Texas' capital city visitors get parking headache under new order

Finding parking in downtown Austin is not easy. Whether you pay $20+ to park in a garage or get lucky and find a spot on a metered street, this year you may not need to do either. Ride sharing may become visitors and residents’ best bet since Austin is doing away with parking restrictions for new developments in 2024.

The City of Austin has now become the biggest city in the country to eliminate its parking mandates citywide, according to an NPR report. The effort is part of several ways to make neighborhoods more walkable, ease housing costs, and combat congestion in the city. 

Council member Zo Qadri, who represents Central Austin, was part of spearheading the initiative, saying,”I was proud to lead the way on eliminating parking mandates citywide here in Austin. It’s a significant step toward a more affordable, climate-friendly, and transit-oriented city.”

Getting rid of parking requirements for the city means that developers will not have to make parking lots for buildings anymore in certain parts of the city. Before this, Austin required residential and commercial builders to include parking in their developments since the 1950s, but the amount of spots varied depending on what was being built, according to KUT. For example, usually the city required that every one-bedroom apartment be allotted 1.5 parking spots while a building for a three-bedroom home was required to build at least two parking spots.

Since 2013, Austin began to slowly minimize these requirements for new developments downtown and in 2023, the city council voted to remove parking requirements for bars. The city’s rules will still require builders to provide parking spots for those who are disabled under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Special zoning districts within the city will still be under the city’s former parking minimum rules in neighborhoods like Hyde Park.

Austin is following the trend of dozens of other cities across the nation that have eliminated parking mandates, including Portland, Oregon, San Jose, California, and Richmond, Virginia. Although the move is meant to target parking, advocates of the decision say it may impact the city’s housing troubles as throwing out parking requirements will allow developers to build more housing.

“Downtown Austin hasn’t had parking minimums for ten years and yet developments still provide more parking than is currently needed,” Qadri said.

In addition to making more room for housing, disgarding parking eliminates the cost of having to build spaces, which can cost a developer anywhere from $5,000 to $60,000 for one parking spot, depending on whether they’re building a surface parking lot or a concrete garage, according to the  Austin city department. KUT reported that staff estimate these costs to a developer building apartments can add up to $200 a month to a tenant’s eventual rent.

Tony Jordan, President of the Parking Reform Network, a non-profit organization based in Oregon that educates the public about the impact of parking policy on climate change, equity, housing, and traffic told MySA, “The bottom line is that nothing changes immediately, but over time our cities can actually become better and do a lot better at providing equitable access to people who can’t drive.”

Despite a majority support for the elimination, some Austinites have mixed feelings about it, especially in a city that has been built around cars. 

Reddit user, geezer_red, commented in the Austin subreddit about the NPR report, “What will happen is there will be a limited number of parking spots built, much lower than the units and not allocated to specific units. Then people have to separately purchase parking spots or rent from others. It’s how Brooklyn is and it sucks.”

Another Redditor, Ecstatic-Profit8139, wrote, “we’re not getting rid of parking, we’re removing an unreasonable mandate that forces builders and business owners to provide more parking than anyone needs. there’s a sh**load of parking in this city. it’s always gonna be a chicken and egg situation, but forcing car infrastructure on every development in the city isn’t helping build a better city.”

Census data reveals that 60% of Austin workers drive alone to work, and supporters hope this new initiative will encourage drivers to make more environmentally-friendly transit decisions and if parking is harder, people will choose to take public transportation, bike or walk to their destinations.

“Getting rid of these parking mandates just removes the arbitrary hurdle to having some percentage of our cities be accommodating for people who’d rather not drive which actually is most people [who] say they want a walkable experience,” Jordan said.

Qadri added that he along with council members are working with the Urban Land Institute and local stakeholders to study what more the city can do to better utilize space in developments for uses other than parking.