Public policy-making can be filled with difficult trade-offs and tough decisions. Once in a while, however, a radically simple change is capable of alleviating a broad range of problems, with virtually no discernable downside. In Connecticut this legislative session, legislators have put such a change on the table. House Bill 7061 offers an opportunity to correct a pernicious set of policies that have quietly raised the cost of living for residents and undermined the vitality of our cities and towns: parking mandates. These mandates, enshrined in zoning laws, force property owners to build specified amounts of parking any time they build a new house, apartment, or commercial building, regardless of how much they need or will use. H.B. 7061 would make Connecticut the first U.S. state to eliminate parking mandates statewide. Currently, 173 of Connecticut’s 187 local zoning authorities impose arbitrary parking quotas. Want to start a retail shop on a Main Street? For decades, zoning codes requiring parking lots bigger than the shop itself have saddled small business owners with unnecessary costs. They’ve also resulted in building demolitions that have hollowed out our historic cores – too many traditional village centers are marred by ugly surface parking lots. Shaded areas indicate the location of housing with no parking requirements. Credit: Courtesy Sara Bronin It’s worse for the apartment builder: Fork over the cash for a big piece of land for the sea of parking you’ll need, or don’t bother. One can’t help but wonder whether parking mandates are used, intentionally or not, to drive up the cost of multi-family housing that seems to be disfavored by too many Connecticut communities. But this goes beyond apartments. Onerous parking mandates may discourage townhomes, duplexes, backyard cottages, and all other types of housing by rendering them financially infeasible, practically impossible to fit onto a given piece of land, or both. Consider, too, the excessive parking routinely required around train and bus rapid transit stations. Naugatuck’s Business-1 District, directly adjacent to its train station, requires three parking spaces per studio apartment. This requirement defies logic given the slim odds that someone living in a studio apartment next to a train station would ever have, use, or need three cars. Government should not make it harder for developers to build housing near public transit by requiring them to build parking spaces that will sit empty and drive up costs. Naugatuck’s rule is far from unique, but its parking quotas are particularly high —so high, in fact, that they violate state law. To the legislature’s credit, a 2021 statute capped local parking mandates at one parking space per studio or one-bedroom apartment and two for two-or-more-bedroom apartments. Twenty-two states, including California, Oregon, and Colorado, have curbed parking mandates, too. H.B. 7061 – which passed out of committee last month – would go farther than the 2021 law, and make Connecticut the leader in a rapidly growing wave of reform. At least 100 North American cities have fully repealed parking mandates. Hartford, in 2017, was the first; Connecticut communities as diverse as Woodstock, Bolton, Bridgeport, and Thompson have also declined to mandate parking. Our research and practical experience have led us to believe that these mandates are unnecessary in communities large and small, and that statewide elimination would have significant benefits. The legislature’s passage of H.B. 7061 would end outdated requirements to prioritize excessive car infrastructure over the creation of needed homes, businesses, and vibrant places. It would reduce sprawl and enhance walkability. Passing H.B. 7061 would enable us to trade trees and greenery for asphalt. It would reduce urban heat islands and polluted stormwater runoff. It would take a stand against exclusionary development practices. Eliminating parking mandates would open the door to more affordable housing, greater flexibility for home creators and diversity in housing options, and a revitalization of Connecticut’s main streets. Sara C. Bronin founded the National Zoning Atlas and is the author of Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World. Daniel Herriges is the policy director of the Parking Reform Network and the co-author of Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis. ...read more read less