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City Council Notes | Parking requirements in new Seattle developments could be up for debate

Here’s a look at this week’s Capitol Hill-centric highlights from the City Council’s chambers:

  • Parking requirements: Inspired in part by backlash in West Seattle, retiring transportation chair Tom Rasmussen has sent a letter to his fellow Council members calling for a review of Seattle’s parking requirements for new developments. “The goal of lowering construction costs is important in light of our housing affordability challenge, and I am not interested in requiring developments to build parking spaces that go unutilized,” Rasmussen writes. “However, residents in a number of neighborhoods would argue that the competing goal of avoiding on-street congestion of parked cars has been ignored and that there is significant spillover of parked cars.”

    The April 1st letter follows debate over a Hearing Examiner ruling on what should constitute “frequent transit service.” The Examiner ruled a West Seattle project should be able to move forward without including parking in its plans because it is served by multiple stops that combined would meet the standards for defining “frequent” service to the area. “In light of the controversy (and confusion) surrounding the pending DPD Director’s Rule on parking requirements, I believe it is time for the Council to review our current multifamily parking requirements to make sure they are consistent with our Comprehensive Plan, and to see if there are clarifications and improvements that can be made,” Rasmussen writes. “I strongly support our policies encouraging increased pedestrian, bicycle, and transit use. But again, that policy must be balanced with accounting for local conditions where on-street parking congestion is at its worst,” the West Seattle councilor said. Rasmussen said the parking requirements should be reexamined after a DPD “review of residential vehicle parking requirements citywide” currently underway.
  • Screen Shot 2015-04-07 at 12.10.14 PMPedestrian Designation: 23rd and Jackson won’t yet be part of this round but the City Council’s planning and land use committee Tuesday afternoon will discuss an update planned to improve the streetscapes “in 37 neighborhoods across the city” by removing outdated use restrictions in a handful of residential areas and revise the rules governing things like business parking lots and acceptable design departures. With most of Capitol Hill already governed by relatively pedestrian friendly zoning, you won’t find any areas from the neighborhood called out in the legislative update. Council’s staff memo does note that the community around 23rd and Jackson has expressed interest in studying the area for possible designation. You can learn more about the pedestrian designation legislation here (PDF).
  • Family leave at City Hall: Tuesday, the Parks, Seattle Center, Libraries, and Gender Pay Equity Committee (CHS’s favorite “everything but the kitchen sink” committee) approved legislation to make the city’s paid parental leave benefits available to city employees. If approved by the full council as expected, the legislation will make four weeks of paid family leave available for all City of Seattle employees.
  • Campaign finance reform: A new ballot initiative signature gathering effort is underway for a program to change campaign financing in Seattle. It would impact campaigns beyond the City Council and provide all the city’s candidates with an opportunity to receive funding vouchers from voters from a property levy-powered pool. There would be some hooks to getting the cash. And the new system would cap overall campaign spending. The Stranger’s Heidi Groover details the whole thing here — The Newest Idea to Get Money Out of Politics in Seattle: Give Every Voter $100
  • Emergency radio levy: Ballots have been mailed out for the April special election. In Seattle, there’s only one thing to vote on. Here’s what we wrote about the PSERN levy last month:
    King County voters will weigh in on “a nine-year property tax levy lid lift proposal to raise revenue needed to replace the county’s aging emergency radio system.” Monday, the King County Council approved sending the measure to the ballot for the April 28th election. The proceeds of the levy will go toward “the capital, financing, and other costs associated with the replacement project, the Puget Sound Emergency Radio Network (PSERN) project. PSERN would replace aging components and provide new technology to support emergency dispatch and incident scene communications.” The emergency radio system is used to dispatch police, fire, and emergency responders to incidents and allow responders to communicate with each other at those incidents. It is owned by King County, the City of Seattle, Valley Communications Center (ValleyCom), and the East Side Public Safety Communications Agency (ESPCA). CHS regularly monitors the broadcasts for our neighborhood reporting. While many departments across the country now encrypt their radio transmissions, a Seattle Police spokesperson tells CHS that this PSERN upgrade will not — “No. Period.” — encrypt SPD communications.
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[…] City Council Notes | Parking requirements in new Seattle developments could be up for debate | CHS C… – There should be legal maximums, and they should be low. A new car parking space (usually underground, costing  about $50,000 each) in Seattle is a luxury amenity and should be treated as such. […]

Worker
Worker
8 years ago

Hey council, landlords rent out unused parking spots to non residents who want them. In the U District very, very few go unused.

JB
JB
8 years ago

Let the free market figure it out. City council does not need to be – and is probably not capable of – dictating an appropriate number of parking spaces in any given building. Clearly street parking should cost something too, in any situation where demand exceeds supply, though it might make sense for long-time residents to get a break while newcomers in big apartment buildings pay more.

Jim98122x
Jim98122x
8 years ago
Reply to  JB

Seattle should charge for street parking decals, required in some high-density neighborhoods, with a smaller number of no-permit-required spots. Vancouver BC does this, and it works great. I’m sure it raises plenty of $$ for the city.

onthehill
onthehill
8 years ago
Reply to  Jim98122x

hey dumbass, they DO charge! it’s not free. $65 for a two-year pass. If you get it on day one of two years, it’s $65. If you get it 2 months before it expired it’s still $65 and you still have to pay another $65 in 2months when it expires.

What the city should be doing is requiring parking off street for residents and then limiting on street parking for a number of hours. if you go over, they have the right to ticket and/or tow.

JB
JB
8 years ago
Reply to  onthehill

Yearly decals don’t cut it. Parking should be charged the minute, hour, or at most the day. I don’t know why we need time limits and tickets though. Just charge the market rate until the car moves. Simple.

Jim98122x
Jim98122x
8 years ago
Reply to  onthehill

Hey, dumbass, I’m not talking about Zone decals. I’m talking about all on-street neighborhood parking, not just RPZ areas.

Random Joe
Random Joe
8 years ago
Reply to  Jim98122x

Says the moderator who I would wager has at least a 180 IQ. ;-)

matt
matt
8 years ago

From the creators of “If We Don’t Build Housing, Techies Won’t Invade The Hill” and the producers of “Rents Won’t Go Up If We Stop Development” comes a new hit: “If We Don’t Build Parking People Will Not Bring Their Car Even If Street Parking Is Free”

Robert
Robert
8 years ago
Reply to  matt

Like! Upvote! and Ditto.

matt
matt
8 years ago
Reply to  Robert

Why people expect the city to subsidize their parking? Residents should not be thinking their entitled to park on the street for $32 a year (o $32 for a month if you are unlucky like ‘onthehill’).

One easy way is to have Seattle charge a tax per car, unless you can prove you own/rent a parking spot. How much? Definitely more than 30c/day.

If you want to save developers the costs of building parking that will be empty most of the time, make sure you spare residents the burden of accommodating the cars on streets that are crowded most of the time.

RWK
RWK
8 years ago

Many thanks to Tom Rasmussen for initiating this call to review parking requirements in new developments. It’s long overdue. In my opinion, all new buildings should be required to provide some parking, unless they are in areas which clearly have low demand for street parking. As another commenter points out, any unused spaces can be rented out to nonresidents, thereby reducing the number of cars parked on the street.

Also, I disagree that “frequent transit service” should be the sole criterion for the City to approve of no parking. Even in areas with alot of transit, there will be some people who will own cars, for various reasons, and they need to park somewhere.

JB
JB
8 years ago
Reply to  RWK

All new buildings should not be required to provide parking. That is the kind of Soviet-style command economy thinking that got us into our current mess in the first place. Minimum parking requirements perpetuate the self-fulfilling prophecy of auto-dependance, sprawl and traffic that so degrade our quality of life. Let the free market figure it out – for on-street parking as well as off-street.

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[…] recommendations: Last week, we told you of outgoing transportation chair Tom Rasmussen’s call to reconsider the city’s rules around requiring — or really, not requiring — … as part of new development in areas well-served by transit. This week, DPD and SDOT have delivered […]

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[…] pedestrian zone: Pedestrian zone legislation we discussed in a previous notes edition will be on the table again Tuesday afternoon along with a community-driven amendment to include the […]

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[…] due: Not Seattle City Council biz but don’t forget to vote on the emergency radio levy. It’s the only item on your ballot. Pop it open, vote, and make sure you get it postmarked by […]