Bike parking gets support in Urban Transportation Commission’s call to end parking requirements

City Council may add changes to bike parking requirements to a November resolution that will finalize the removal of parking minimums from the Land Development Code.

The Urban Transportation Commission recently voted to recommend Council adopt the ordinance changes on parking minimums called for in a May resolution, while also in most cases requiring bicycle parking spaces be provided at a mix of 10 percent of the number of parking spaces included in new building projects.

The Planning Commission is scheduled to consider the ordinance language at tonight’s meeting, with Council’s Nov. 2 meeting as the likely date for possible final approval.

Dan Hennessey, project manager for the city’s transportation department, began the meeting detailing where the changes in the development code will be concentrated, with most of the 59 affected code sections contained in sections 2 and 6 of chapter 25. Hennessey said there are a small number of changes regarding development in the extraterritorial jurisdiction that will need approval from Travis County officials, who have expressed support but haven’t yet scheduled sessions to consider and adopt those changes.

Staff has also taken the step to explicitly state in the code that the city no longer will require parking for building projects, in a move to overrule any remaining parking requirement language elsewhere in city code.

“It’s a little bit unusual for the code having a section saying that something is not required, but we felt that this is such a drastic change for people and such a departure from where we’ve been that we wanted to be very clear about off-street parking no longer being required, with the exception of accessible parking spaces,” he said. “This essentially says that not only is off-street parking not required, but there are a number of references to off-street parking in other documents, and this provides an opportunity to supersede all those documents where we haven’t yet made changes.”

After working with the advocacy group Adaptive Texas, transportation staff also left in requirements for accessible parking at equal to current ratios, with Hennessey saying there might be a slight increase in the number of accessible spaces needed.

Commission members included the language about bike parking spaces to simplify the process for builders and make sure that city policy on nonvehicular transport matches with the Strategic Mobility Plan that calls for an eventual 50/50 split between vehicles and all other modes.

“If you look at the rest of the code, it’s very complicated to figure out how much bike parking you need and what that type of bike parking is,” Commissioner Spencer Schumacher said. “You need to go to six different sections of code and go through three different tables and dependencies. As a result, compliance with this is very low because it is extremely confusing to try to figure out.”

While some commissioners asked if the 10 percent requirement for bike parking may be seen as aggressive, Schumacher said developers will be able to accommodate those spaces fairly easily.

“We’re eliminating some parking requirements while expanding some. I think the difference here to remember is minimum motor vehicle parking is absolutely a hindrance to development and affordable development but I don’t think there’s any developer out there who will say – because they had to put in six bicycle spaces instead of two – that they were unable to build their property,” he said. “The reality is, when you are doing a site plan, bike parking is kind of an afterthought. You go in doing very thorough research on how much parking you think you’re gonna need … then put in bike parking two weeks after you open ’cause you forgot about it.”

Photo by Jaysin Trevino from Evanston, IL, US, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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