Just the other day I posted an update on a report updating the City’s efforts to address the issues created by a December Hearing Examiner decision changing the way frequent transit service is calculated. The decision was unfortunate because it changed the simple straight forward way of calculating frequent transit service disallowing an average of the time between buses on routes near new development. This change means some projects having to add expensive parking or, worse, makes some projects completely infeasible. But what about allowing builders to buy bus passes for residents instead of building parking spots? Included in the report are a bunch of other ideas and recommendations including this one:

Require transit passes and other transportation options for new residential development.

POTENTIAL STRATEGIES

• Create a “residential transportation options program” that would apply to residential uses in new development in places with no minimum parking requirement (Urban Centers, Urban Villages, and light rail station area overlay districts).
• Require that new residential development participate in a residential‐based transit pass program as provided by King County Metro.
  • Terms of participation will be fleshed out, with respect to how many options, chosen by which parties (land owners, homeowners associations), for how long, and subsidy levels, for example.
  • Also include in this program enrollment in car share and bike share programs, and guaranteed ride home services.

Uh oh. Sounds like another well meaning but unfunded mandate. But the last sentence of the suggestion points out that “actual costs of this type of program will be a small fraction of the cost of building new parking.” Parking for sure is expensive and it always gets paid for with higher rents. It would seem like getting rid of parking requirements in exchange for a mandate to provide passes would, overall, be cheaper for everyone and potentially increase housing supply.

In an article touting the recommendation, the Atlantic’s City Lab points out just how much parking increases rents:

Charting the data on cost, we can see rents climb as the parking options become more complex, and thus expensive for the developer. A low-end rent in a building with no parking comes to $800 a month. Rent in the same unit in a building with the cheapest parking option, surface spots, comes to $1,200—a 50 percent jump. In a building with underground parking, the low-end rent hits $1300, a spike of 62.5 percent.

In the end, renters will pay for the bus pass (0r other transit alternatives) too, since the costs of bus passes will have to be considered an operating expense like utilities or maintenance. But using City Lab’s example, an Orca card with a regional pass costs $189 per month, a lot less than the parking spot. And not having to build parking is a savings that will make the overall project less expensive to build and, possibly, would free up square footage for people to live rather than mandated car storage.

Will the City go this route? Hard to say. What is true is that Councilmember O’Brien presided over the demise of microhousing, a process that ended up requiring its replacement, Small Efficiency Dwelling Units (SEDUs), to provide .75 covered bike parking spots for each unit. That means in a building like mine with 32 units, the requirement would have been 24 covered bike parking spots. My building has about 7 covered bike parking spots. How many of them get used? Here’s a picture of the 7 spots taken at the end of a typical week day.

The Council and planners at the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) have a knack for making things up, then imposing a requirement without really understanding how things actually work. Requiring lots of bike parking probably felt good, but it doesn’t make any sense. The same thing is true of requiring parking minimums or even transit passes. What does make sense is to find out if this kind of idea is something residents would pay for if it was offered. Nothing is free, but if rent included access to an array of car alternatives it’s likely than many people, especially people who don’t have cars and are already paying for transit would jump on the idea. The City can stoke that idea with a pilot, but requiring it and having the planners and Council manage it makes me nervous.