Springfield experiments with reducing parking requirements in student housing

Springfield is experimenting with reducing parking requirements for housing development designed for Missouri State University Students.  A News-Leader article has the details:

Bike Racks

Future developments in two areas near the heart of Missouri State University will be able to reduce the off-street parking they must provide by up to 20 percent if they install even more bicycle racks, according to a recommendation Thursday night by the Planning and Zoning Commission.

The city already gives developers across the city a 10 percent reduction in required off-street parking if they provide bicycle racks for residents. . . .

In written material provided to commissioners, city staff had recommended the change based on the increasing number of college students who don’t own vehicles, particularly international students; the increasing cost of not only vehicles but of going to college; better public transportation in the center city area; and increased shopping and work opportunities in the center city area.

Commissioner Thomas Baird IV said the free market will dictate whether apartment complexes with fewer off-street spaces survive.

“The market will dictate if this is successful or not,” Baird said. “If it is not successful, people will not move in.”

Nationally, parking issues are seen as one of the major policy issues that makes American cities unfriendly and unsafe for biking and walking. Most cities require set parking ratios--per apartment or per square foot--which means that housing and commercial areas are always, by policy, surrounded by large, unattractive areas empty of any walkable or bikable destinations.  

This reduces the density of those areas of the city while not providing any counter-acting attractive or beneficial spaces for local residents or visitors.  The end result is that destinations are pushed too far away for easy walking or biking access, and cities are unintentionally built so as to discourage biking and walking and encourage private automobile travel, simply because of parking regulations.

Some recent articles on the topic:

• The ruinous, vicious cycle of underpriced parking
• Did progressive parking policies propel Pittsburgh past Detroit?
• Reasons to be optimistic about parking reform
• In Missouri, MoBikeFed and local advocacy groups have become involved in municipal parking policies in Kansas City, St. Louis, Springfield, and other cities. Most generally these efforts focus on adding requirements for bicycle parking and reducing requirements for motor vehicle parking