Why Austin Should Ditch Parking Mandates

Parking mandates require Austin’s builders and homeowners to provide a certain amount of onsite parking, depending on the building’s location, size, and type.

Although parking mandates might seem reasonable, after decades we now see the harm they’ve caused.

The problem? Parking mandates have forced Austinites to build more parking than we really need.

As a result, here’s what’s happened:

  • We’ve created so much space for parking that there’s not enough land for other things we care about such as housing, local businesses, and compact, walkable neighborhoods. Moreover, the spread-out environment created by parking oversupply forces more people to drive or to struggle without a car.

  • Parking mandates have made everything more expensive. The costs of excessive parking in places like apartment buildings and grocery stores get passed on in the form of higher rents and more expensive goods and services for everybody, whether or not they use that parking.

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Parking Mandates = Bad Math

Findings from studies around the US on parking mandates suggest similar impacts in Austin

Parking is associated with a $56,000 per unit increase in construction costs.

US Govt. Accountability Office (2018)

Parking mandates reduced apartment building units by roughly 13%.

Parking: Issues and Policies (2014)

Parking mandates raised housing costs by 13% for families without cars.

Bloomberg (2019)

Average construction cost of one space in a parking structure is higher than the entire median net worth of 50%+ of all Black and Hispanic households.

Bloomberg (2019)

Garage parking included with housing costs renters around $1,700 a year.

Access (2017)

Parking spaces can raise the amount of CO2 emitted per mile by up to 10% for an average car.

Science X (2010)

Parking Mandates Impact Real People

Austin’s parking mandates have had many unintended consequences.
Here are four common examples of mandates’ impacts on every day Austinites.

A family gives up on trying to convert a garage into a small residence for an aging parent.

Parking mandates would have required them to add more parking to the property when there’s not enough space and the family can’t afford it.

Parents abandon their goal to expand their house for a new baby and must leave their community to buy a bigger house elsewhere.

Parking mandates would have forced them to pave their front yard for a parking space, making the overall project too expensive.

An affordable housing project has to turn people away because of fewer units.

Without parking mandates consuming valuable space, the project could have included more units and accommodated more residents who are struggling to find housing.

A local restaurant closes down because of having to provide too much parking.

Austin’s parking mandates have forced many local businesses to dedicate three times as much land to parking as to the businesses themselves, meaning less productive space and lower profits.

How Austin Will Benefit From Ditching Parking Mandates

Eliminating parking mandates will mean less space wasted on excessive parking, meaning more land for housing and more walkable, compact neighborhoods.

  • More housing units

  • Less expensive homes and lower rents

  • Less homelessness

1. More housing

  • Less traffic and shorter commutes

  • More transit and better walking and bicycling

2. Better mobility

  • More walkable neighborhoods

  • Quieter neighborhood streets

  • Fewer large parking lots and strip malls

3. More pleasant places

4. A stronger economy

  • More local businesses

  • More local builders able to participate in construction

  • More affordable goods and services

5. A cleaner environment

  • More green space and less impervious cover

  • Better air quality

  • Reduced heat island effects

  • Fewer arbitrary government regulations

  • Less red tape makes housing projects quicker and easier to build

6. Better government