The Elrich Plan, Part Four

In Parts Two and Three, we revealed Council Member Marc Elrich’s intention to build Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) routes across the county. But just because people have the option of using transit does not mean they actually will. After all, part of the county’s official development policy is to force developers to build parking spaces in new projects, thereby encouraging auto use.

Yes, you read that right. Division 59-E-3 of the Montgomery County Zoning Ordinance requires developers to build minimum numbers of parking spaces for new buildings. The requirements vary depending on location, proximity to Metro stations and land use. Requirements for office buildings, for example, vary from 1.9 spaces per 1,000 gross square feet (GSF) of building space for a project in the county’s southern area that is within 800 feet of a Metro station to 3.0 spaces per 1,000 GSF for a project in the county’s northern area more than 1,600 feet from a Metro station. The requirement for retail buildings is 5 parking spaces per 1,000 GSF. Restaurants require 25 parking spaces per 1,000 GSF. There are many, many other categories. Developers are permitted to build fewer spaces if they enter into share-a-ride agreements, build near Metro stations, provide shuttle buses or carpooling incentives, or engage in other measures to reduce traffic.

These requirements not only encourage auto use in the age of global warming, they also guarantee that new developments will cause new traffic. And they impose tremendously expensive burdens on developers. Parking spaces cost a lot of money to construct, sometimes running close to $100,000 per space when built underground. And that space is not as profitable for building owners as actual leaseable space for office or retail uses. Minimum parking requirements might make sense for suburban areas in the 1960s, but their primary effect now is to increase auto congestion and greenhouse gas emissions and to increase the cost of project construction.

Elrich would augment these minimums with parking caps, especially in the county’s Central Business Districts (CBDs). If residential areas and CBDs are connected with BRT routes, why do we need large numbers of parking spaces? Elrich does not favor reducing parking spaces for visitors, customers or shoppers, but he would restrict spaces available for employees. Doing so would relieve CBDs of congestion and decrease building costs for developers. This would enable more construction in CBDs – a key goal of smart growth advocates.

But Elrich would not stop there. If new development is unchained from parking requirements, there is less need for the county’s burdensome traffic tests. We explored this issue in last summer’s Traffic Measurement series. Briefly, the Planning Department uses Critical Lane Volume, a measurement that it knows is terminally flawed, to measure congestion at county intersections. If a new development causes traffic to exceed congestion thresholds that are set for each area of the county, developers are required to install a variety of mitigation measures designed to compensate. But these mitigation measures – things like widening sidewalks, building bus shelters, setting up bike lockers, establishing “information kiosks” and the like – usually have nothing to do with reducing real live car traffic. Decades of such policies are responsible for our current traffic nightmare. And developers who pay for these tests and mitigation measures are required to spend millions of dollars in exercises that have little, if any, impact on traffic reduction.

So once BRT routes are in place and parking caps are established, Elrich would phase out these tests. No one would be happier to see them go than the developers!

Tomorrow, we’ll conclude with the most difficult issue facing this plan: financing.