See what happens when you don’t require any minimum parking? Photo by magandafille on Flickr.

Last night’s zoning hearing stretched so late into the night that Office of Zoning staff started talking about what time the Metro closes, to ensure commissioners and audience members could make it home. That’s especially apt given the topic, modifying the zoning code to make it easier for more DC residents to live without a car.

One of the superstars of the evening was Alice Speck, a car-free new mom who testified while carrying her new baby. Speck and her husband Jeff recently built an infill house on Florida Avenue, for which the zoning code required one parking space. Without an alley, this would have forced them to remove a historic curb and sacrifice one on-street space for a single off-street space. The zoning variance to waive this requirement delayed their home by nine months, she said to general laughter.

Brian O’Looney, of Torti Gallas and Partners, delivered an extremely compelling presentation about buildings he personally worked on in Columbia Heights. Zoning and lenders forced large amounts of parking that’s going unused. “If we fail with parking maximums and undersupply parking, the solution is to raise prices and build more,” he said, but “if we fail with miimums and overbuild, there is greater risk and financial stress for those willing to invest in DC. “Why throw more money into useless holes in the ground,” he added while showing a slide of a giant hole dug in Columbia Heights to put in the unused parking. That project has 500-700 unused spaces, or $20 million that could have provided better housing or community benefits.

Matthew Yglesias framed the key issue of spillover very cleverly (perhaps little surprise given that he writes a popular blog and recently published a thoughtful book on foreign policy). Parking minimums, argued Yglesias, cause their own kinds of spillover.

“We should consider the spillover consequences of parking minimums. I want people to come in and open businesses [near my house]. If they need to build a parking garage or buy space in an existing lot, that discourages people from opening these stores. A lot of valuable land, where we need grocery stores or places where can buy clothing, are being used up as parking spaces. … In the name of protecting people who live near retail corridors, we shouldn’t be trying to harm the interests of those of us who live there.

Some opposition arguments were downright amusing. Barbara Zartman, of the Committee of 100, held up Georgetown as an example of what life is like without parking minimums. “See what happens when you don’t require any minimum parking?” she said. If I didn’t know better, I might have forgotten whether she was for or against the proposal. If not having minimums means we get neighborhoods like Georgetown, that’s the best argument of all to get rid of them. For someone who chose to live in Georgetown, serves on the local citizens’ association, and fights to preserve the historic fabric, it’s odd how much Zartman seems to loathe the place.

A complete recap of the meeting below the jump:

Harriet Tregoning, Director of the Office of Planning, led off the discussion with a presentation focusing on the financial and environmental impacts of automobile dependency. “Walkability is our future in Washington,” she said, and urged steps to make more of the Walk Score map for DC green.

Tregoning also rebutted the argument some opponents have made that if we build without parking, it’ll be too late to add parking later, by pointing out that building too much parking is just as difficult to rectify. “We can’t convert a parking space into another convenient use,” she said. “It can’t be a condo; it can’t even be a doghouse. If we guess wrong or force more parking than might be necessary, we’re stuck with it for a very long time.”

Karina Ricks of DDOT also spoke for the plan, pointing out that parking spaces are expensive (over $40,000) and that according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, DC has 5 parking spaces for every vehicle, of which (logically) four are vacant at any one time. These each cost about $3,000 per year just to exist. Ricks added that over 50% of DC’s trips are made by modes other than driving, compared to 32% in Arlington and under 12% in Fairfax.

Finally, Ricks addressed the concerns about spillover. “This is not an insigificant concern but neither is it an unsolvable one,” she said. DDOT’s two performance parking pilots have been successful, and show “tremendous promise” for managing demand in both residential and commercial areas.

About 25 residents spoke in favor of the plan, including Neha Bhatt delivering official testimony on behalf of Councilmember Tommy Wells, compared to only 6 opposed. Opponents included two commissioners from ANC 6B, the Eastern Market area. Commissioner David Garrison said that “people on Capitol Hill don’t want to abandon their ability to have a car,” a surprising argument given that nothing in the zoning rules prohibits car ownership or will even reduce the number of parking spaces.

Fellow commissioner Ken Jarboe pointed out that Eastern Market was named one of the best neighborhoods in America and “we want to keep it that way.” That’s very laudable, but to the two Capitol Hill residents sitting next to me who enjoy walking to the great restaurants on Barracks Row, a 50-year-old zoning code that promotes automobile use over all else wasn’t their idea of the right way.

Wilson Reynolds, of the Adams Morgan ANC, testified in favor of the proposal. He pointed out that “the cost of parking is very high and not usually recovered,” forcing those who don’t own cars to bear some of the costs of the parking spaces. The proposal, Reynolds said, is “finally addressing the balance of people who want to live in a city with cars and people who do not.”

Following his wife Alice, Jeff Speck gave a powerful and poetic indictment of required parking:

The more parking you provide, the less residents will choose to walk.

The more parking you provide, the less residents will choose to take transit.

The more parking you provide, the more you will devalue the investments you make.

The more parking you provide, the dirtier the air you will have.

The more parking you provide, the more child obesity you will have.

The more parking you provide, the more difficult it will be to build affordable and attainable housing.

The more parking you provide, the more difficult you make it for the city to meet its obligations for limiting climate change and dependence on foreign oil.

World class cities—the ones people choose to visit—these world class cities do not have mininum parking requirements. It’s remarkable that DC has become the world-class attraction that it is in spite of its suburban-style, distinctly not world-class parking requirements.

A resident near the Convention Center, whose name I missed, suggested some clarification of the rules for “car sharing” to ensure people don’t simply use the spaces for a privately shared vehicle among a few people. By way of example, he pointed to the woman next to him, saying the two of them shouldn’t get a car sharing space just for sharing a car together. Ironically, that woman was Ellice Perez, the General Manager of Zipcar, who began her own testimony by saying, “If you become a member, we will be sharing a car,” creating the meeting’s most hilarious moment.

Perez talked about Zipcar’s ratio of 43 members per car (compared to 1.1 for private cars), the way each Zipcar takes 14.9 cars off the road. After joining, members drive an average of 2,500 fewer miles and consume 100 fewer gallons of gas. That’s 215,000 tons of carbon not emitted as pollution.

Commissioners asked about private garages which might be concerned about the security impact from having publicly accessible Zipcars. Perez listed many ways in which they can work with buildings to accommodate their security needs, from the low tech like requiring Zipcar users to go through the building’s concierge to access the garage, to the high-tech like keypads with a code the user only receives before his or her rental, or (coming soon) proximity card readers that the member can only open at the appropriate time with his or her Zipcard. When asking about Zipcars as a possible amenity for a PUD, according to May, commissioners have heard from many developers about supposed difficulties with security. Perhaps, he added, next time they will press the developers harder.

Several witnesses spoke up for bike parking, though they engendered less controversy than the minimums. But the representative from WABA (whose name I didn’t write down) generated one of the few real moments when Zoning Commisssioners engaged the witnesses. He suggested doubling OP’s suggested bike parking requirements for schools; the current proposal calls for one bicycle space per classroom.

Commissioner Michael Turnbull, the representative from the Architect of the Capitol, jumped in. “Doesn’t [two spaces per classroom] seem kind of low? What do you do, fight in the schoolyard” for who gets the space? Peter May, from the National Parks Service and the other federal representative on the board, added that the rack at his son’s school certainly fills up. Commissioner Gregory Jeffries added, “What could be more important than training young people in the use of bicycles?” It sounds like the Office of Planning is going to be reexamining, and raising, some of their bicycle parking numbers.

After many hours of testimony, the handful of opposition witnesses had their turn. George Clark, of the overwhelmingly white Federation of Citizens’ Associations, opposed the parking changes primarily on behalf of the residents of transit-poor neighborhoods east of the river, most of whom he doesn’t represent. It’s honorable to try to stand up for the rights of others, of course—too bad Clark was only thinking about the 53% of households in Ward 7 and 8 that have cars. Trying to make life better for the other 47% is anathema to Clark, who called it “social engineering.”

Clark, as have many others, glossed over the important distinction between removing parking minimums and removing parking. Commissioner Jeffries pointed out this contradiction during questioning. Developers would almost certainly build parking in transit-inaccessible areas, Jeffries said, especially because he knows many people moving to Wards 7 and 8 want parking. The market will almost surely make different decisions east of the river than it would in Columbia Heights, Shaw, or Dupont Circle, Jeffries added.

The discussion of bicycle racks aside, commissioners left few clues as to their thoughts on the specifics. NPS’s May listed some points he’d like to see better fleshed out, including the specifics of how in-lieu fees will be collected and used. They need to learn more about performance parking, he added, and to better understand the process for reforming residential parking permits.

The Zoning Commission will continue to accept comments until 3 pm August 29th, and then will ask its questions and give its guidance to the Office of Planning on September 8th. OP will then take 2-3 months to write more detailed language and collect public comment, which will go back to the Zoning Commission for a “proposed action” which triggers another 30-day period of public comment. That’s two more chances for the public to weigh in, in addition to the still-open comment period for this hearing.

We’ll know more on September 8th, but I interpret commissioners’ comments on details as a good sign. It seems (but is not certain) they accept the general concepts in principle, with many questions remaining about the details. My goal for this hearing had been for enough citizens to speak for the proposal to outweigh the well-organized, established groups fighting it. Instead, the opponents looked like increasingly strident voices standing athwart the progressive evolution of our city, yelling “stop”. We’ll find out on September 8th how much the Zoning Commission will stop an important change just for them.

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.