New research reveals that the City of Boulder has nearly twice as many parking spots as it uses in some areas of the city. This finding is the latest factor motivating city planners to consider eliminating minimum parking requirements for housing, shopping centers and other developments.
In the long term, such a change could significantly alter Boulder’s urban landscape, which has historically been designed with vehicles in mind.
Since 2014, the city has been studying off-street parking areas by counting the number of occupied and empty spots during peak times. The most recent data includes observations of more than 16,000 parking spaces at 50 sites across the city, according to a city staff memo.
At retail locations, nearly half of the parking spots go unused during peak times on average. Similarly, more than half of the spaces at office locations remain empty on average. The number of unused parking spots increased notably after the Covid-19 pandemic, as more people began working from home.
In residential areas, about 70% of parking is used on average. However, in mixed-use areas, only about half of the spaces are utilized. These percentages have remained largely unchanged over the past decade, according to the research presented in the memo.
This overabundance of parking is driving up housing costs, increasing the city’s temperature and making streets more dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians by encouraging more cars on the road, according to transportation reform advocates.
Yet almost everywhere in Boulder, developers are still required under city code to provide at least one off-street parking spot per housing unit. In commercial areas, parking minimums are based on the building’s square footage.
“It’s clear from the data that we’re requiring more parking than is needed or used,” Lisa Houde, a principal city planner, told the Boulder City Council during an Aug. 8 meeting.
City planners told the Boulder City Council that they want to explore eliminating parking minimums citywide. Such a change would go beyond a 2024 Colorado law that prohibits cities including Boulder from enacting or enforcing parking minimums near bus and train stops. According to city officials, the state law, which takes effect in June 2025, would impact about 81% of the parcels in the city.
Councilmembers agreed that the city should consider eliminating parking minimums. The council is expected to vote on a parking reform ordinance in the first half of next year. If passed, Boulder would join cities like Austin, Minneapolis and San Francisco in eliminating parking requirements. Longmont also recently repealed its parking minimums.
One challenge, however, is that many people still rely on vehicles for transportation. A 2023 survey found that about 35% of trips made by Boulder residents were in single-occupant vehicles. This reliance is partly due to limited bus services and relatively dangerous streets for traveling by bike, foot or other means.
In addition to rolling back parking requirements, city officials are considering creating a “transportation demand management” ordinance. Such a policy would likely require developers to build infrastructure and offer incentives to encourage non-vehicle transportation. These could include perks like free bus passes, bike parking and storage and designated rideshare pickup locations.
Councilmember Ryan Schuchard said during a council meeting this month that the city should begin creating a demand management strategy by setting a target for how it wants people to travel around the city.
“Demand management is a tool that allows us to decouple people from cars,” Schuchard said during the meeting. He added, “Let’s use this opportunity to actually shift towards a less car-centric direction.”
Reducing parking will not prevent people from owning cars, and it will not cause less cars to be driven. A car that is parked, is not being driven. Duh. What Boulder really needs are a lot less planners, especially “transportation” planners. If Boulder had an effective mass transit system, it might be different, but it doesn’t. Maybe the city could work on that.
100% on working on a superb mass transit solution! In the mean time, let’s not maintain acres of asphalt in one of the most beautiful regions in the country.
Huge parking lots get in the way of effective transit and reducing parking options 100% is effective at reducing driving. Many studies put reducing parking as the most effective method of encouraging non-auto travel.
Glad to hear at least one council member advocating for decoupling. Rolling back parking requirements is a concession / gift to developers that is greater than the onus of bike parking and designated ride-share pick up (which is still a car btw). This just continues the same conflict/discussion that’s been going for decades and frankly, it’s small ball. Boulder is way past ripe for greater measures. Let’s move to GREATLY reduce the cars in the city center and number of cars running about, whether from new development or not. What could work: Satellite lots with a huge increase in electric intra-city bus loops (with accurate apps showing time to arrival of next bus) so that no one needs to walk more than 1/4 mile to a line, better protected bike lanes and separate bike signals. While we’re at it, how about requirements for surface lots to be semi-permeable (for the above noted urban heat issue, not to mention flood mitigation during heavy rain). Great cities all over the world are waaaay ahead of us on this.
More housing AND/OR more affordable housing? If it’s more housing only, that option sacrifices diversity. More than it already does. It’s a matter of stopping a bad thing from continuing rather than improving matters overall.
Not building any housing at all is the most effective method of destroying diversity … again and again the neighborhoods that don’t build concentrate either rich or poor households. The neighborhoods that build the most (of any kind of housing) end up being the most diverse.
Appreciate the coverage of this issue. Eliminating the square footage for parking cars provides more space for housing people, which is what we need. Boulder Housing Network is covering this issue today, as well as the BRL. See http://eepurl.com/iXfHZI
Councilmember Ryan Schuchard neglects to mention that “transportation demand management” ordinances cost the developer money and adds to the cost of every new housing unit. This is one reason why building housing in Boulder is so expensive. Instead of tacking on new ordinances to be addressed by each new development, how about a comprehensive city-wide transportation plan?
Good point that should be obvious, so I appreciate the insight. Cost/benefit would be considered in the BVCTP, but should be enforceable, unlike it is with the BVCP.
Reducing or eliminating parking minimums need to be leveraged against growth subsidies.
Is there no concern/consideration for seniors who don’t bike & who aren’t able to walk long distances? They need to drive & park. Has Boulder become a town that no longer cares about it’s seniors? Whenever we go out to places in Boulder, we have a hard time finding a place to park and forego a lot of event because of this. Please don’t take away parking.
Maybe Boulder can set up an realtime on-demand free van service to transport to and from bustops to the destination. That’s what we have now. It’s called cars.
And at the same time, do you think those Amazon retail delivery and local restaurant delivery services are cheap? Not in congestion! What about using busses for those?
I couldn’t agree more that the push to eliminate cars really hurts those who simply can’t travel by foot. For health reasons, I’ve spent 14 months of the past two years unable to walk more than a few hundred feet (and 8 of those unable to walk at all!). Saying that everyone should travel by bike sounds great until you realize that not everyone has the capability to ride a bike. (And taking a knee scooter on public transportation sounds like a good way to make your injury worse.)
Building a city entirely around cars also prevents people who are unable to drive from getting around. Reducing the auto trips of people who don’t need to drive also frees up parking space for those who do.
This is great! Would be excited to see less parking and more housing/micro-mobility options.
There’s little to no concern for seniors or renters in this town. It’s all about what financially best suits the developers. There are serious consequences to this that continues to go ignored, soon to be the final nail in the coffin of what is left of Boulder.
Nithin, all you’re gonna see from that is more congestion from Uber and delivery. Cars happen, transport of goods happen, one way or another. Life does not exist on alternate modes, and I say that when I only drive 5 times a year. The rest is on my bike. I don’t use the plane either.
If Boulder intends to eliminate parking minimums they should take a page from Chautauqua and create an accessible and readily available free mass transit service to compensate for the elimination of these spots. RTD currently does not provide enough service in Boulder to cover the needs of the car less so the city must do so directly.
I prefer to walk or bicycle when I can, but bad weather is another of the primary reasons most people choose auto travel. Amazingly, it’s one that the city and the “transportation reform advocates” always omit from their surveys and analyses. Remember that it can snow here at any time 9 months of the year, even when the day starts out sunny. Maybe BRL could ask why they keep omitting bad weather from their analyses?
Some of us are serious about trying to think about making bicycling a better year round option. I’m on my condominium board, and a number of years ago we looked into adding covered bike parking. People are a lot less likely to jump on a wet bike covered in snow, even for a short trip.
We were planning to repurpose one auto parking spot, but the city’s planning and building regulations made it impossible to do this. To build a 10’x12′ covered “bike”-port, we would have had to go through a full site review process, with no guarantee of success, just to build something very, very simple. Eliminating parking minimums will do little to do nothing without also changing building regulations to allow people to make bicycling easier in the winter months.
Finally, you also have to encourage/require covered bicycle parking at destinations, like shopping centers and supermarkets. Without reforms to deal with our winter weather, like these, Mayor Brockett, Ryan Schuchard and the other anti-car transportation advocates are just playing into the hands of greedy developers by eliminating parking minimums. They’ll just shoehorn in more luxury units without a safe and dry place to park a bicycle.
Why do the city leaders think THEIR vision of transportation is better than others, such that they should impose it on us?
While some areas of Boulder have unused parking spaces others do not. Eliminating parking requirements throughout the city is not wise. I live in the South Whittier neighborhood and every developer for the last 20 years has requested and received a parking reduction. Most were 40 to 60%. This has resulted in the neighborhood absorbing all of the overflow. The neighborhood is old so most places rely, in part, for “on street” parking. The days of parking on the same street that one lives are gradually coming to an end. Policies do have an impact.
One of my other concerns for “decoupling people from their cars” is just who are we talking about. The more affluent population have private parking, they are not being asked to give up their cars, the less affluent park on the street. People need cars to get to their jobs. Much of the service industry rely on cars for their business. Cars are a problem, but solving the problem by making life difficult for the low-income population is not the solution.