Washington's Most Parking-Burdened Towns and Cities
Middle school teacher Marijean Rak moved to Mount Vernon, Washington, in 2022 to care for her 86-year-old mother. She hoped to build a modest, 1,000-square-foot, single-story home on a vacant lot she owned to securely and economically age in place in her newly adopted town. But Mount Vernon parking mandates, which require a two-car garage plus two additional off-street parking spaces, made it impossible to do so.
“This requirement is cost-prohibitive and doesn’t align with the character of the neighborhood,” she told her city council members earlier this year, pointing out that most of the existing homes in the blocks surrounding her lot have a one-car garage or no off-street parking at all.
Rak’s story is one of thousands across Washington of a dream unrealized, whether it’s a home in a neighborhood they like, the conversion of a vacant storefront to a new café, or the opening of a much-needed daycare facility. Parking mandates—rules establishing a predetermined number of parking spaces for all new buildings—have proven a sneaky but consequential factor in driving up the costs of homebuilding and developing businesses; sometimes, they’ve prevented them from existing altogether.
And these parking rules are as arbitrary as they are arcane, slapping one-size-fits-all minimums with no scientific basis across a range of establishments. From restaurants to retail stores, homes to houses of worship, libraries to “butterfly or moth breeding facilities” (yes, really), cities and towns have mandated an excess of parking, locking communities into patterns of sprawling development that makes traveling without a car impossible and promotes unsightly seas of asphalt. In short, parking mandates have silently shaped how we live and how we get around.
https://www.sightline.org/2024/10/01/washingtons-most-parking-burdened-towns-and-cities/