Parking in downtown Columbia is a hot button issue. Right now, the city requires residential developers to build one parking spot for every four bedrooms in their complex. These spots can be anywhere within one-quarter mile of the residence. The Parking and Transportation Management task force met Wednesday to discuss possible changes to this minimum requirement.
The task force voted unanimously to approve recommendations it will present to the Planning and Zoning Commission on October 20. These recommendations include keeping the minimum requirement at one space per four bedrooms, but with a requirement that disability-accessible parking spots be made available on site. The task force also recommends developers no longer be allowed to just lease parking spots in public parking garages to fulfill their one spot per four bedrooms requirement. The task force also wants a parking and transportation management commission to be formed to continue the work the task force has started.
City Council member Michael Trapp says data shows there is plenty of parking downtown already so the task force does not see any reason to increase the number of spots available.
“What the data tells me is that there is ample parking. It’s just not always as close as people would like,” Trapp said. “So I still see lots of empty parking spaces, but maybe not right in front of the building someone wants to go to.”
Trapp said instead of building more parking spaces, the task force wants to look into creating a fee-in-lieu system. This would allow developers to avoid parking requirements by paying a fee to the city instead. This fee, Trapp said, will go toward funding alternate means of transportation and creating parking garages.
“It costs $20,000 to build a parking space in downtown. So by requiring unnecessary parking, you’re really driving up housing costs and nobody wants to see that,” Trapp said. “So there are a lot of better uses for that $20,000 than having private parking spaces that are not going to be used.”
Trapp said he doesn’t think the fee-in-lieu system will be a viable option until more data is gathered on how much parking is available downtown. He says there isn’t enough information on supply and demand to make a fully informed decision yet.
Leah Christian, a transportation and neighborhood planner for the city, said the task force recognizes parking is a complex and controversial issue.
“I think it’s complicated because there are so many different types of people that need parking,” Christian said. “You have a wide variety of people who need to park and a lot of different perspectives from those different folks. It just gets very contentious because everybody is a part of it.”
While the task force accomplished its goal of creating recommendations for Planning and Zoning, Christian said this is not the end of the task force.
“The next tasks for this task force are to basically look at the bigger picture parking management issues and sort of delve into how we organize those,” Christian said. “We still have SMART Growth recommendations that are really mostly focused on transportation demand management that we need to decide as a task force how to move forward on.”
Christian says she hopes the task force will next focus on how to get people to use their cars less and find alternate means of transportation to get around the city.