for more people. Removing some lanes of a road from car traffic also saves taxpayers longterm on maintenance costs.

5. The garage must be open for 24 hour business. There’s a real problem of some parking being used for daytime use and other parking nighttime use in Downcity, such that even though there are more than enough parking spaces available, they’re not being used rationally so that they can double on their capacity.

6. There should be some decent bike parking in the garage.

Hey, I’m not a fan of pension reform. But I can make my peace with balancing a budget. Let’s horse-trade. The way to show good faith on the idea that pension reform isn’t just a reverse Robin Hood is to put your money where your mouth is.

No more subsidized parking.