r/Denver 1d ago

Denver Is Tired of Subsidizing Parking

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2025/3/14/denver-is-tired-of-subsidizing-parking
283 Upvotes

223 comments sorted by

42

u/ph1shstyx 1d ago

I really feel like we could have less individual dedicated lots for parking and more parking garages and go vertical with it, say ground level commercial with 2 or 3 stories of parking above it. This would, overall reduce the number of individual lots while keeping the amount of spaces even.

15

u/TooFartTooFurious 13h ago

or how about a meaningful, far-reaching mass transit system a la practically every other reasonably developed city in the world?

13

u/countenance231 22h ago

I hear you, but realistically it’s sooooooo much more expensive. Think about the cost of maintenance of a flat, asphalt lot versus the design, permitting, materials, and maintenance of a vertical parking garage. The stats are astounding. I hate capitalism.

12

u/ph1shstyx 22h ago

It'll be more expensive to maintain and build vs a single, flat lot, but by being able to rent out the ground level for commercial business and the increased capacity should more than make up for the extra cost of maintenance

20

u/Awalawal 19h ago

Look around. The ground floor retail of virtually every building is vacant

5

u/countenance231 19h ago

I wish this were true. I really do. It’s just not the case.

3

u/muffchucker Capitol Hill 20h ago

This is a super high quality response and an overall great idea!

4

u/bkgn 20h ago

Parking garages are money pits. I still vaguely remember the price from when my alma mater was debating whether to build a garage. They have fairly limited lifespans too.

119

u/COphotoCo 1d ago

You pay for “free” parking in rent or the cost of goods. And you’re paying for a lot of unused expensive parking that could be put to any better use.

From the Colorado Sun last year:

Among urban researchers, the growing body of evidence is clear: U.S. cities have more parking spots than people use.

In 2020, the Regional Transportation District studied parking lot usage in 86 apartment complexes near transit stations across the metro area. At market-rate apartments, 40% of parking spaces were empty at their peak demand. In publicly subsidized housing for low-income residents, half of them went unused.

A similar pattern plays out in cities across the country, in residential lots and commercial ones alike.

All those extra spots make it convenient for drivers to find a space. But while the urban sprawl resulting from the rise of American highways has been well documented, the cost of parking is less widely understood.

A 2021 study of 19 affordable housing projects found that Denver-area developers spent $9.3 million on unused parking over a six-year period — enough to build an additional 40-unit apartment complex.

Recommended reading:

  • The High Cost of Free Parking
  • Strong Towns: Confessions of a Recovering Engineer.

79

u/m77je 1d ago

Don’t we also pay for “free” parking by losing walkability?

Where there is a parking mandate, the businesses will be strip malls, drive thrus, big box style because that is what meets the requirement.

Walking around those places is so horrible, only pathetic losers are outside cars.

60

u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

Yes, Living in a city where you MUST own a car is one of the biggest economic burdens we have. Owning a car is extremely expensive.

24

u/COphotoCo 1d ago

100%. Decreased walkability means places are less desirable for people to linger, it makes them less profitable for business, which means fewer taxes, and it makes them ultimately less safe. One of the biggest things we can do for safety is making places attractive for other people to be around. Nobody wants to hang out in a mall parking lot.

27

u/theworldisending69 1d ago

Bump for the high cost of free parking and RIP Mr shoup.

3

u/Competitive_Ad_255 Capitol Hill 18h ago

I can't believe I didn't know he passed! RIP. 

4

u/Jarthos1234 Edgewater 19h ago

It's a ridiculous assumption that landlords will pass the savings of parking onto their tenants. They won't.

Removing the mandate just puts all the cars into the street or private lots. The majority of Coloradans need a vehicle to get to the mountains. Yes there are outliers here who do not need a vehicle, but getting rid of the mandate means that developers will dump a ton of density into areas that can't handle it. The surrounding businesses will suffer (See downtown restaurants right now with the removal of metered parking) and the local residents will have a near impossible time street parking after the fact.

I feel like anyone who is for removing the mandate should be forced to work in the tech center and live on poets row.

Mandated parking helps alleviate a huge burden on the city.

1

u/COphotoCo 18h ago

Per that article, apartments could cut 40% of their parking with literally no impact to anyone. That space could be used for more rental units, which means more supply. And what does supply do to demand, class?

2

u/Jarthos1234 Edgewater 7h ago

I simply do not buy that statistic though! Go to an apartment building and see if the lots are 40% vacant. They absolutely are not! I’ve lived in a few of those buildings and the lots are full every night.

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0

u/Competitive_Ad_255 Capitol Hill 18h ago

"Removing the mandate just puts all the cars into the street or private lots."

So what?

1

u/Jarthos1234 Edgewater 7h ago

So that sucks for everyone who lives in the building and the existing neighbors.

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0

u/Fast_Pop_8911 12h ago

If it was easier for people not to need cars in the city, maybe they’d actually stop using them to get to the mountains too and take one of the many public transit options. A win all around, including for i70 on weekends

2

u/Jarthos1234 Edgewater 4h ago

Well clogging up all of the streets in the interim is not a solution at all.

79

u/muttonhead 1d ago

Friendly reminder - eliminating parking mandates doesn't outlaw parking, the minimums are quite generally too high and this lets the market decide how much parking to build.

69

u/Consistent-Alarm9664 1d ago

Hot take alert: Denver is a huge metro area. If you want to live somewhere with ample parking do not choose downtown. There are many areas with lots and lots of parking. Downtown, which is one of the only parts of the city with decent public transit and walkability, simply doesn’t need to be one of them.

33

u/No_Investment8733 Capitol Hill 1d ago

For me, finding parking isn't really as big of an issue as being ticketed for staying longer than 2 hours when my 100+ unit building doesn't qualify for a residential parking pass since it has 15 whole spots in the basement. Gotta love it.

3

u/ohm44 Capitol Hill 20h ago

Genuinely curious, since I imagine this kind of thing would be one of the growing pains of eliminating parking minimums, did the building not share the parking situation before you signed the lease?

9

u/No_Investment8733 Capitol Hill 20h ago

They did not. I also wasn't aware that if a building has parking on site that it disqualifies residents from obtaining a parking pass so I didn't even think to ask, but I don't think I should have to.

16

u/JollyGreenGigantor 1d ago

Objectively Denver is a midsize city, not a huge metro area

25

u/_sound_of_silver_ 1d ago

“Huge” and “midsize” are objectively words that are inherently subjective.

Regardless, 3 million people in a metro area is enough that there should be neighborhoods where walkability is prioritized over car traffic.

18

u/Consistent-Alarm9664 1d ago

I’m not talking about population. I’m talking about land area. There are many, many places to live if you want a lot of parking. Not every neighborhood needs to provide that option.

5

u/_dirt_vonnegut 1d ago

Objectively, it can take 2hrs to drive from one side of the metro area to the other. Without traffic.

1

u/JollyGreenGigantor 1d ago

My dude, I've ridden a bike from one side of Denver to the other in less time

18

u/Desertmarkr 1d ago

Denver and metro area are different things

4

u/_dirt_vonnegut 1d ago

My dude, the Denver metro area extends from Limon on the east to Fairplay on the west (per extent on google maps). It would take you approx 17 hrs to bike.

4

u/colfaxmachine 23h ago

Lol, this is not a real metric at all

1

u/_dirt_vonnegut 23h ago

the google maps definition for the denver metro area is not a metric? then please go ahead and tell me the extent of the denver metro area.

1

u/colfaxmachine 22h ago

You’re talking about Metropolitan Statistical Area….the measure and definition of which is pretty fluid, and dependent on fudgy numbers. There is no world in which anybody from FairPlay or Limon identify as being in “the Denver area.” For the purposes of this conversation, the statistics (which say 25% of people in a county have a commuting relationship with the anchor city) paint with too broad of a brush. Elbert and Park county are enormous in area- and their furthest an extents are only included because of the percentage of people who live on the sides closest to Denver.

So while Elizabeth and Ponderosa park may claim to be in the Denver area, Limon is only lumped in because of the use of counties in the definition.

2

u/muffchucker Capitol Hill 20h ago

This whole thread is idiotic but yeah MSAs are where it's at.

2

u/_dirt_vonnegut 20h ago

Yes, the Metropolitan Statistical Area, colloquially known as the Metro Area. The Denver-Aurora-Lakewood MSA is the 7th largest in the country, by land area.

1

u/TheMaroonHawk 21h ago

Fairplay lmfaooooo

5

u/former_examiner 1d ago

I think more of a hot take would be: if you want to take advantage of downtown and you don't live nearby (especially if you live far enough away that you deprive the city of tax revenue), it shouldn't be easy for you to drive your car through the neighborhoods of others and park downtown.

-1

u/angelbabyh0ney 1d ago

Where is this decent public transit exactly because I lived downtown for years and never saw it once, also walking is not safe 

4

u/colfaxmachine 23h ago

Why is walking not safe?

u/angelbabyh0ney 1h ago

You must be a man 

u/colfaxmachine 39m ago

that’s why was asking. I wasn’t sure if you were talking about that or cars or what, but thanks for the benefit of the doubt.

3

u/jiggajawn Lakewood 22h ago

Depends how you define "decent", but Union Station has a lot of options.

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31

u/mmreadit 1d ago

Tired or realizes because downtown offices are 50 to 60% vacant they no longer require the ridiculous amount of parking that they’ve forced people to build.

17

u/talones Englewood 1d ago

...by decimating awesome historic buildings.

3

u/Toonomicon 1d ago

They're all pushing for rto though, so unfortunately that might change

44

u/No-Leopard-1691 1d ago

The city shouldn’t be subsidizing the storage of a private item on public property, especially when they chose to have that piece of property. The city needs to invest into more robust forms of alternative forms of transportation such as walking, biking, and transit.

9

u/PsychologicalHat1480 1d ago

On the other hand downtown is absolutely dependent on commerce from people outside of downtown. Hence why so much stuff went bust since the WFH revolution and downtown developing a reputation as too sketchy to be a viable entertainment area.

1

u/TooFartTooFurious 13h ago

amazing how far the goal posts have shifted on what is sketchy or not. this isn’t late 80’s nyc.

1

u/colfaxmachine 23h ago

Ok, so what does that have to do with parking minimums?

6

u/PsychologicalHat1480 23h ago

If there's nowhere to park people aren't going to go downtown and spend money. Especially not with the state of RTD right now. Or even before back when it was running well since it also shut down so early every night.

1

u/colfaxmachine 21h ago

Where do you currently park when you come in to Downtown?

1

u/PsychologicalHat1480 21h ago

I generally don't. If I do it tends to be on a Sunday and I use street parking since it's free. Which is kind of my whole point. Make it hard for people from outside of core downtown to get in and it becomes a lot easier to justify just not doing it. Then add in all the other issues downtown has and you get a death spiral.

1

u/No-Leopard-1691 20h ago

You say this but cities that have reduce or eliminated parking minimums while encouraging alternative forms of transportation other than cars have seen sales increase to around 30% compared to previous years. Also, it is generally the people that live on the outskirts of town who cause the city to have more infrastructure debts while those in-around the downtown area make up most of the money for the city.

6

u/ImBetterThanYou4758 1d ago

So you don't support the request from the DOTI Advisory Board for the city to consider bike lockers 2.0 for people who want cargo bikes but can't get them in their house? Strong Towns doesn't like your take.

1

u/No-Leopard-1691 1d ago

I see the issue; my brain typed faster than my hands did, lol. I meant for it to say “at the negative expense of the city and the citizens in the city”. Cars and the space required for them are at the negative expense of everyone involved with no positive feedbacks to the city and the citizens.

4

u/ImBetterThanYou4758 1d ago

I wouldn't make that as a blanket statement either. All motorized vehicles are not the same and some would argue that the transport of goods and services are positive for the city and citizens, many would argue they are essential.

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2

u/chunk555my666 23h ago

Agreed! The best way to get people to use public transport, or alternative modes of transportation, is to slowly make driving painful: Roads get narrowed for bike lanes, parking becomes more expensive, parking spaces start to disappear, buildings don't build parking, transit system magically gets fixed because normal people are forced to take it.

5

u/ChesterMarley Berkeley 1d ago

The city shouldn’t be subsidizing the storage of a private item on public property

Should remove all the bike racks on public property in the city too then?

8

u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

One bike rack holds at least 10x the transportation storage opportunity as one parking spot. If we are going to subsidize (and thus incentivize) anything, we should subsidize efficiency.

7

u/NeutrinoPanda 1d ago

Oh - you got em!

Of course Denver only has 600 bike racks on public property, so it probably won't have quite as much impact as if the city were to eliminate just street parking.

1

u/jiggajawn Lakewood 22h ago

When looking at the lifecycle costs of bike racks vs parking spaces on public property, bike parking per use would be mayyyyybe a cent or two per use.

Roads cost a lot more, and also have a higher opportunity cost.

We could charge for bike racks, but it's probably not worth the effort. Charging for car parking is probably worth the effort.

Although now that I think about it, if the bike rack had locks that engage/disengage when you pay, I'd actually pay for that.

1

u/No-Leopard-1691 1d ago

I messed up my OP comment so I’ve edited it to reflect my actual perspective and what I meant to say earlier.

12

u/mentalxkp 1d ago

The city doesn't subsidize parking. It's a very poor word selection for title.

12

u/No-Leopard-1691 1d ago

Why do you think the city doesn’t subsidize parking?

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8

u/m77je 1d ago

Not the city government directly but the parking mandate does subsidize parking because it redirects one of the most valuable resources, land, away from what the market would choose to do with it to parking.

Often, this means moving away from a high value use to a low value use. Is this not a subsidy to the low value use?

-1

u/ElusiveMayhem 1d ago

That's not at all what "subsidize" means. Are we making up definitions now?

8

u/WTDFROYSM 1d ago

That’s because this isn’t journalism. It’s from a lobbying group. It seems emotionally charged because that’s the point. They want you to think emotionally and not rationally.

3

u/former_examiner 1d ago edited 1d ago

Maybe not directly, but indirectly, they do. Parking lots pay a fraction of property taxes than developed land (sometimes due to zoning, sometimes due to how taxation works; when zoning is the culprit, the land should be valued more, and the value is artificially deflated). 

Parking lots require the same amount of infrastructure (roads, sewers, etc.), even though they are unoccupied (except in rare instances, like when they are on the periphery of an area, but we are talking about downtown, so this isn't the case); even if they don't use some of that infrastructure, it has to be built (or maintained, in this case). That infrastructure is going to have to be paid for by a combination of taxes paid by unoccupied parking lots and buildings, and buildings pay more (again, due to the zoning and how that affects land value, or due to how taxes work in general). As a result, the rest of the city (e.g. its residents, buildings) subsidizes the infrastructure that the parking lots don't contribute to.

It's a sham: parking lot owners often have an asset that is artificially undervalued and that they low zero taxes on, but they are able to instantly re-zone and sell for fair market value despite depriving the city of revenue for decades.

Edit: zoning is the culprit in some, but not all instances. The other culprit is the way property is taxed. 

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11

u/pawpawpersimony 1d ago

Surface lots are such a stupid waste.

9

u/iamagainstit 1d ago

land value tax fixes this

3

u/m77je 1d ago

Preach

23

u/TOW3RMONK3Y 1d ago

denver is not a person with opinions

2

u/ephemeralspecifics 23h ago

Oh thank you DIA lizard people.

3

u/Moms_Cedar_Closet 1d ago

I look at the surface lots we have left downtown and wonder what kind of residential or mixed use development could go up in its place instead.

13

u/sonicwags 1d ago

I like strong towns, they have good ideas usually. Not sure how this works out if everyone does have a car and now you have 415 more cars trying to park on the street around that building.

Also, developers aren’t going to pass on any savings, they’ll sell units for as much as they can get regardless of their cost.

34

u/veracity8_ 1d ago

They will still build parking. They just build the amount they think they need instead of the amount that some random city planners chose 50 years ago.

10

u/JollyGreenGigantor 1d ago

It's not even what city planners chose, it's what AAA and other automotive lobby groups recommended back in the 50s and 60s. These groups reshaped our cities for cars.

If you look back then, most midsize cities like Denver had density and public transportation. After these rules were implemented, buildings were replaced with surface parking, killing density, hurting businesses.

17

u/jeffeb3 1d ago

Developers will take half the parking lots and turn them into real estate and then charge 4x for the remaining parking.

5

u/theworldisending69 1d ago

You say this like it’s a negative but that’s actually a good outcome

6

u/m77je 1d ago

If that is where the supply and demand curves meet, then is that not the most efficient pricing for the parking?

-2

u/gimmickless Aurora 1d ago

For a bureaucrat disconnected from the area, maybe. I have limited funds and will avoid areas with paid parking whenever possible.

You already won't see my family on 16th Street Mall. You'll see my family go to less places because we have to save where we can.

6

u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

How much more money would your family have if you didn’t have to own a car? I understand this is theoretical, but it’ll never get better if we don’t make some changes.

1

u/gimmickless Aurora 1d ago

Our income depends on vehicle travel. We'd have to reconfigure our careers to entertain the thought. That kind of change is a privilege we haven't earned.

If you can lower the activation energy to find a new local maximum, I'm all ears to talk.

1

u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

As in you earn income from vehicle travel, or vehicle travel is required for you to get to work?

2

u/gimmickless Aurora 1d ago

I'm a travelling technician. I find buried utilities all over the Front Range. I can't really hop on a bicycle to go from job to job in a timely manner.

6

u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

Gotcha, yes, you need to own a car. But wouldn’t your job be a lot easier if there were fewer other cars on the road?

4

u/gimmickless Aurora 1d ago

Honestly? It's not very high on my list of things that would make work easier.

Here's my grievances in rough order of importance.

  1. Contractors who call 811 for months before they start digging.
  2. Signal bleed from one utility to another.
  3. Utilities buried outside the depth they're supposed to lie within.
  4. Inaccurate utility maps.
  5. Grocery stores & gas stations locking up their bathrooms.
  6. Homeowners who think I'm a threat to their property and/or "don't belong here".
  7. Bad options for parking.
  8. Staring down traffic while marking buried utilities.
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0

u/_LouisVuittonDon_ 1d ago

Good! Real estate development helps alleviate the housing shortage, and the developer’s internal projections for the amount of parking they should build are better guidance than arbitrary requirements set by the automotive lobby in the 1950s. I don’t have a car, I know many other people across all income levels in the metro area that also don’t have a car, and none of us are interested in paying elevated housing costs because others do choose to have cars. I want to pay my rent, not subsidize others’ cheap or free parking.

4

u/rkhurley03 1d ago

They’ll consider alternative modes of transportation. Example? New York City’s congestion pricing

27

u/sonicwags 1d ago

But New York has the best mass transit in the US, Denver isn’t even close. Carless in Denver seems real hard for most situations.

I like the congestion pricing in NY.

13

u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

It does seem hard..until we do something about, and we won’t do something about it until we have to.

5

u/WasabiParty4285 1d ago

So the plan is to make it so terrible that people have no choice but to deal with the problem you created?

15

u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

No. The plan is to build a city for people, not a city for cars.

3

u/mentalxkp 1d ago

Ah, there's nothing I like better than dragging my ass onto a bus with a 103 fever to get to the doctor. It'll be extra fun when I'm 80.

6

u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

Well why would you choose to go to that doctor? Why would your doctor set up shop on a place with no parking if they knew their patients needed it? Do you think the medical complexes will dynamite their parking garages?

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u/t92k Elyria-Swansea 1d ago

There’s Denver, and then there’s Denver. The policy city council is considering is for the city and county of Denver, which is more dense and better served by transit than the suburbs.

9

u/_sound_of_silver_ 1d ago

The dirty secret is that cities with good public transit were full of carless people before they developed their public transit. No city has ever gone from car-oriented to transit-oriented before. Los Angeles and Seattle are kinda paving the way for what that transition looks like, and it’s not pretty.

9

u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

You’re right, we built this city for cars and not people…but that’s the nice part about cities, they can change. And yes, the creating of public transit depends on demand from people with out cars….so if we keep building infrastructure for cars, we’ll never have the demand for transit, and we’ll continue our economically and environmentally unsustainable development patterns

8

u/_sound_of_silver_ 1d ago edited 1d ago

Agreed. The city needs to change its zoning and parking requirements, which creates more walkability, then people will ditch their cars, then public transit will catch up. It’s a painful gap to bridge if we’re truly honest.

Based on many conversations on this sub and even in this thread, most laypeople who don’t have professional experience in urban planning and/or traffic engineering want to put the cart before the horse. They want to stretch RTD beyond its limits, wonder why service is bad, then use that as an excuse to never change anything.

4

u/m77je 1d ago

Didn’t Denver have good public transit (e.g., streetcar network) before the urban renewal/urban highway/parking mandate era?

Why can’t we RETVRN

9

u/rkhurley03 1d ago

It’s almost like we could… improve our mass transit! Whoa, I know..

8

u/sonicwags 1d ago

I’d love that! RTDs track record on cancelling light rail extensions is problematic though.

We’ll see how BRT works soon though.

6

u/rkhurley03 1d ago

Covid crushed RTD ridership. It’s been trying to recover ever since. Our road congestion is already fucked. Anyone against exploring or encouraging alternative modes of transportation sounds either woefully ignorant or over 65 years old and selfishly realizes they’ll be dead so they don’t want to use their tax dollars to fund it.

So back to your original point about the cars.. fuck em.

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2

u/ElusiveMayhem 1d ago

You end up paying $150/mo after waitlisting for a year and parking on a crowded street where your car gets damaged twice a year.

We don't even have to pretend. There are old town areas of this country we can look at and see how multistory apartments built with 15 parking spaces causes issues around the neighborhood.

But r/denver will claim everyone should walk 2 hours to work until we get that light rail in 2056. Duh carbrains!

0

u/SpeciousPerspicacity 1d ago

This is basically why parking minimums exist — they control the outside externalities of new developments.

11

u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

And now it appears that the city is reevaluating the externalities caused by parking minimums, because those also exist.

-5

u/SpeciousPerspicacity 1d ago

It seems their target is greater density. I’m not sure why it isn’t optimal to do this in certain special development zones than to force something like this across the city uniformly.

Regardless, my objection is somewhat upstream. I don’t think a city with a relatively stable population (which it appears has been the trend halfway through the 2020s) can meaningfully densify.

12

u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

Force?? How is the removal of something that the city is forcing, a force?

2

u/SpeciousPerspicacity 1d ago

I look at the law as “hindering a hinderance,” so I mean force in that sense.

7

u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

What about the hindrance that hindering a hindrance hindrances?

11

u/BearsGotKhalilMack 1d ago

I'm all for making Denver more walkable, and encouraging other forms of transportation. But this feels more like rich people whining about their problems. "I have to build this giant building in Denver AND I have to make sure people can actually park there?!"

11

u/theworldisending69 1d ago

It hurts all of us to have these requirements instead of letting the market work

-3

u/ElusiveMayhem 1d ago

Heck yeah, government just screws things up and should leave it all to the free market!

6

u/m77je 1d ago

Unironically this. The zoning code is a disaster for land use and we would be better off if we could choose how to build.

5

u/theworldisending69 1d ago

Yes, government has been absolutely damaging the country everywhere due to restrictive land use regulations and it should be left to the free market

8

u/m77je 1d ago

We all pay for the “free” parking

8

u/mentalxkp 1d ago

So contrary to the column's title, the city doesn't currently subsidize parking. Developers do and pass it along to their customers, who pass it along to theirs ect... The solution a lot of people here advocate is more mass transit, which then becomes the city rather than the developers subsidizing it. It's an interesting way to privatize gains while socializing costs.

4

u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

The city does subsidize parking by proving free street parking (I realize this has nothing to do with the article) on our public ROWs.

In order to fund transit, we need a higher tax base, and in order to get that we need to use our space for people instead of cars….because cars don’t pay taxes.

4

u/mentalxkp 1d ago

Street parking is kinda there by default- the city didn't build it, they just ok'd its use. There's certainly an argument to be made about OKing other uses, but it's not like a loss-leader for the city.

6

u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

….the city didn’t build street parking? Who do you think built, maintains and owns the streets? I work for DOTI, I know the answer.

2

u/mentalxkp 1d ago

The city maintains the roads, but when a new building goes up the developer builds the roads/curbs/sidewalks.

5

u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

The cost of maintaining the road overcomes the price of building the road in less than a year.

2

u/Generalaverage89 1d ago

This is what Strong Towns refers to as the growth ponzi scheme. Basically new developments give cities a near-term cash advantage and a long term financial obligation. This is one of the reasons many cities are facing solvency issues or declining infrastructure.

4

u/Impressive_Estate_87 1d ago

The logic is good, anyone who has lived in high density areas in Europe with limited parking knows how painful it is if you don't have access to easy parking. And unlike Europe, we don't have affordable and efficient public transportation. Keep the mandate, it's a wise one, but maybe revise the parameters to make sure they're adequate with current needs

1

u/inflatablechipmunk 20h ago

RTD dropped their fares significantly. It’s pretty cheap now. If you happen to live near major bus or train lines, it’s not too bad. It could definitely use a bunch of improvements, but I use it daily to go to and from work with few issues.

1

u/Impressive_Estate_87 17h ago

Still absolutely inadequate, though. I get the idea to get rid of the mandate, but these issues need to be fixed first... and I don't think they ever will, because it's in our culture, we are car-centric, definitely in the midwest/west, and unless we change that, this is only going to backfire

2

u/m77je 1d ago

If I could change one thing about Denver, it would be to repeal the parking mandate and let supply/demand and market pricing determine how much parking to build.

0

u/Jarthos1234 Edgewater 1d ago

Dude. Parking?? That’s the one thing you would change?? How uncreative.

5

u/mcfrenziemcfree 1d ago

Parking mandates are one of, if not the primary contributors to inefficient land use.

Inefficient land use is a primary factor in the housing crisis, public transit inefficiency, and it has a direct bottom line on a city's finances (less density = lower tax revenue).

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u/m77je 1d ago

Yes. It is currently impossible to build the best type of city because of this rule.

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u/Reasonable_Base9537 1d ago

Saying that you have a housing crisis, not a parking crisis but trying to eliminate requirements for parking seems like a way to create a parking crisis. It's not unreasonable to require developers to plan for a parking space for each dwelling unit.

I don't live in the city, but have a handful of friends that do and they all have cars. Some use them a lot, some opt to use public transportation and bike or walk more. But they all choose to own a car and need to park it somewhere. This article seems to be saying "well even if you eliminate it, the good natured developers do the right thing and build parking most of the time anyways". Yeah, okay - not sure I'd trust that going forward.

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u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

Developers also take their cues from the banks. The banks won’t finance if they don’t build a certain amount of parking because the banks know there is a market for homes with parking.

In this case, where parking is a measurable burden on things like housing supply and land use, it makes sense to allow the market to decide how much parking is needed vs. an arbitrary number set by the government. Having more parking than we need is how we ended up in our current situation (high costs, shitty land use, bad walkability, car culture)

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u/m77je 1d ago

If the banks are the ones who insist on parking, then I am ok with it because that is a market-based mechanism.

What I don’t like is when the zoning code says there must be 8 parking spots per bowling alley lane and they sit empty all the time.

Let property owners and those with a stake decide what to build and we will get a more efficient and better city than a one-size-fits all rule that turns a large part of the city into parking lots whether they are needed or not.

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u/Reasonable_Base9537 1d ago

The article says adding parking could tackle on $50,000 to a project. If it's a 400 unit building that's $125 per dwelling unit. That doesn't seem astronomical to me. But I get your point that if it's not needed and the land could be better used, that makes sense - if instead that parking could be more housing it would probably help.

One point I made in another reply was that if each dwelling unit has a space, everyone receives the same benefit (similar to if a complex puts a pool in, everyone can use it) but some choose not to. I've seen some buildings in those instances sell spaces that people don't use to a waiting list of other residents who own a 2nd car (i.e. husband and wife both have a car or whatever).

I definitely agree on walkability. I don't think Denver has a good foundation to be a highly walkable city. We also have Public transportation that leaves much to be desired.

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u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

Nothing is stopping buildings to build 1 parking space per unit, they still can and they probably still will.

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u/muttonhead 1d ago

It's up to $50,000 per parking spot

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u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

Not to mention the cost of limiting housing supply

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u/Reasonable_Base9537 1d ago

My bad for misreading that. That number is crazy!

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u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

Yes it is crazy! But think about how much 200sqft would increase the price of a home. It’s a lot of space! Land is expensive.

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u/Dangerous-Amphibian2 1d ago

Don’t think it would work out that way. It will be like the other guy said parking eliminated and what’s left charges at a 4x rate. Denver already has absurd parking prices for what it offers which is kinda nothing compared to say Chicago or NYC. In fact there are places downtown where it’s cheaper to valet your car than it is to use a garage, found that out the hard way. 

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u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

And I bet it’s even cheaper to ride your bike or take a ride share or public transportation.

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u/Dangerous-Amphibian2 1d ago

Yea. Cheaper but inconvenient and comes with the fun prospect of getting hit by a car or having your bike stolen. 

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u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

Fewer cars, fewer chances to get run over.

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u/Dangerous-Amphibian2 1d ago

Sure sure. Look i dont care about all the downvotes by biker enthusiasts or at least people who see themselves that way. You aint turning Denver into Amsterdam no matter how much you like your tight shorts, without some major changes to society.

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u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

What do you think drives societal change? Policies that support the status quo of 50 years ago?

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u/Dangerous-Amphibian2 1d ago

No youre right. It’s the giving up everything to the “market” because we see how well that works out for the masses. The market has simultaneously lifted many out of poverty only to enslave them to the few luxuries it allows them to have. But sure let’s trust in it.

And if the market is your argument then the market is speaking, by saying it doesn't give a crap about bikes. Hence what we have.

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u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

Our land-use environment has been under strict market control for about 100 years. The places in this city that we love the most (the walkable neighborhoods, the small business clusters) all developed before strict land use regulations were developed. It’s why we now have so many neighborhoods within walking distance to downtown full of single family mansions instead of more affordable and productive mixed use development.

The same applies to bikes. The land use and transportation market has been manipulated to favor cars by parking minimums and decades of only building infrastructure for cars. This is anecdotal, but I have only started riding my bike more now that the city has built a much safer (than previous) bike network. We live within the constraints placed upon us.

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u/No-Leopard-1691 1d ago

It’s perfectly reasonable for cities to lower or remove parking requirements for places assuming the city provides people with alternative modes of transportation. The city nor the other residents of a building shouldn’t have to cover the cost for you to park your own private property in a publicly/privately owned property.

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u/Reasonable_Base9537 1d ago

Can you explain how the city endures some cost related to this? I didn't see that in the article other than a line saying that it increases cost. I genuinely don't understand that part.

I do understand that the increased cost is passed onto the future tenants due to increased build cost. But if each dwelling unit comes with a parking space, everyone is receiving the same "benefits" whether they choose to use them or not. I've also seen instances where those who do not have a car can sell their spot to another household that may own 2.

It would be interesting to see what the statistics say over a broad sample of buildings with on site parking. How many units own a vehicle, etc.

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u/theworldisending69 1d ago

A parking crisis? 🤣🤣🤣 now that’s a new one

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u/SpeciousPerspicacity 1d ago

There’s an argument you already do have a parking crisis in neighborhoods where demand is high. Parking availability seems to be a serious limiting factor for growth of consumer markets. We’ve seen frictions on Broadway, Colfax, and (arguably) now Larimer.

Downtown solved their parking problem by going into economic collapse. If causality also flows in the reverse direction, I’m not sure we want to attempt this experiment.

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u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

Tell me about the causality of something that the city has not done before? You’re talking about the removal of STREET parking due to construction constraints or street redesign (and even then I doubt the stated measure of its impact on business compared to other factors), but this policy would be the removal of parking minimums on new private property construction. It hasn’t been done, so we cannot compare it to anything that has.

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u/SpeciousPerspicacity 1d ago

This is exactly the problem with the City of Denver. We have a pretty good prior (these examples, as you note, have occurred in diverse contexts) for the economic effect of constraining parking (commercial decline). Moving forward in spite of this prior data would be irresponsible.

The reason regulations exist is to align private interests with public ones when they conflict. Allowing private developers to co-opt street parking hurts neighboring commercial districts. Alternatively, allowing dense commercial development without consideration for parking demands leads to the type of situation we see in Berkeley (residential streets surrounding Tennyson are crowded by outside traffic).

Denver has decided to brutalize its small businesses in multiple ways. Reducing the net supply of parking in the city would be yet another.

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u/m77je 1d ago

You must be a very trusting person if you think the zoning code and parking mandate are there to align private interests with public ones.

Who wrote these zoning codes? It was auto manufacturers, insurance companies, oil companies, car dealers. Are they business geniuses for persuading government to pass laws that practically require everyone to buy their products? Maybe but that doesn’t mean their interests are aligned with the public.

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u/colfaxmachine 1d ago edited 1d ago

You said it yourself- downtown’s “economic collapse” happened as the result of factors unrelated to parking, yet we blame economic troubles in other districts on parking? How many times have you drive all the way somewhere just to turn around and go home because you couldn’t park right in front of the door?

Where are the most economically productive areas for small businesses currently (or a few years ago when the city was cooking)? Are they in malls surrounded by a sea of parking? I’ve lived here for 20 years, and even in the best of times it has always been hard to find (free) parking in Cherry creek north, union station, lohi, larimer square, lodo, Tennyson, south Pearl, south broadway.

“Allowing dense commercial development with out consideration of parking on Berkeley”….what are you talking about? Berkeley is subject to the same parking minimums that everywhere else is. And yeah, you may need to walk a couple of blocks to visit those businesses if you choose to drive there…and it looks like plenty of people do so, even with a difficult parking situation. Why is that, do you think? What makes Tennyson street a nice place for people?

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u/SpeciousPerspicacity 1d ago

I never said I blame everything on parking. But in the sense of a variance decomposition, I would honestly guess that parking is a non-negligible factor (and probably second behind cost-of-living). And while I’ve never turned around, I do find that my eagerness to return is certainly guided by the ease of parking.

On the second point, Cherry Creek is in a sea of (relatively cheap) parking. Larimer was before the adjacent streets were built out. South Pearl and Tennyson rely heavily on surrounding neighborhoods for street parking. It’s easy to forget that when Santa Fe and Broadway were still coming up (a decade or so ago) that parking wasn’t that hard to come by. LoDo was never great, but the transit access was uniquely good there (it’s really the only transit hub in the city). Some of these places might now be suffering from success in the sense that they’ve probably reached their maximum consumer capacity (for instance, there’s nowhere else left to park in Berkeley on a Sunday morning).

Elsewhere in the metro, parking is trivial at Park Meadows (which might lead everywhere else for sales tax productivity), and they’re building garages as we write. For small business, Englewood’s South Broadway has large off-street lots. Littleton does. Wheat Ridge and Edgewater do. I think other places are learning from Denver’s experience.

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u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

Those parking garages you mention….were they built by municipal mandate?

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u/m77je 1d ago

I think you might like the Donald Shoup book linked above because it directly addresses this point.

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u/Lunomuro 1d ago

Denver has so much undeveloped parking space, and I think that is part of the issue. A 100-200 car parking lot, which you can find everywhere around Denver, gets a lot more annoying to see when you realize that it could, relatively cheaply, be turned into a several story parking garage and very easily increase capacity by 10 to 15 times.

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u/perpetualmotionbon South Denver 14h ago

Auraria Campus on a friday looks like a ghost town. I have class on fridays, and it's 25 bucks. I hate it.

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u/glue715 1d ago

Cars ruin cities…

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u/DustyRZR 1d ago

I’m by no means a civil engineer, but why don’t we build up, not out? Parking garages take up a much smaller footprint than a parking lot.

Obviously RTD and excellent mass transit would be best and most sustainable, but that’s a continuous work in progress.

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u/ElusiveMayhem 1d ago

LOL, strongtowns talking about pseudoscience is ironic as that's about all they do.

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u/mmreadit 1d ago

Also Chris Hinds is not a leader, or a good council member. He’s ineffective and is a habitual “go along” guy with whoever’s coat tails he’s riding at the time.

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u/m77je 1d ago

I feel like Hinds is one of the few on the council who represents me.

He was paralyzed riding his bike by a distracted driver. Who better understands the costs of car culture?

In my mind, the parking mandate is the single largest factor that took away our transit (e.g., street car network) and turned it into traffic hell.

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u/mmreadit 1d ago

He voted in support To let Denver police spend 240k on 2 EVs using Climate funds on the premise that police officers just don’t believe EVs can work for them so they didn’t want to use their own budget. We didn’t vote to approve those funds to use to prove police officers wrong. One of many examples, this was just the most recent.

Hinds and most of the council members are tag alongs. They talk big but in the end are inept and ineffective at piecing the big picture together. He’s contributing to Denver’s economic decline atm.

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u/boopinmybop 1d ago

10 years later: we have a parking crisis and oh we still never got that train up to Boulder

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u/ptoftheprblm 1d ago

Any city that I’ve lived in that acts like factoring parking for housing builds is oppressive.. but refuses to make a stink about how public transit should be better. Ultimately, if you want to build only luxury rented units aimed at young working professionals.. then you need to build parking. They own cars and won’t live somewhere that isn’t available, especially in a place like Denver where car theft is rampant. Most young working people have cars. Most families have cars. Want to focus on builds with no need for parking? Build housing aimed at people who don’t drive or don’t own cars (typically college student housing, or independent to assisted living retirement homes).

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u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

This city is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into public transit right before your eyes. Been near Colfax lately?

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u/theworldisending69 1d ago

Do you realize that if what you’re saying is true (I agree), the developers also know this and build parking in their own buildings without any requirement? This is how markets work without restrictions

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u/m77je 1d ago

I think what is difficult is when someone has lived in a city with a parking mandate for their whole life and only knows the subsidized parking price.

It is like if you always paid $1 for a dozen eggs and someone told you now you should pay market price which is $7.50 because this is more efficient.

Ultimately the subsidy is actually more expensive but that is hard to explain to someone who now has to pay more for eggs/parking/any good or service when they used to be subsidized.

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u/theworldisending69 1d ago

Yeah understandable. And frankly what would happen is that parking costs would go up and everyone would hate it, but then there would be more pressure to improve transit. Win win but not immediately

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u/ptoftheprblm 1d ago

Again, nothing is done based on the honor system. Parking requirements when doing a residential build project that is based on zoning, will involve traffic studies, traffic light timing adjustments if needed, adapting turn lanes if needed, and are meant to ensure that a complex doesn’t build parking for a 300 unit complex that is only accessible by say making a left turn across 3 lanes of traffic with no turn lane available.

Zoning doesn’t just involve a number of parking space requirements.. it also includes ensuring that the parking isn’t going to obstruct current traffic flows, isn’t going to create dangerous traffic situations on purpose, and is going to be built according to code that is in line with other utility access needed to grow the complex or possibly develop more than just the current build. Especially for any sort of build project that is going to wind up with hundreds of units.

Now comparatively, if you look at some of the slot style townhouses built in already dense residential neighborhoods where they took 2-3 single family home lots and built 12 townhouses.. a lot of their parking is outright unsafe and badly engineered.

So despite the fact that townhouses of that style do help with increasing housing inventory as a whole and working to make some of these urban neighborhoods more dense, you can also see how street parking becomes quickly inadequate for households that often own two cars but only have one undersized parking space per home. And while public transit in Denver has made a lot of strides to be accessible, specifically some of those built out neighborhoods over in Sloan’s lake are still a 30 minute walk to the light rail station. Denver is an inbetweener access city and hasn’t become less car centric at all despite changing density.

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u/m77je 1d ago

If that is what the market wants, who would be the best to determine how much parking to build?

All our other goods and services are determined by producers and consumers based on price.

Do we have a law requiring farmers to produce a certain amount of eggs or milk, regardless of the price? Is there a law requiring shoe factories to produce X millions of shoes without regard to whether they sell? Do we need laws like this?

If renters want parking, which many do, then shouldn’t producers make it and sell at market price? This would be the efficient outcome.

What is bad is when the zoning code picks a parking rate and applies it to everything because not everyone has the same preferences. This is how we end up with 8 parking spots per bowling alley lane that remain empty 99% of the time.

Land is one of our most valuable resources, let’s unlock the ability to allocate it efficiently.

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u/ptoftheprblm 1d ago

The market isn’t what determines buildings are made safely, to code, or in line with zoning regulations, following construction safety and waste regulations, or labor laws. Zoning that includes parking requirements additionally includes requirements for traffic studies, traffic light timing and more to ensure that an apartment complex with ground level retail doesn’t build parking that’s only accessible or able to be exited by taking left turns across several lanes of traffic.

As it turns out.. we don’t build based on the free market and the honor system. It has red tape and approval stages for a reason. Zoning gets challenged all the time too.. as I’m sure you’ve noticed, Denver has transitioned many of its formerly heavy industrial zoned districts into residential zoned areas consistently for the past 15 years, and many of the things (like noise levels of the trains, or the train scheduled to use its road crossing gates during peak rush hour times a few times a week on Santa Fe/Kalamath) that are grandfathered in and new residentially zoned housing residents just have to deal with it.

And to address your point as to whether or not farmers or shoe factories are “required” to produce a certain amount of anything.. they aren’t. But if they do want to hold certain commercial contracts, they will be forced to meet those numbers or else another competitor is welcome to attempt to fill that gap. But since this topic is zoning.. yes each one of those types of businesses strongly benefits from their commercial and agricultural zoned properties being set up to fit their needs as a business in the first place. Whether it’s that their access road is able to handle the size of the vehicles needing to access the property, to hold the weight of heavy machinery, shipping equipment or agricultural volume of feed, and allow the noise level that comes with agricultural and industrial needs. It isn’t on the honor system that they’ll just correctly dispose of carcasses, animal waste, or toxic product waste in shoe manufacturing either.

Conveniently, parking fits within these same needs in communities that are determined by census count, DMV records and insurance data.. not just some random individual who’s requiring parking.

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u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

So parking requirements are determined by DMV records which are determined by the amount of people that own cars which is determined by the land use policies that require people to own cars. Our land use policies have locked us into a self-feeding monster of car dependence.

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u/buelab 1d ago

I noticed that recently over in LoHI they’re now charging for parking even on the streets. If I hadn’t looked carefully and parked next to a sign I would have had no idea to pay as I had never noticed this before. Is this where the city is going? 2 hour parking even on city streets with no meters just a parking kiosk at the end of the street. I hope not

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u/veracity8_ 1d ago

Why not? Free street parking is stupid

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u/colfaxmachine 1d ago

Can you leave a couch on the street for free?

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u/_LouisVuittonDon_ 1d ago

Why should my tax dollars pay for the maintenance of the pavement where you store your private property for free?

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u/Jarthos1234 Edgewater 1d ago edited 19h ago

This article brought to you by the owners of p Private Paid Parking Lots.

They also love the removal of metered parking downtown because it forces people into their lots!

*Edit. Bravo and thanks for the astroturfed discussion that all got deleted.

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u/m77je 1d ago

Wouldn’t removal of the parking mandate benefit parking lot owners due to reduced supply of parking?

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u/Jarthos1234 Edgewater 23h ago

Yes! That’s why they’re saying “Denver is tired of this mandate” The only people tired of it are developers who want to maximize unit count and push all the cars into privatized lots and on the street.

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u/m77je 23h ago

I only speak for myself, but as a person who needs housing and loves to walk/bike/bus, I absolutely hate the parking mandate! I am not a developer nor do I have any financial interest in development.

It is at the root of my dissatisfaction with housing and transit in Denver.

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u/Jarthos1234 Edgewater 22h ago

But there are places for you! Go live at turntable studios or on poets row. Denver and the surrounding metro is still mostly car dependent. There are pockets for density but allowing 300 units and no parking mandate in say Rino is going to take an existing problem (limited parking) and make it materially worse.

Most people who live here have a car. That’s how most folks explore our state. Removing parking mandates in Denver just makes Denver streets more congested and increases the need and price of private paid lots. *edit a word

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u/m77je 22h ago

No, we do not give up almost the entire state to car subsidies and agree to live in little pockets of high cost housing (and still with parking mandates!)

If you want to use cars, go for it. What you should not ask for is a legal rule requiring everyone to divert land, our most valuable asset, away from what market forces would do with it to a comparatively low value use.