New developments need to include parking, but Metro Vancouver estimates that, on average, it’s “oversupplied by 47 per cent in strata buildings and 35 per cent in market rental buildings.”
Developers can spend up to $230,000 per stall to build parking for new developments around Metro Vancouver, which often isn’t used by a building’s residents, a research report has found.
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Results vary by how close developments are to rapid transit, but the research showed that parking for new development “remains heavily oversupplied from a usage standpoint,” Metro senior planner Mark Seinen wrote in the report.
The report showed that, on average, parking isn’t used by 47 per cent in condo buildings and by 35 per cent in market rental buildings.
However, parking use across the study was as high as 1.91 vehicles per unit at the high side and as low as 0.65 vehicles per unit in buildings depending on how close they were to transit.
Metro commissioned the research for its work to update its regional parking strategy, which the report notes will be heavily influenced by provincial legislation that mandates increased density around rapid transit, but eliminates minimum parking requirements.
“More parking does increase the cost of housing,” the report notes, but it also noted that there isn’t a guarantee that developers would pass on the savings from building less in absence of the province’s removal of minimum requirements.
Developers told researchers that reducing the number of parking spaces “can significantly lower development costs,” but reducing requirements wouldn’t necessarily result in fewer spaces being built.
How much parking gets built is a function of customer demand and builder’s cost. And while parking can make units more marketable, developers can’t necessarily pass on the increased cost in final sale prices to improve profits.
Developers, however, consider removing minimum parking requirements “critical in avoiding arbitrary oversupply.”
Metro is working with TransLink and a working group of representatives from its member municipalities on the next phase of updating parking policies, which the regional district is aiming to complete by the end of June.
The work is happening at the same time developers are pressuring Metro over sharply rising development cost charges that go along with development.
However, while it’s important to get the balance correct, planner Andy Yan said decisions to alter parking requirements need to be based on sound data.
In some instances, Yan said reducing parking requirements might simply “externalize the cost to surrounding neighbourhoods,” when residents resort to searching out on-street parking near their buildings.
Yan added there is also a temptation to use parking as a measure of “phantom affordability or phantom unaffordability.”
“It’s not only about housing cost, whether it’s rent or mortgages, but it’s also (how) do you include transportation costs,” said Yan, an associate professor and director of Simon Fraser University’s City program.
So talking about parking requirements can’t happen without also considering the transportation needs of residents. Even when people do live near transit, Yan said a lot of them still need cars to commute to work, especially to working-class jobs in the suburbs.
“There’s a total logic (to reducing parking requirements), but then when logic hits the real life experiences of people living in certain parts of the region, you realize the challenges of what that means,” Yan said.
So the region also needs to consider other ways to meet people’s transportation needs, Yan said. He added that increasing transit availability is part of the answer, but building out the network is expensive and TransLink has warned that it’s facing a $600 million operating deficit.
“Housing plus transportation costs is a real measure of affordability,” Yan said.