City Planning is currently considering granting a special permit to this 44th Street parking garage to allow it to buck the Clean Air Act and store 90 more cars than currently allowed. Image: Google Street View.

We reported last week that Boston, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. are each making policy shifts to curb the proliferation of off-street parking even as New York City continues to enable the construction of more and more traffic-inducing, land-devouring parking.

Streetsblog followed up with Debbie Schaaf, a senior transportation planner at Philadelphia’s planning department, about her city’s new direction on parking policy and how it compares to the state of parking policy in New York. Our conversation highlighted a rift between policy makers in the two cities, suggesting that under Amanda Burden, New York’s city planners have lurched out of sync with their peers on the issue of off-street parking.

The policy changes in Philadelphia are advancing on two fronts. Right now a rewrite of the zoning code is tightening parking minimums, and in the longer-term, the city’s new comprehensive plan calls for the institution of parking maximums. “We don’t want to overload the city with too much parking, which can encourage more automobile traffic,” explained Schaaf.

New York’s Department of City Planning, in contrast, has denied that there is any meaningful relationship between the amount of off-street parking required by the zoning code and car ownership rates. ”It is not the requirements themselves that influence car ownership, but rather, housing density and distance from the core of Manhattan, among other factors, such as the habit of  families with children to select housing in lower density areas where parking is available,” concluded DCP’s 2009 report addressing parking requirements.

Schaaf said she did not agree with New York’s position and that parking requirements and car ownership are indeed related.

She listed a number of reasons Philadelphia is trying to limit the amount of off-street parking that gets built. “It should make development more affordable,” she said. “It should make development more pro-transit.” She also said that less parking would mean a more sustainable city with better air quality.

Maximums, explained Schaaf, will eventually be an important part of Philly’s parking policy portfolio. “Developers sometimes are forced to provide more parking even than they think they need, either by lenders or by community groups that want more parking,” she said. “If you have a maximum in place, it would make it a little bit easier to resist that.”

While New York City has parking maximums in parts of Manhattan and Long Island City, the current Department of City Planning habitually grants requests for special permits to ignore them.

The maximums in the core of New York City date from the 1970s, when the city responded to lawsuits brought under the Clean Air Act. Despite the passage of PlanNYC nearly four years ago, under the Bloomberg Administration, New York has failed to build on its inheritance of progressive parking policy. While cities like Philadelphia are trying to curb traffic by preventing the oversupply of parking, New York has seemingly forgotten what it once knew about the connection between congestion and parking.

The city of Philadelphia recently released a draft of its new comprehensive plan, Philadelphia2035 [PDF]. The plan’s release makes New York the last city in the four largest Northeastern metro areas that hasn’t so much as stated a commitment to cutting back on off-street parking.

Philadelphia2035 calls for controlling congestion by adding parking maximums into the zoning code and pricing on-street parking high enough so that 15 percent of spaces are always free. Here in New York, we still pretend that adding off-street parking reduces traffic congestion.

At the same time, Philadelphia is moving forward with a brand new zoning code. According to an article by PlanPhilly’s Nick Gilewitz, the new code will eliminate parking minimums downtown and in the city’s many rowhouse neighborhoods. While Gilewitz notes that parking minimums will still require significant amounts of new parking in some relatively dense neighborhoods, he concludes that the end to many parking minimums “is a huge step forward in recognizing that Philadelphia has incredible public transit resources that can, and perhaps should, shape development.”

New York’s other Northeastern competitors, too, are trying to halt the overproduction of off-street parking and the subsidization of on-street parking. Boston’s equivalent of PlaNYC, for example, calls for raising meter rates and eliminating most free on-street parking by putting a price on residential parking permits. It also calls for expanding the area where new off-street parking is banned and cracking down on exemptions to the ban where it’s already in place.

In practice, as the city rezones, Boston is switching parking minimums in many neighborhoods to parking maximums, according to the editor of CommonWealth Magazine [PDF]. When directly involved in the development of large projects, Boston is pushing developers to turn entire floors of parking into housing.

Washington, D.C., meanwhile, is working its way through a citywide rezoning. According to Greater Greater Washington, “parking minimums would disappear in most cases,” with only the least transit-served neighborhoods keeping them. The Office of Planning’s draft language [PDF] includes city-wide parking maximums to “prevent an over-supply of off-street parking that would contribute to traffic congestion and the inefficient use of land.”

D.C.’s draft language also allows the city to grant exemptions from any remaining parking requirements if it can be shown that parking demand will be below the minimum, if the developer creates a plan to reduce driving to work, or if a project is near transit.

While it follows that the city with the best transit system and lowest car-ownership rate in the country would lead on parking policy, New York is instead falling further behind.

A sample image of Philadelphia's proposed "green corridors." (Image: Lomo Civic Assn.)

Testifying on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Nutter singled out his city's "complete streets" policy as a key element of the local revitalization that has attracted more private investment and new residents to Philadelphia:

Over the past five decades, Philadelphia lost jobs and residents. The pulls that caused people to leave our city and others like it were driven in part by government policies that valued highways over transit and new tract housing over older row homes. But, in recent years, Philadelphia has begun to witness a rebirth... people and jobs are moving in and private investments are being made. People again view our walkable neighborhoods and public transportation systems as assets to value and nurture.

Nutter also described a series of sustainable infrastructure projects that his city is prepared to launch once long-term funding is secured. The Senate climate bill sets up a new block grant program that would provide that long-term funding, directing money to metro areas for energy efficiency and conservation projects.

Among the Philadelphia proposals mentioned by Nutter were the city's "green corridors" program -- now in line for a $6 million pilot phase -- that would install landscaped sidewalks to collect storm water as well as new energy-efficient streetlights and traffic signals. A parallel effort, known as "green streets," would increase tree cover and install curb bump-outs with sidewalk planters to decrease heat-trapping.

"Our experience... is characteristic of so many cities that are moving forward with these investments," Nutter told the Senate environment committee, which will hear from more than two dozen witnesses today alone.

Republican witnesses offered a counterpoint to the urban experience, focusing almost exclusively on the high cost that regulating emissions would impose on traditional fossil fuel-burning industries.

"We are in favor of green jobs but not at the expense of the heartland, of red, white, and blue jobs," Bill Klesse, CEO of oil company Valero, told the environment panel.

Today's hearing can be followed live here, courtesy of the committee.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. As part of a city-wide campaign to reduce speeding, Philadelphia is marking 100 intersections with painted-on faux speed humps, like the ones pictured above. Britain's Telegraph reports:

"The goal is to change the mindset," said Philadelphia's chief traffic engineer Charles Denny.

"The driver sees this in the roadway, and they think that it's some protrusion up out of the roadway, and not a perfectly flat surface. So they slow down before they drive over it."

Accident data will be collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to see if the pioneering scheme actually does make the roads safer.

The virtual humps are the latest innovative measure adopted as an alternative to traditional "sleeping policemen", which have been criticised for damaging cars, slowing down emergency vehicles, and lowering fuel economy.

We admire the Engwichtian spirit here, but it's not immediately clear how much of an impact virtual speed humps will have on drivers who, for example, pass over them more than once. And they don't sound nearly as much fun as the laser crosswalk wall, or this one:

Rubber speed humps that inflate only when a speeding vehicle approaches have been successfully tested in London.

Streetsbloggers, what say you? 

Photo: Telegraph

With "Reality TV" producers plumbing the depths for every conceivable confrontational scenario, it's a wonder it took so long to strike the rich vein that is the put-upon motoring public. But thanks to "Parking Wars," the wait is over.

This new show, on the A&E Network, follows the Philadelphia Parking Authority as its agents ticket and boot scofflaw drivers while suffering abuse at every turn. Presented without commentary, save for cheesy effects and cheesier music, "Parking Wars" pits the irresistible force of the entitled motorist against the immovable object of the PPA bureaucracy. Caught in between are PPA employees, whose jobs are so psychologically taxing -- the possibility of physical confrontation is always as near as the next ticket -- they should qualify for combat pay. If the producers are rooting for one side over the other, it's hard to tell, as the "cha-ching" sound that comes with every levied fine is balanced by the portrayal of traffic agents as regular Joes working a thankless gig.

In this clip, watch what happens when a hothead who's racked up a "ton" of tickets gets booted after parking on the sidewalk. Then straight-talking agent Brian gives a lecture on civic courtesy to an irate woman as she stands watch for a double-parked friend.

"It's never their fault they're parked illegally," says Brian. "It's always my fault I happen to be there to write them up."

Video: MsYbf/YouTube