Seattle Parking Shortages

There are parking shortages all over the city! So why this:

The Seattle City Council yesterday agreed to reduce the number of parking spaces that developers are required to include in new apartment, townhouse and condominium projects in some of the city’s densest neighborhoods.

According to the council this is all about affordable housing and using alternative transportation. But I suspect the builders and tenants will, respectively, make it about maximizing return on investment and enjoyable living which may or may not match up with the council’s verbiage.

Binary Circumstance rightly notes:

What they don’t seem to realize is that a lot of people DO take public transportation but like to have a car for weekend trips or special errands. It is absurd to think that people will give up their cars just so they can live in a building without enough parking.

The great majority of the older apartment buildings in the city already have no parking and the tenants in those buildings are already using up all the street parking.

Yep, this is a big reason I do not go into some areas of the city as often as I might.

Reducing parking requirements for new multifamily construction will not change the situation much. In the areas that the changes apply to there is, as noted above, for all intents and purposes no street or public parking to accommodate the additional cars that new construction might bring to the area. It’s already in use and often not forced to churn often enough to make it inconvenient for folks to use the streets for longer than 1-2 hour parking.

The builders will have to build the spaces necessary to maximize their investment If they need two or three spaces for every unit to get the necessary tenants they will build them. On the other hand if their business model will work with carless clients then no spaces should be ok as well! Over time the combined decisions of the builders and their tenants will lead to better results for the area residents than is possible with blanket council mandates.