DAB Again to Recommend Parking Reform

Back in 1945 the City approved the first parking meters downtown. The decision was protested, litigated, and even voted on. 

A group calling themselves the "Salem Civic Improvement League" ran ads for meters, against an initiative banning meters in 1946.

Many of the arguments
for paid parking still hold true
Nov. 4th, 1946

Though we might not agree with all of their arguments in particular, and we now have better analyses of the harms of underpriced and free parking, in a lot of ways they got the big picture right. Right-priced parking is a key part of a solution for better traffic, better parking itself, and for revenue to fund positive goods.

The Downtown Advisory Board meets on Thursday the 24th, and they look to recommend  to City Council that the City finally move on right-priced parking downtown. This has become a refrain for them, but the situation might be more promising now.

Request to move to right-priced parking

From the memo (with agenda):

For many years the DAB received annual parking utilization reports from third party parking consultants that recommended the conversion of the current parking district model, where the businesses pay an annual parking tax to cover costs of the Parking District, to an on- street paid parking system where the user of the parking space would pay for the privilege of parking in a high-demand on-street parking space.

The municipal garages have had to raid Urban Renewal funds for capital improvements. Still, it was not enough and the DAB lists deferred maintenance and other downtown services they hope to fund with a better source of revenue:

• District wide sidewalk power washing (has not been done for 9 years)
• District wide alley sweeping (has not been done for 9 years)
• Trash Can powder coating, repair of broken doors (has never been done since original installation of trash cans 7+ years ago)
• Hanging Flower Baskets (4 years)
• Holiday Decoration/Lighting (6 years)
• Repairing/repainting benches (9 years)
• Economic Promotion/Events
• Landscape Maintenance
• Increased costs to parking garages due to the structural impacts as a result of excessive cleaning resulting from homelessness
• Security Services
• Marion, Chemeketa and Liberty Parkade Capital Improvement Projects

Priced parking has been recommended in the SRC process (2008) and more recently by the Congestion Relief Task Force, and now there is the Climate Action Plan to consider. From the memo again:

The Board understands that one of the recommendations of the Climate Action Plan is consideration of a paid parking system in downtown, and a third-party analysis was completed as part of the Climate Action Plan that indicates a paid parking system would be feasible.

We should lead with parking reform (2018)

Multiple analyses converge now on right-priced parking as a good policy move.

And there would still be a generous amount of free parking. "The recommendation included maintaining long term free customer parking in the parking garages if on-street parking was changed to paid parking." If you want to pay in a little bit of time with a walk of a couple blocks, free parking would still be available. If you prefer the convenience of a stall right in front of your destination, you can choose to pay a small rental fee. A well-designed system actually increases options and convenience!

The protest against meters does not seem to have advanced very much, and the repetition of argument is not evidence for its truth as much as evidence to reconsider things. Back in 1945, the "Salem Retail Trade Bureau" asked ominously if meters were "a discriminatory tax." Against whom meters might discriminate they declined to say.

Anti-meter ad, Sept. 17th, 1945

They also appealed to beauty, saying "Our beautiful city with its wide streets cannot be compared with a compact city of narrow streets." Somehow metered parking was more ugly than free parking? Appeals to beauty did not save the Holman Building or the Eldridge Block, both of which were demolished for parking. The discourse around beauty and parking is very odd and inconsistent.

David Duniway and the Holman
July 18th, 1950

A couple of weeks later in October of 1945 Council approved a trial with meters.

First approval, Oct. 2nd, 1945

It was litigated to the Oregon Supreme Court.

Nov. 13th, 1946

The appetite continued unabated, and a few years later we see what might be the first instance of an argument about "business development in the fringe districts" we see constantly today: "New modern stores at the city's fringe are spick and span, light and airy, have well-displayed merchandise, and have handy [and free] parking."

March 3rd, 1950

A couple years back when right-priced parking was again in the news, people on social media protested with a version of this same argument, saying that downtown was "saved" by free parking in the 1970s and 80s as it had to fend off competition from the malls and their large lots with free parking. This argument constantly reappears.

But a very different reading of the history is possible. The fact that multiple generations have tried to appeal to free parking as an essential ingredient in downtown health, even as downtown still seems to be imperiled, instead suggests that free parking was never in fact essential. Free parking didn't save J C Penney and it didn't save Nordstrom. Free parking and parking requirements have not prompted the redevelopment of our empty lots and craters. Free parking is not the powerful lure some people think it is. 

As a recent piece at Sightline points out, "Six years into their deregulation experiment, a growing city thrives without parking mandates," requiring parking hampers entrepreneurship and redevelopment. Here the Nishioka building, the New Holman Hotel, and the Nordstrom redevelopment almost certainly don't happen with large parking requirements.

An excess of parking and an overcommittment to free and underpriced parking hollows out the urban fabric. It is subtractive, not additive. Priced parking helps find the "natural" balance between supply and demand.

Ada Louise Huxtable wrote in 1970,

Some day, some American city will discover the Malthusian truth that the greater number of automobiles, the less the city can accommodate them without destroying itself. The downtown that turns itself into a parking lot is spreading its own dissolution.

Especially if this time the proposal gains traction, there will be more to say. The post-war period for city planning is rich with things to reconsider!