Category Archives: Parking

Carrboro to Charge for 21% of Downtown Parking Spaces: 79% to Remain Free

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Downtown Carrboro has over 3,600 parking spaces. The Town owns roughly 700 public spaces, and this week the town released plans to begin charging for parking in those public spaces.

The remaining 79% of downtown parking spaces (around 2,900 spaces) are held by private businesses, such as Carr Mill Mall. Nothing about those private parking spaces is changing as part of this plan.

Why is Carrboro planning to charge for parking in public spaces? (Short Version)

Two separate parking studies (in 2017 and 2022) have found that there are many people parking in public lots downtown for 6 or more hours. Some of them then take the J or CW bus to campus and spend no money downtown. In other cases, downtown employees wind up parking in spaces close to their employer, and inadvertently make it harder for customers to reach their business. These long stays in parking spaces reduce traffic for downtown businesses by locking up parking spaces for most of the day.

We’re also a community that has adopted a Comprehensive Plan called Carrboro Connects that has Climate Action as one of its two pillars. Parking pricing is one of the proven incentives to encourage individuals to consider using public transportation, biking, walking, or carpooling to make a trip instead of driving alone, and this helps reduce carbon emissions in our community.

What are the details of the proposal?

The current plan presumes:

  • Charging for parking in all publicly owned spaces downtown except for designated handicapped parking spaces.
  • The first 30 minutes in any space would be free so that pop-in, pop-out visits which still turn over spaces quickly would cost nothing.
  • The standard hourly cost would be $1.50 per hour
  • The maximum parking time allowed would be two hours
  • Signs will be displayed at the entrance and within each designated paid parking lot or series of on-street parking spaces, indicating this is a Paid Parking Lot/Space (as applicable), maximum parking duration, paid parking rate, and payment instructions.
  • Discounts of fifty (50) percent will be provided to low-income Carrboro residents who meet certain criteria
  • Signs will be displayed at the entrance and within each designated paid parking lot or series of on-street parking spaces, indicating this is a Paid Parking Lot/Space (as applicable), maximum parking duration, paid parking rate, and payment instructions.
  • Discounts of fifty (50) percent will be provided to low-income Carrboro residents who meet certain criteria
  • Fines for violations will be $20 for the first violation and $50 for subsequent violations

Registration and/or payment for parking spaces shall be required immediately upon parking via one of the following methods:

  • Mobile App: download and utilize the designated mobile app for the Town of Carrboro paid parking system; or
  • Text Messaging: send a text message to the designated phone number with the unique identifier displayed on the parking space signage; or
  • Phone: call the designated phone number and follow the automated instructions to pay for parking using a credit or debit card.

Will people still be able to come to downtown Carrboro without paying to park?

YES!

  1. Changing the time of a trip to downtown. While not currently listed as part of the proposal, it’s likely that the parking charges will be active for PART BUT NOT ALL OF THE DAY. So if parking charges are in place from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, and you come downtown at 6:01 PM, you can park in any public lot for free.
  2. Parking in one of the private lots downtown that will still be free. Remember, 79% of parking in downtown Carrboro will still be free! If you park in the lot for Carr Mill Mall, for Grey Squirrel/Amante Pizza/Cats Cradle, those spaces will still be free. But be aware that some businesses downtown, particularly Carr Mill, engage in aggressive towing if you park on their lot and go to another business.
  3. Make a short visit! If you need to use a public space to pick up take-out from Spotted Dog, just park for less than 30 minutes, and the visit is free!
  4. If Sundays are free (not clear yet, to be determined by Town Council), park downtown on Sunday!
  5. Choose another transportation mode! The Chapel Hill Transit J Route and CW Route provide all day service to downtown Carrboro, and there is peak hour service on the Chapel Hill Transit F Route and the GoTriangle 405 Route. Biking may also work for those who live within 2 to 3 miles of downtown.

Patrick, you’re a parking nerd. Is there anything you would change about this plan?

Largely, this plan is well-conceived, and the Town deserves credit for establishing an equitable parking charge component for low-income residents. This is what walking the talk on equity looks like.

But I propose two key adjustments to the plan.

Adjustment A: Allow up to Four Hours of Parking With Higher Costs Per Hour

Currently, the planned ordinance has a fee structure that appears to be:

Current Carrboro Parking Charge Plan
0 to 30 MinutesFREE
31 to 60 Minutes$1.50 total
61 to 120 Minutes$3.00 total
More than 120 Minutes Violation & Fine – $20

I propose the following as an alternative:

Alternative Carrboro Parking Charge Plan
0 to 30 MinutesFREE
31 to 60 Minutes$1.50 total
61 to 120 Minutes$3.00 total
121 to 180 Minutes$6.00 total
181 to 240 Minutes$14.00 total
More than 240 Minutes Violation & Fine – $20

In the Alternative table, hour 1 and hour 2 both cost $1.50 for each hour. So if you stay under two hours, you pay $3.00. But if you stay longer, your impact to downtown businesses by not turning over the space increases, and so your cost for hour 3 is $3.00 just for that hour. And if you stay for hour 4, that one hour costs another $8.00, bringing the total cost for 181 to 240 minutes of parking to $14.00.

This gives people more flexibility in how they spend time downtown without triggering a $20 ticket quickly, but uses pricing to discourage park and ride to campus and employee parking in public spaces.

Adjustment B: Use The Alternate Pricing for Lots in the Core of Downtown, But Discount the Price of Less Convenient “Tier 2” Lots

Several lots that are little further away from the core of downtown may be able to be priced at a lower rate to reflect that they are a longer walk and less convenient from most downtown activities. This “Tier 2” of lots could include:

  • Town Hall Lots
  • Laurel Ave Lots
  • Community Worx Lot
  • Weaver St Lot
  • Fitch Warehouse Lot

In Tier 2 lots, parking would cost 2/3rds of what it costs in CORE lots. ($1.00 per hour for the first two hours, and the same discount in hours 3 and 4 in the Alternative Charge Plan above)

The map below shows the proposed CORE lots in green dots and the proposed TIER 2 lots in yellow.

I think there are some other questions about the Tier 2 lots that include – do we even need to charge in them on Saturdays? Other than the Farmers Market hours, those lots are very lightly used on weekends except during special events. Do we charge for Town Hall lots like they are Core lots during the Farmers’ Market, then not charge afterwards?

There’s always a balance between tuning parking policy as closely as possible to demand at various times of day, and having a system that is easy to understand. So maybe the CORE lots charge Monday through Saturday and the Tier 2 lots charge Monday through Friday. Fortunately we have a Town Council to help us work through these questions!

Is there anything else we need to be thinking about?

Yes. Employee access to downtown, in which parking is one of several strategies to reduce the chance that employees are negatively affected financially by the changes. Here are a few things worth thinking about:

  • Raleigh has subsidized e-bike purchases for residents. Can we do the same for downtown employees earning less than $20 per hour?
  • GoTriangle is returning fares to the 405 in July 2024. Can the town use some of the parking revenue to partially subsidize monthly GoTriangle passes for downtown employees?
  • South Green is currently not fully leased out. There is some parking capacity that the Town may be able to lease for town employees who could park there and then either walk up to downtown or take the J bus from the side of the roundabout.
  • It’s also worth considering if employee permits could be made available for downtown properties that have under 50 employees. Larger employers will have greater ability to solve for their employees, so focusing our efforts here could help. At the same time, it’s a balance – we want to make sure that as we issue permits for workers, it does not overwhelm capacity and fill lots. Maybe some of the Tier 2 lots could be prioritized for downtown workers?

Anyway – there’s some thinking to do here.

Why is Carrboro planning to charge for parking in public spaces? (Long, Detailed Version)

1. A downtown business district thrives on ACCESS – people being able to get to the business district to spend money. Some people walk downtown, others bike, others take the bus, and others drive and park.

2. When people who spend little or no money per hour spent downtown occupy access resources (bike racks, seats on buses, parking spaces) in ways that make it HARDER for shoppers who sustain the district financially to access downtown and spend money, it hurts local businesses and downtown vitality.

3. There are two populations of people whose spending per hour parked downtown is very low or zero: downtown employees, and stealth park-and-riders to UNC, who could be students or employees.

4. The largest employer in downtown, Carr Mill, has significant parking capacity to accommodate most or even all of its employees. Carr Mill practices extreme vigilance in preventing its employees from parking in the primary Carr Mill lots adjacent to WSM, Venable, CVS, Harris Teeter, etc. (Seriously, ask the WSM cashiers. Carr Mill has towed WSM employees with 15-20 years of service!)

5. At the same time, Carr Mill practices ZERO vigilance in encouraging its employees to use the lot that is free to them. People being people, having a choice between a free short walk to work and a free longer walk to work, choose the shorter walk from the Armadillo lot, etc. This behavior reduces the availability of an access resource (public parking spaces where you don’t get towed) to shoppers who sustain the business district.

6. While Carr Mill is the biggest issue here due to the number of employees onsite and their mismanagement of their own parking facilities, other downtown employees do the same. I’ve seen Century Center employees park across the street and walk in with brown bag lunches. That’s a town employee taking up a parking space for 8 hours, eating at their desk, and removing 8 hours of parking access in one of the best located lots in town.

7. UNC students and employees who have a choice of paying to park at Chapel Hill Transit lots on the edge of the two towns and taking longer bus rides to campus choose to drive to downtown Carrboro, pay nothing to park, and take a shorter J bus ride to campus, also removing parking spaces from the shoppers who sustain the business district.

8. While making rational choices for themselves, downtown employees and UNC students/staff are imposing costs on downtown businesses by reducing ACCESS for their customers.

9. Charging for public lots over a certain number of minutes will shift Carr Mill employees who work longer shifts to the Carr Mill lot, especially at the Yaggy/Armadillo Grill lot. Would you walk one block further to save $8 to $20 per day? Most anyone would.

10. What about UNC students? Park and ride to campus on the CM bus is still a pretty quick trip, but it’s $2/day or $20/month from the University Lake/Jones Ferry park and ride. But $2/day is much cheaper than $1.50/hour. So yes, people will make that switch. Addressing this stealth park-and-ride to campus behavior is important. I see calls from individuals opposed to parking pricing say that we should just do more to work with downtown businesses. First, the Town has tried, for over a decade, to do this, and not much has changed. But more importantly, as long as public parking is free, downtown Carrboro will remain the cheapest and best park and ride to the UNC Campus.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, on climate – we’re about to enter several days under a deadly HEAT DOME all across the east coast, and we have a forecast for the most active hurricane season ever. I was going to write something here but Elyse Keefe already made the perfect comment on this topic the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chat Facebook group, so read what she has to say:

Take the Town Survey and Share Your Thoughts

In closing, the Town has a survey page where you can provide input here:

https://www.carrboronc.gov/3008/Paid-Public-Parking-Ordinance

Share your views, particularly on things like hours and days of the week when the charge should be in place, and if you think it’s better to have one price everywhere for simplicity, or if having two or more tiers to give people who are willing to walk further lower parking costs is more valuable.

Damon Seils’ Consequential Council Model Gets Results – and Wins Big at the Polls             

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We are the people we’ve been waiting for.

When I wrote my “Fundamentals of Carrboro” blog post, I shared this Barack Obama-ism to point out how most of the things we want to see happen in Carrboro are under the control of the Town Council, and that while there are state and federal programs and resources that can be leveraged, none of them are any use to us if we don’t take votes at the local government level, and then follow up with more action after key votes.

As Damon Seils’ service as Mayor comes to a close, I believe that he has understood this better than anyone in Town, and that we will look back on his final term and consider our current elected board to be “the Consequential Council.”

I had a conversation with Damon when he was transitioning from Town Councilor to Mayor and he told me something like this: “we spend a lot of time listening to and receiving reports. That’s useful, but our time as a group is valuable, and I want us to use more of that time to make decisions that move the town forward.”

Key Votes of the Consequential Council

The 2021 to 2023 Town Council is a testament to the decision-oriented governing style he envisioned, and the results include:

  • The vote to approve the final plan and funding to construct the 203 Project, successfully completing a 34-year old quest to build a library in Carrboro
  • The votes to review key drafts and ultimately adopt the final Carrboro Connects Comprehensive Plan, the town’s first ever holistic policy document for the Town’s future
  • The vote to adopt a strategy to build affordable housing on Town-owned land
  • The votes to re-open public engagement on the long-stalled Bolin Creek Greenway alignment and approve the Creekside alignment as the path to take into engineering design and construction
  • The votes to bring forth the first Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) amendments to eliminate residential parking requirements and adjust Planned Unit Development (PUD) regulations

Any two of these votes would be major decisions in a single council term, but on top of these, the Town Council also managed to process and reach resolution a community discussion about the future of the Fidelity Street cemetery.

Perhaps most importantly, Mayor Seils’ governing approach demonstrated that the Town Council could make decisions with transparent processes in four months or less for multiple policy actions that overlapped, with the Greenway and parking policy actions being the most recent example.

A Referendum Election on Consequential Election and Swift, Timely Governing

As the fall election season began, three candidates emerged that are aligned with Mayor Seils’ decision-oriented governing approach and policy agenda, including one candidate and incumbent Town Councilor who both had significant, direct involvement in the Carrboro Connects plan. All three candidates were clear and unequivocal supports of the Town’s affordable housing strategy, the completion of the greenway, and the use of the Carrboro Connects plan to update our land use rules.

Two other candidates emerged who expressed concerns about stormwater and skepticism of or outright opposition to the votes and policy agenda described above.

Last night’s election was a clarion call for continuing the success of the Consequential Council, with the Carrboro Better Together candidates receiving roughly 80% of the votes in the election. Mayor-Elect Barbara Foushee, who has been a strong supporter of the initiatives described above, ran unopposed and received 97% support from Town residents.

The Opportunity for More Consequential Councils

With these results, Mayor-Elect Barbara Foushee and the incoming 2023 – 2025 Council should be feel a strong wind at their backs to continue the policy agenda that the 2021 – 2023 Council has developed and supported, and even more importantly, to feel confident that they can move forward with the speed that that the current council has proven can work in town.

If our new council is successful, we will be able to remember the 2021 – 2023 Town Council as the FIRST of MANY Consequential Councils. May we be so fortunate.

One More Consequential Opportunity: Taking Administrative Action On BCG That Reflects Broad Consensus

As the current council completes its last few meetings in November, there is one more opportunity to do something small but meaningful that can act as the cherry on top of the big ice cream sundae of their accomplishments.

Now that the Town Council has adopted the Creekside alignment for the Bolin Creek Greenway, there is no reason to wait to update regional plans to reflect this. The DCHC-MPO’s long-range Metropolitan Transportation Plan currently omits the Bolin Creek Greenway due to the gag order on discussing the project that persisted in recent years.

The DCHC-MPO Metropolitan Transportation Plan instead contains one of the alternative alignments that we now know only reached the plan because our engagement processes prior to Carrboro Connects privileged the opinions of wealthy, mostly older white homeowners over everyone else. Getting the BCG into the DCHC-MPO Metropolitan Transportation Plan is crucial because it is the gateway to federal funds that can help us complete the greenway.

The Town Council should instruct Town staff to immediately reach out to DCHC-MPO staff and request that they initiate an Administrative Modification of the MTP to remove the alternative Seawell School Rd alignment and to put the BCG Creekside alignment in the MTP instead.

We have had a 2021 Town Survey, the BCG engagement process, and now an election with pro-greenway and anti-greenway candidates that have all showed 70% to 80% support. There’s no need to have lengthy discussion or additional public engagement to make this change. I hope we can see this as a consent agenda item before December 5th.

Congratulations to Mayor-Elect Foushee, Councilor Posada, Councilor-Elect Fray and Councilor-Elect Merrill. We have high hopes for you and are grateful for your willingness to serve.

Residential Parking Reforms Come to Carrboro

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With two motions yesterday evening, the Carrboro Town Council UNANIMOUSLY adopted the first piece of policy outlined in the Carrboro Connects comprehensive plan, the elimination of parking minimums for residential land uses, and the conversion of those minimum parking requirements to maximum parking requirements (PDF Link to updated ordinance).

What’s Great About This Policy Change

There are several positives here worth celebrating.

Most substantively in Carrboro, these arbitrary parking requirements deter potential housing projects in Town, and force developers to over-provide parking that they may not consider necessary simply to meet the ordinance code. When developers over-provide parking, they have less financial capacity in their projects to address more important public policy goals like including some percentage of affordable housing in a project. Carrboro has seen very little new multifamily housing in the past five years, and rents for a 2-bedroom apartment have soared by nearly $400 per months since January of 2020. (source:rentometer.com)

Removing residential parking requirements supports building denser on the same piece of land, which can create more small-size units that are more likely to be affordable to a wide range of individuals. Projects with higher Floor-to-Area Ratios (FAR) consume less land than lower-density housing on the edge of town, and house more individuals and families per acre, reducing each household’s carbon footprint, and building a market for locally-owned businesses.

Finally, Dr. Donald Shoup and others have documented that parking requirements are little more than pseudoscience, with most communities drawing on old, poorly executed studies in suburban Florida, in an environment very different from present-day Carrboro.

How Different Parking Reforms Represent Different Levels of Climate Action

Carrboro’s action last night represents a strong step forward past Climate neutrality to positive Climate Action by introducing parking maximums, which encourage developers to think about how to deliver projects with as little parking as needed while still being financially feasible. Both Shelton Station and the recent 203 N Greensboro Street project had developers asking to provide LESS parking than the presumptive standard. In their discussion, the Town Council and staff could not recall the last time a developer asked to provide MORE parking than the minimum in town. The table below helps delineate how much specific parking reforms advance Climate Action and Climate Change mitigation, and also how flexibility the approach affords developers.

Which Additional Reforms Are Still Needed?

While Carrboro did a great job with its residential parking reforms last night, the Council discussion made it clear that to meet its goals of Climate Action and Racial Equity, the Town Council will also need to reform commercial parking requirements as well.

The Town Staff were initially instructed to address residential text amendments only, and commercial text amendments could be brought to Council in early 2024.

Key Lesson Learned: We Can Make Policy Choices In a Four Month Timeframe

The Carrboro Connects plan was adopted on June 7th, 2021, and as of June 7th, 2022, no new policies had been adopted. However, this parking item first reached the Council table on May 16th, 2023, returned to Council on June 27th, 2023, and was approved on October 23rd. This a five month period from first policy draft to final approved policy. However, considering that the Town of Carrboro does not typically meet in July and August, one could say that this was closer to four-month process in terms of active Council meetings.

In that timeframe, the Town was able to share information on the proposed change at several public events, and circulate the proposal to each of the town advisory boards. This should be the working schedule for policy changes going forward – four months from first policy draft to a final vote.

The Carrboro Town Council Should Take a Victory Lap

In closing, I want to commend the full council: Mayor Damon Seils and Councilors Susan Romaine, Eliazar Posada, Randee Haven-O’Donnell, Barbara Foushee, Danny Nowell, and Sammy Slade for embracing this opportunity to act, and to plan for continued conversations about commercial parking requirements in January.

This is the leadership on housing, racial equity, and climate we have been waiting for, and it is is marvelous to see it in action.

A Proposed Text Amendment To Convert Parking Minimums to Parking Maximums in Carrboro

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Back on May 16th, at long last, the Carrboro Town Council held a discussion about whether to remove parking requirements in Carrboro. As the Town Council finished its discussion, the schedule for next steps included bringing a revised draft of a parking proposal to the Town Council on June 20th. This did not happen; there were no parking policy items on the June 20th agenda.

In an effort to move the community discussion forward at a faster rate, I and another community member with professional urban planning expertise made an attempt at drafting alternative text that would convert parking minimums to parking maximums in Carrboro.

This is a DRAFT and is surely imperfect. However, it does attempt to:

  • Convert all minimums in the parking table to maximums, for all uses in Carrboro. For all but two uses, we did not change any quantity of parking listed in the table. The two where it was hard to write a maximum without expressing a number have the comment “qualitative adjustment”
    • Use a 1/2-mile buffer around the Chapel Hill Transit Short Range Plan services that operate five days per week as the “Transit Parking Area” where the change can be activated
    • Leave space for zoning district-driven triggers for parking maximums. However, we left this section of the code empty, as it appears commercial parking changes may be handled through a different process.
    • Address the possibility of car-share services such as Zipcar being allocated spaces outside of the standard parking maximums.

My anonymous colleague and I hope these are useful to the Town.

WORD VERSION: Carrboro_Parking_Maximum_Text_Draft-6-22-2023-finalDownload

PDF Version: Carrboro Parking Maximum Text Draft-6-22-2023

Carrboro_Parking_Maximum_Text_Draft-6-22-2023-finalDownload

Carrboro Town Council Should Vote on Parking Reform This Week (May 16th)

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On Tuesday, May 16th, the Town Council will discuss the potential of removing parking requirements in town for the first time.

The Short Story: All of the information the Town Council needs to make a decision about parking requirements is already in the public domain, and there is no additional research that can be undertaken to further illuminate the policy question. To take an affirmative, meaningful step towards the goals of Climate Action and Racial Equity that uphold the Carrboro Connects plan, THE TOWN COUNCIL SHOULD VOTE ON MAY 16TH TO CONVERT ALL MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMENTS TO MAXIMUM PARKING ALLOWANCES IN THE FOLLOWING LOCATIONS:

  • Downtown Carrboro zoning districts
  • All non-residential parcels within ½ of mile of All-Day (J, CW, CM) and Express (JFX, 405) bus routes

AND ELIMINATE ALL MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMENTS IN THE REMAINDER OF THE TOWN, WHILE REFRAINING FROM ADDING PARKING MAXIMUMS ON RESIDENTIAL-ONLY PARCELS.

Any alternative policy that requires developer negotiation with staff or council to meet a parking number is a version of the failed status quo and should be considered dead on arrival at the Council table.

The Bigger Picture: The town staff materials discussing the proposed parking policy change in the May 16th agenda packet focus on highly improbable outcomes and do not mention climate change, or equity risks inherent in the status quo.

Before we get into the details, I want to make two key points. The first:

THE ELIMINATION OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMENTS DOES NOT REQUIRE THAT NEW DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS HAVE ZERO PARKING SPACES.

201 N Greensboro street recently got a permit that did not use the town’s minimum parking requirements – they simply proposed a number that made more in line with the actual use they anticipate.  The removal of parking requirements allows developers to bring in proposals with a number of parking spaces they think makes sense while meeting other project goals like street trees, affordable housing, and high quality design. It saves time and helps get us good projects faster.

The second key point:

THE PRIMARY GOAL OF ELIMINATING PARKING REQUIREMENTS IS TO MAKE GOOD DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS (INCLUDING THOSE WITH AFFORDABLE HOUSING COMPONENTS) CEASE TO BE FINANCIALLY INFEASIBLE DUE TO AN ARBITRARY NUMBER OF PARKING SPACES IN THE TOWN CODE THAT DRIVES UP CONSTRUCTION COSTS. REMOVING MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMENTS STILL ALLOWS ANY DEVELOPER TO PROPOSE AS MUCH PARKING AS THEY WOULD LIKE.

The Details:

The Town Staff materials on the policy have several shortcomings we need to unpack to have a healthy community conversation about this. If you read the Staff Materials, you might have the following take-aways:

  • That we know nothing about how Carrboro residents travel today that could help us think about whether eliminating parking minimums has risks to the town.
  • That altering policy on parking requirements requires a certain level of transit service or it can’t be done.
  • That removing parking requirements raises the risk of a flood of automobiles into Carrboro city streets for on-street parking that will be so substantial that it will block fire trucks and first responders to reach emergencies, and these are potential outcomes even along semi-rural Rogers Rd.
  • That parking requirements have nothing to do with climate change, which is not mentioned in the document.
  • That it is not possible for Town Council will take an action any sooner than fall 2023.
  • Finally, and perhaps most importantly – it presumes that the status quo is less risky and more equitable than the potential policy change. Unrealistic risks that have not happened in other communities that have reformed parking are imagined in the staff memo, and the force that parking requirements apply to make mixed-use and mixed income housing projects financially infeasible – is only obliquely referenced.

The remainder of this blog post addresses each of these shortcomings in the staff materials.

ANALYSIS USING CARRBORO TRANSPORTATION COMMUTING BEHAVIOR DATA

If we care about slowing climate change, we must work to actively reduce the auto-dependency of our communities. However, the staff memo does the opposite, assumes a fully auto-dependent population, and assumes that for each new development, that every developer will underestimate the needs of their building, and that they will not provide enough spaces and produce spillover effects on town streets. But does every Carrboro resident drive everywhere? No. We have lots of data on this.

Nearly Half of Carrboro Commuters Carpool, Take the Bus, Bike, Walk or Telecommute

Here are the 5-Year Average Estimates for Carrboro commuting modes from the American Community Survey, the best publicly available data, for the years 2017-2021:

Drove AloneCarpoolTransitBike / Walk / TelecommuteTotal
55.3%7.9%10.9% 25.8%100.0%
Method of commuting to work, Carrboro American Community Survey, 2017-2021

Prior to the pandemic, Carrboro was already one of the towns with the highest percentage of residents who DON’T drive alone to work in the Southeast. The work-from-home revolution has significantly contributed to the expansion of the Bike/Walk/Telecommute number above, and transit use in Carrboro remains at a level equal to or above that of suburbs of major US cities with mature rail systems.

What does this mean for parking use? It means being a two-worker, one car household in Carrboro is much easier than in other communities. It means that when I go downtown on good weather days, I’m much more likely to bike than drive. Our household of three has gone from being a two-car family to a one-car family for the past 18 months, and living in Carrboro makes it possible because we have transportation choices. As we permit new buildings, the new residents will have the same opportunities.

Carrboro literally welcomes new residents and helps them to drive less!

We don’t just see this in commuting data, though. We also see it in traffic counts.

TRAFFIC COUNTS HAVE FALLEN SIGNIFICANTLY IN CARRBORO OVER THE PAST TWENTY YEARS

What? Am I kidding? No. You can go fact-check me at the NCDOT interactive traffic count website if you want to.

Here are some daily traffic counts for key locations in town by year:

West Main Street in Front of Town Hall (total of all vehicles over 24 hours)

2003: 5,200 cars
2009: 4,500 cars
2017: 4,100 cars
2021: 3,100 cars

North Greensboro Street in front of Fitch Lumber

2003: 16,000 cars
2009: 13,000 cars
2017: 14,000 cars
2021:  7,800 cars

East Main Street by China Gourmet Kingdom

2003: 21,000 cars
2009: 18,000 cars
2017: 15,000 cars
2021: 12,000 cars

N Greensboro St West of Blue Ridge Rd (Close to MLK Jr Park)

2003: no data
2009: 6,200 cars
2017: 5,800 cars
2021: 3,900 cars

Again, here’s the link, go see for yourself.

The only place in town you see counts rising is on NC 54, because that is predominantly pass-through traffic in our growing region. Within town, our residents are driving less and biking, walking, and working from home more.

The final point I want to make here is that between 2000 and 2020, Carrboro also grew from 16,782 residents to 21,295! The town added almost 5,000 new residents and CAR TRAFFIC FELL ALL OVER TOWN.

WHY IS THIS DATA RELEVANT?

What we see in our commute data tells us that if we pick 20 Carrboro residents at random, 12 of them will drive to work alone, two of them will carpool, another two will ride the bus, and four will bike, walk or work from home.

But our ordinance in the staff memo (Attachment B, sections 1.100 through 1.300 of the Part I table) basically assigns one parking space per bedroom, or two parking spaces per unit. This is functionally requiring 20 parking spaces for the 20 random individuals above. We’re requiring too much, and making housing more expensive by requiring the unneeded parking.

THE LEVEL OF TRANSIT SERVICE IS LARGELY IRRELEVANT TO REMOVING PARKING REQUIREMENTS

If finding the “right” level of transit service to safely eliminate parking requirements was critical, we would see parking crises in towns with less bus service than Carrboro that have taken this action. However, towns in NC that have eliminated parking minimums include:

  • Graham (83% Drive Alone in 2017-2021 ACS)
  • Mebane  (85% Drove Alone)
  • Albemarle (82% Drove Alone)
  • Mooresville (84% Drove Alone)
  • Gastonia (84% Drove Alone)

All of these places have significantly less transit service than Carrboro, and Graham and Mebane grow much faster than Carrboro does due to our restrictive zoning. Even during the bus operator shortage, the J bus still operates 15-minute service on Main Street and 20-minute frequency on the CW in the morning. The CM and JFX supplement with rush hour frequencies of 15 to 25 minutes, and GoTriangle 405 connects us to Durham every 30 minutes. These are excellent transit frequencies at peak times in any southeastern US city. Only the F bus, which only runs four daily roundtrips at this point, has a qualitatively different and noticeably low level of service. It is reasonable therefore to exclude the F but otherwise support parking policy reforms around the remaining All-Day (J,CM, CW) and Express (JFX,405) services.

If the towns above aren’t having parking nightmares with less transit and 30% more drive-alone commuters, why are we contemplating such outcomes in Carrboro? Surely if the votes to reform parking in these five other communities had created significant problems, we’d be able to find news of it. That doesn’t seem to be the case. From a qualitative point of view, if you haven’t been to downtown Graham recently, it’s jumping. Old buildings are full of new businesses and it’s an increasingly lively and pleasant place, and the elimination of parking requirements has been a key ingredient in activating old buildings with new businesses.

If these small towns with fewer transportation choices and greater auto-dependency can make these parking change without crisis, Carrboro, with its significantly larger transit, bike, and telecommuting mode shares, can likely do so without any noticeable impact on our streets, given our reduced traffic counts in recent years.

CLIMATE ACTION IS A PILLAR OF THE CARRBORO CONNECTS PLAN

It’s frustrating to see a document from the Town related to Carrboro Connects that is silent on climate change.

Councilor Slade has made repeated valiant efforts to bring climate action to the Council Table, and I believe that the Council is earnestly interested in taking action. Transportation is the largest source of GHG emissions in Orange County, and therefore is the biggest lever to push to move the needle locally to reduce GHG emissions. Requiring too much parking is fundamentally encouraging further auto use when we need to reduce it. Eliminating parking requirements doesn’t even discourage auto use, it merely stops over-promoting it. Developers can still choose to provide parking at a level that is out of touch with climate imperatives. Parking maximums, however, with their limits on ultimate parking supply, affirmatively discourage auto use, which is why I recommend it as the preferred policy at the beginning of this post.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Orange County by Sector

THE USE OF THE RACIAL EQUITY POCKET QUESTIONS IS INCOMPLETE

As a regular reader of Town Council packets, I observe that the Racial Equity Pocket Questions are primarily posed to consider the racial equity benefits and impacts of a proposed policy change, but not the racial equity dimensions of the status quo policy situation.

This is a problem as it assumes that the current state of affairs is inherently more equitable, even though the Carrboro Connects plan identifies many inequities in town that demand action more than additional study. The Racial Equity Pocket Questions are one of the best new practices in local governance, but they need to examine the status quo as vigorously as any proposed policy change for the best outcomes.

SOME OF THE ANALYSIS IS AT ODDS WITH CURRENT LOCAL TRENDS AND BEST PRACTICES IN TRANSPORTATION PLANNING

While several of the answers in the Racial Equity Pocket Questions in the staff memo are well-considered, there is also a good deal of unrealistic speculation that is at odds with most transportation planning best practices and what we know about relative life safety risks in our community. For example, the memo states:

 “Unintended consequences include the congestion of small streets that are unequipped for street parking (as residents who live or move into the area still have cars). Congested streets could make it difficult for emergency services to access residences, could make the streets more dangerous for walkers and cyclists…”

First – development in Carrboro is so slow and so difficult due to our development ordinances, that it is not going to be possible to develop quickly enough in most of the town for this to become a problem. Removing parking minimums is usually a necessary, but not sufficient step to unlocking new economic development opportunities, mixed-use buildings that drive tax revenue for equity goals, and new affordable housing concepts. Unfortunately, the town’s development ordinances have many other hurdles embedded in them that will also need to be overcome. But this situation also means it will be impossible for a parking problem to overtake the town with any speed, especially in residential neighborhoods.

Second, this paragraph is embedded with the assumption that ever more car use is inevitable, even as noted above, car traffic on many Carrboro streets has fallen by 50% over 20 years!

Regarding congestion, the Town of Chapel Hill just added parking protected bike lanes to Franklin Street, and car speeds are slower and people walking and on bike report feeling much safer even though motorists might consider the street more congested. Many Vision Zero strategies that municipalities are using to reduce traffic deaths and life-altering injuries intentionally deploy congestion as a tool to slow automobile speeds.

From an overall life safety perspective, many more residents in Carrboro are injured each year by traffic violence than by fires in homes or businesses. Making streets fast for first responders mostly makes them fast for all other drivers, which puts everyone in town at greater risk every day, even if it gets a fire truck to a house a few seconds earlier on a much less frequent basis.

A second excerpt states: “Spatial analysis…—indicates most of the parcels in Carrboro’s two qualified census tracts (QCTs) as well as historically Black neighborhoods near Rogers Road and Alabama Avenue would be impacted by changes identified in this project.”

Again, this statement seems to be embedded with the notion that removing parking requirements will lead developers simply not to provide parking, leading to congest the sides of streets like Rogers Rd with parking on the shoulder of the street. Whether they are private developers or mission-driven ones such as a church, both have self-interested incentives not to do this. Private developers have profit at risk, and want to meet consumer preferences. In places that have a semi-rural built environment, such as Rogers Rd, the expectation will very much be for off-street parking, and developers will likely cater to that expectation to sell or rent their homes. Similarly, if a church or other mission-driven organization like Habitat for Humanity proposes a development, they will likely propose parking locations that work for their stakeholders, not those that straddle the road right-of-way. This is a significant amount of discussion for a risk that is unlikely to materialize.

WHAT’S THE MOST PRO-CLIMATE ACTION AND PRO-RACIAL EQUITY POSITION POSSIBLE?

On climate, sustaining minimum parking requirements is 100% in conflict with all climate goals, and is Anti-Climate Action. This consensus spans all kinds of publications, from Bloomberg to Mother Jones, and international transit advocacy organizations:

Climate Action’s Next Frontier is Parking Reform – Bloomberg

Why US Cities Are Falling Out of Love With the Parking Lot
To Tackle Climate Change, Cities Need to Rethink Parking

Maintaining minimum parking requirements is the bad-for-the-climate status quo that Carrboro must move on from on Tuesday night.

As mentioned at the top of the post, eliminating parking requirements still allows a developer to propose as many parking spaces as they would like for a project, even if that number of spaces encourages auto dependency. So eliminating parking requirements is progress from a bad status quo but is still only climate-neutral.

With required parking maximums that cannot be exceeded, the Town is explicitly directing developers to take positive Climate Action to bring forth concepts that double down on Carrboro’s strong mode share performance for biking, walking and transit, and to de-emphasize car use as much as feasible while still bringing new jobs and economic development to Carrboro.

Relative alignment of Parking Requirement approaches with Climate Change Mitigation Action

Regarding racial equity, BIPOC homeowners, particularly black residents, have been negatively impacted by systemic racism that discouraged bank lending and wealth-building through homeownership in minority communities over many decades. While adopting maximum parking requirements is a stronger climate policy than simply eliminating minimum parking requirements, applying maximum parking requirements only to commercial properties in Downtown Carrboro and within ½-mile of all-day and express bus services allows commercial landowners to lead on parking supply innovation while ensuring that BIPOC homeowners (and all homeowners) have the freedom to build as much or as little parking on their land as suits their needs. Taking the climate neutral approach of Eliminating Parking Requirements on residential-only land in Town is therefore positive movement on climate while also being a pro-Racial Equity position that does not add regulatory burdens to homeowners, including BIPOC homeowners.

IN CLOSING: CARRBORO CONNECTS CAN BE A COMPREHENSIVE PLAN OR A COMPREHENSIVE WISH

Most of the data in this blog post is old. We know a lot. A plan is something you do and we have enough information to give us the wisdom to act.

Adding density to land in town on transit routes in small units offers one of our best chances to expand the stock of small multifamily homes that will have some legally binding affordable units, and others that will be attainable to 1 and 2 person households near the median income. But our parking requirements are probably the #1 barrier to making this happen.

So the land use reform vs affordability debate is on the table again Tuesday night, as it has been at every Town Council meeting since the Carrboro Connects plan was adopted on June 7th, 2022. The median home price has risen about 5% (~$21,000) since plan adoption. Waiting has consequences.

Carrboro Connects plan is a great document informed by the most inclusive planning process the town has ever done. But without policy action, it’s a comprehensive wish, not a plan.

Let’s take a vote Tuesday evening, shall we?

More Millionaire-Only Housing is the Price of Delaying Zoning Reform in Carrboro

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The Short Take: Carrboro Town Council passed the Carrboro Connects plan over 5 months ago. To date, no significant land use policy changes have come to the Council Table for action from the plan. Meanwhile, sites that could have held more diverse housing options continue to be converted to large homes that only millionaires can afford.

How Neighborhoods Can Support Different Stages of an Individual or a Family’s Life

Our family has lived in Central or West Carrboro for the last 21 years, despite moving several times. One of the things that has made this possible is that as our lives have changed, there have been different types of housing in the neighborhood available to suit our needs. I lived in a small apartment before getting married. DW and I bought a townhouse a few years later. As we became a family of three, we moved to a house.

Age and Size of Housing Stock and Affordability

Living here for twenty years, you can distill the neighborhood down to three kinds of housing choices and price points for each:

  • New and any size – expensive
  • Old and large – expensive
  • Old and small – more affordable

My apartment had one story, 2 small bedrooms, and about 600 square feet. It rented for $600/month in 2002. It was built in 1962, 60 years ago.

The townhouse, about 950 square feet, rented for about $780 in 2006, and was built in 1982. Our house was newer, a little larger, and nearly double the townhouse rent for the mortgage.

Every property in our neighborhood is getting older. But we haven’t built many small units in the neighborhood in a long time. What that means is that if we’re not building more small units today, even if they are new and more expensive now – we have fewer opportunities to have the “old + small = more affordable” units of the future.

A Significant Missed Opportunity on Gary Rd

Earlier this summer, our neighbor Cristobal Palmer published this great piece about how he thought a significant assemblage of land that had gone on the market would be a great place for a neighborhood coffee shop or bodega. His closing statement proved prescient. He said:

“I don’t have the capital or skill set to make my dream happen, but I hope there are folks who share this dream and will be loud about it. If we aren’t loud, developers will do what is fastest or easiest to finance and get approved: more single-family detached homes. Let’s dream bigger.“

Sadly, the most likely (and zoning-encouraged) future unfolded. There is no zoning that allows anything other than large lot single family housing to be easily built here, and the other day I saw this on a walk:

I popped over to Zillow and found Cristobal’s (and my own) fears confirmed.

That’s one household living in 3,150 square feet. Zillow estimates the monthly mortgage payment for the million-dollar house to be roughly $6,600 per month. To meet the standard that your mortgage payment must be no more than 30% of your income, this house is targeted at a household earning $264,000 per year. Only millionaire households will live there.

Go two blocks east up West Poplar Avenue and you’ll find four households living in 3,161 total square feet in a quadplex.

The going rent for 2 bedroom apartments in the area ranges from about $1200 to $1500 per month. At $1500 per month, an individual or couple making $60,000 per year can rent these quadplex homes at a reasonable percentage of their income.

The Quadplex Above: Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing at 80% Area Median Income

The median income for Orange County in the 2016 – 2020 American Community Survey was $74,800. A household earning $60,000 per year is at 80% of the Area Median Income (AMI) and can spend 30% of their income on $1500/month rent. This level of affordability, approximately 80% to 100% of AMI, is the level of income that programs like the Community Home Trust target for buyers in their programs.

What this example shows is that despite all the challenges for housing here, especially for those at 60% AMI and below, which will require public subsidy to address, there is a portion of the below-median income market that may, in the long run, be served by older, smaller units without public subsidies — but only if we build it, and let it get old.

How Long Until the Next Missed Opportunity?

While we wait for policy changes, the real estate market moves along. Someone else will sell a significantly sized parcel, and if the only thing allowable is a large lot single family home that costs $1 million, that’s what we’ll get.

The Carrboro Connects plan can’t wait for years of study to take its next steps. We need two actions from the Council to begin moving as soon as possible. Those actions are:

  1. Eliminate Parking Requirements in Carrboro, period. Not downtown, not a few places, everywhere. I’ve covered the reasons and benefits of doing so here.
  2. We need to update our Single Family Zones to be Single Family + Missing Middle Housing Zones. On this one, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Chapel Hill has already done a significant amount of heavy lifting by drafting this model text to enable Missing Middle Housing. The Town Council should direct the Carrboro Planning staff to bring a draft version of this ordinance to the Council in this calendar year. It shouldn’t take that long to adapt this language for our town.

In taking these two actions, the Town will at least open the door to the possibility that the next building on a parcel like the one on Gary Road will house more people in smaller units, and help us prepare for a more affordable housing future.

So how can we get these things moving quickly?

Carrboro’s Pre-Carrboro Connects Public Input Process for Land Use and Zoning Changes Was Deeply Flawed

For many years, Carrboro planning decisions have been subject to the worst kind of public participation processes – those that privilege wealthy, older, whiter, retired homeowners who have the time to spend 3 hours sitting in a room to speak for 3 minutes at a podium on a weeknight. These engagement methods encourage a “pack the room” strategy that allows every person with an opinion to speak at a podium ALWAYS favors those who are retired and done working, those who work daytime hours, and those who are not responsible for caring for young children in the evening.

Two Better Ways to Take Public Input

The Town of Carrboro would do better to combine public engagement approaches from Chapel Hill and Durham to address and accelerate the timeline to vote on policy changes. For some of Chapel Hill’s recent initiatives, the town used its Public Input website to not only capture opinions, but also to get the demographic characteristics of those participating. Carrboro should use these techniques to gather online data from people who cannot attend public meetings, and should report the results in meetings where decisions are under consideration at Town Council.

In Durham, some council decisions allow for no more than five speakers to speak in favor AND no more than five speakers to speak against any policy change. Each speaker is given two minutes. Twenty minutes of verbal public testimony is combined with data from community surveys and larger, more intentionally inclusive initiatives like the Carrboro Connects process. Indeed, the Carrboro Connects plan recently won the prestigious Marvin Collins Planning Award – one of the highest honors a public plan can receive in North Carolina. The Daily Tar Heel reported in September:

Part of the criteria of the Marvin Collins Awards includes looking for transferability and applicability to other communities, as well as originality, Bynum Walter, a co-chair of the APA-NC awards committee, said. Carrboro Connects was particularly effective in its community outreach efforts, she added.

“We had an unprecedented amount of community engagement and development,” Carrboro Mayor Damon Seils said regarding the plan. 

The Carrboro Connects team engaged with more than 1,600 individuals. The plan also recognizes over 4,000 touchpoints – instances of engagement within the community. 

There’s no reason Carrboro should not offer a public comment opportunity on these policy initiatives, but it should be reasonably limited like Durham’s process, and recognize the breadth and depth of opinions generated by the much larger, more detailed, Carrboro Connects process, and the 2021 Carrboro Community survey.

Still Waiting for Action Five Months After Plan Adoption

In closing, it’s great that the Carrboro Connects plan reached 1,600 people in town with over 4,000 touchpoints. But if the policy recommendations don’t move forward, that public input is slowly and steadily devalued. The Carrboro Connects plan was adopted on June 7th, 2022 and as of this writing on November 11th, 2022, it is not clear when any policy actions from the plan will be considered on a Town Council agenda.

As of Friday evening, November 11th, there is nothing on the agenda about Carrboro Connects.

I am well aware that policy actions don’t always happen overnight, and that anything that comes to the Council table could take up to 6 to 8 weeks to reach a vote. But it’s important to get these processes started. I hope that we’ll see at least one policy proposal from the Carrboro Connects plan reach the Town Council agenda in January 2023. The two policy proposals above are great places to start. If you agree, consider sending an email to council@carrboronc.gov and letting them know you want to see eliminating parking requirements and expanding housing choices on a council agenda in the near future.

Ending Parking Requirements for Cars in Carrboro is a Zero-Cost Win for Climate: Let’s Do It Now

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It’s an exciting time in Carrboro! There are new bike lanes on Main Street. The construction of the 203 Project, featuring a new branch of the Orange County library, is underway. Perhaps most importantly, we have a new Comprehensive Plan that is focused on addressing racial equity and taking action to fight climate change. Better still, the Implementation chapter of the Carrboro Connects Comprehensive Plan (see below) highlights numerous policy actions that can move us towards our goals.

The Fastest, Easiest Climate Win Available: Ending Parking Requirements for Cars

The great news on the climate action front is that there is one policy action that can be taken immediately with virtually zero negative (or even noticeable!) effects: ending parking requirements for cars.

How Does Ending Parking Requirements Fight Climate Change?

There aren’t enough jobs in town for the residents who live here. So many of them have to commute 20 to 40 miles to work, as I discussed in the Fundamentals of Carrboro post.

Eliminating parking requirements, as described in Implementation Strategy 4.1.c on page 48 of the chapter, can make it easier to build mixed-use and commercial buildings in town, and provide more jobs locally.

4.1 c) Update parking requirements to consider adjustments or removal of minimum requirements for affordable housing, accessible
dwelling units, and mixed-use development to reduce impervious surfaces and make more efficient use of land. – Carrboro Connects

If we can house more jobs in downtown Carrboro, we have the potential to convert climate-intensive car commutes from Carrboro to RTP, Durham, and Raleigh to walk, e-bike or local bus trips on the Chapel Hill Transit F, J, CM, or CW bus, and reduce emissions of Carrboro residents.

Eliminating parking requirements can also help build more small housing units on the same land, making it easier to live in a community that is prioritizing walking and biking, which have no emissions. Removing parking requirements is also addressed in strategy 4.2 a on page 29 of the Implementation Chapter.

4.2 a) Remove minimum vehicular parking requirements for residential development close to transit.* Lower vehicular parking requirements
for all residential uses, including ADUs.

On examination, creating a 1/2-mile buffer around the transit routes in town (a standard distance for a reasonable walk to a bus stop) actually puts MOST of the town in an area that would be eligible for removing parking requirements.

After creating the map, I realize it is also missing the F route, which did not run when this bus route layer was created, so the white boundary should encompass even more of North Carrboro. I’d say we’re talking 75% to 80% of the town is in the end-requirements-near-transit area.

The Easiest Path Is the Best Path: Eliminate All Car Parking Requirements in Carrboro

Given that most of the town falls under the criteria where parking requirements would be eliminated, the best course of action is to make it simple and remove all car parking requirements in Carrboro, period.

It’s also a best practice at this point! In March 2022, Raleigh removed all parking minimums citywide. Dunwoody, GA (population 49,000) did the same in 2019. Graham, North Carolina (population 15,000) has removed parking minimums and applied parking maximums to ALL nonresidential buildings citywide. Albemarle, NC has also eliminated virtually all parking requirements. There’s even a lovely map of all these places and what they’ve done!

What Will Happen When We Eliminate Parking Requirements?

Immediately and for awhile thereafter? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Ending Parking Requirements in Carrboro doesn’t affect any properties as they are currently built in town, and doesn’t affect any currently existing parking spaces. It only ends the practice of requiring a certain number of parking spaces for new development. But over time, with the removal of these requirements, we are likely to see more viable building projects downtown and in our commercial areas become financially viable, allowing us to have more jobs with short commutes in town.

Does This Mean Developers Will Only Build Buildings With No Parking? No.

The 201 N Greensboro project is a great example of what will happen downtown without parking requirements. A developer will bring a project forward, and they will have a financial interest in having some amount of parking that meets the project need. Instead of having to match some arbitrary number in the ordinance, which is not tuned to how many people take the bus or bike in town, they will find a number that works for the project, and assumes (appropriately!) that many people will arrive by bus, bike, and walking.

Finally – How Have Parking Requirements Harmed Carrboro?

Parking requirements increase the cost of housing. From Todd Littman at the Victoria Transport Policy Institute:

“Based on typical affordable housing development costs, one parking space per unit typically increases moderate-priced housing costs approximately 12%, and two parking spaces increases lower-priced housing costs by 25%. Since parking costs increase as a percentage of rent for lower priced housing, and low income households tend to own fewer vehicles, parking minimums are unfair and regressive.” – Littman, Parking Impacts On Housing Affordability, May 2022

Parking requirements also inhibit economic development and job growth by limiting the financially viable buildings that can be constructed. Downtown Carrboro is a perfect case study on this point. The Triangle has been undergoing a roaring population and job expansion over two decades, and other than the 300 East Main project, which was entitled in the 2004 – 2007 timeline, and built between 2007 and 2013, we have not had a new given permission to build in our downtown core* until a few months ago, when the town gave 201 N Greensboro a green light – after letting the developer go below the required number of parking spaces, without which, the building was not likely to be financially feasible.

It’s also worth noting that the only other building approved downtown since that time is the 203 Project, which is being built with public money and does not have to meet a financial profit test to be built. Those expensive parking spaces at $48,000 per space would render any private development downtown financially impossible.

So when you ask yourself: “gee, a lot of other communities, even Graham out in Alamance County are seeing quality new development downtown, but Carrboro isn’t, why is that?”

The answer is that our parking requirements have basically told developers who look into a project that the math to pay for parking isn’t going to work out, so the jobs and tax base that would like to settle here goes elsewhere.

There are many other policy changes that need to happen to achieve the goals in the Carrboro Connects comprehensive plan. Eliminating parking requirements is a necessary first step and a good way to start moving towards those goals. I hope that we’ll see this item on a Carrboro Town Council agenda sometime in October.

*I’m considering Shelton Station to be outside the downtown core

Carr-Connects-11-ImplementationDownload

A Review of the Carrboro Connects Plan Adoption Draft

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On Tuesday, May 10th, the Carrboro Town Council will have its first opportunity to adopt its first-ever comprehensive plan. The fact that our town has reached this point after not having a plan for so long is commendable, and everyone who has helped propel this plan forward, especially in the pandemic, should be proud of their efforts.

That said, the Adoption Draft still contains some places where it equivocates instead of sets direction, and those should be improved ahead of final adoption.

Must-Address Changes In the Adoption Draft

Parking Requirements: Still Getting It Wrong
What the Adoption Draft Says: “Investigate lowering parking requirements…”, “reduce negative effects of parking requirements” “update requirements to remove minimum requirements for residential development close to transit.”

What the Plan SHOULD Say (Best): Parking requirements are hereby eliminated in Carrboro with the adoption of this plan.

What the Plan COULD Say (Acceptable): Parking requirements are hereby eliminated in Carrboro within all downtown districts (list here), future growth centers identified in this plan and within ¼-mile of all transit routes. Parking requirements in the remainder of town are hereby reduced to no more than 1 space per dwelling unit, and all applicants are encouraged to propose alternative parking ratios for their projects. These changes are effective upon adoption of this plan.


Why: Removing parking requirements DOES NOT MEAN that projects will not have any parking; it simply means that developers of projects we would like to see in town do not have to curtail their ability to meet our goals in order to meet an arbitrary number. We can see this right now with the 201 N Greensboro Project, where the code requires 50+ spaces for no good reason, and the developer is proposing 43. This is the number that meets Transportation Management Goals best that also works to obtain lender support for the project. If we want economic development, more jobs in town, and the tax base that comes with it, we need to stop making developers beg for this. In fact, letting them figure out what the project truly needs HELPS us because parking is expensive, and developers will be financially incentivized to spend time figuring out how to divert money formerly earmarked for baseless parking requirements into more important items like affordable housing units and green infrastructure.

I can only imagine that these requirements are hanging around in the draft, particularly for commercial uses, because of hypothetical concerns that if new commercial development does not have parking requirements, it will put pressure on existing parking for current businesses. This is only potentially a problem if we continue to do nothing to manage our parking downtown.

The town must grapple with this truth: we have had very limited private investment downtown through one of our region’s most continuous massive boom periods because the parking requirements are effectively eliminating proposals before they start. The changes in East Chapel Hill and many parts of Durham are a testament to how much Carrboro has shunned economic growth in the past decade. Maintaining parking requirements to address this concern is a commitment to stymie development downtown, a commitment to NOT capture a larger share of the regional economy, and it is the town telegraphing that it anticipates that indecision and non-action on pricing parking downtown will persist.

In other words, maintaining parking requirements is waving a big flag that the plan is more committed to keeping the status quo than raising funds through new compact, walkable development to address climate change and racial equity.

The plan should not pass with the current lack of action on parking requirements. If it does, the staff and/or council should say WHY this strategy is preferable to elimination. I get that implementing parking pricing in town has a lot of culture change to process and requires a lot of thought. But this is a no-brainer. Chapel Hill, Raleigh, Durham, and GRAHAM, North Carolina (GRAHAM!) have all removed parking requirements.

Our adoption draft plan is scheduled to “Conduct financial analysis of benefits of reduced parking requirements” in 2024. This is ridiculous. The idea that there’s something left to study that makes them more important in Carrboro than in other jurisdictions is comical. Mayor and Council, pull the trigger and save us all years of meaningless debate. End parking requirements in Carrboro with passage of this plan.

Open Space In New Development: Still Encouraging Sprawl and Inhibiting Climate-Friendly Density
What the Adoption Draft Says: “the Town is committed to improving ecosystem quality, recognizing the dual benefits for quality of life and climate change resiliency and its importance to town identity. For example, in 1995, the land use ordinance required that 40% of open space be preserved in all new developments. In 2014, the tree canopy coverage standards were updated to include at least 40% canopy coverage on residential land.”

What the Plan Should Say: “The town recognizes that while well-intentioned, the requirements for 40% open space in new development, especially when coupled with parking requirements, largely have worked to prevent development downtown and along transit corridors and encouraged it along the edges of the town. The ordinance is hereby adjusted to reduce both coverages from 40% to 15%, and that the open space requirement can be met by a combination of open space and green roof facilities.”


Why: We must move beyond the idea that because we can see more green right in front of our eyes, that we have made the most green development choice possible. Indeed, Mebane and Chatham County are booming with large lot development that disturbs much more land than urban development in Chapel Hill or Carrboro would because of standards like these. Urban communities can have density and tons of greenery. Any visit to Savannah, GA proves this on every block.


Get Specific About What “More Lots” Means for ADUs
What the Adoption Draft Says: “Reform ADU standards in the Land Use Ordinance to allow for ADUs on more lots.”


What the Plan Should Say: “Reform ADU standards in the Land Use Ordinance to allow for ADUs on more than 50% of single family lots in town.


Why: We don’t want to go through a long process to enable 5-10 ADUs to be built in town. We want to enable dozens or hundreds of them. Set a goal for making ADU viability the NORM rather than the exception, and tune ADU eligibility to exceed 50% of existing single family lots in town.

Make Decisions In This Plan To Avoid Overlong Timelines
The Timeframes of when to do things in the plan are either “1 to 5 years” or “6+ years.” How can the staff build a reasonable workplan off of this? How can we hold anyone accountable. To sustain momentum out of the adoption, the town should have a relatively short list of priority actions to be addressed by 6, 12, and 18 months from adoption.

Then there should be a 1.5 to 3 year bucket of actions. Then 3 to 5 years; then 6+.

But more importantly, MORE DECISIONS SHOULD BE MADE NOW.

Under land use, it says for 2022-2023: “Determine priority areas to conduct small area plans such as key corridors identified in the comprehensive plan and possible updates to existing
small area plans based on the comprehensive plan. Determination should consider race & equity and climate action criteria.”

Why can’t this be done as part of the plan? We have opportunity sites in the plan. We have engaged the largest group of diverse audiences in the Town’s history. Why can’t we put those priority areas in the plan today? How could we have done all this work and not be able to figure out where these priority areas should be already? Chapel Hill’s 2020 plan identified Future Focus Areas as part of its adoption; surely we can do the same.

The rest of the plan should be screened for other decisions that can simply be made NOW.

It is worth stating that one of the reasons that it is important to get as much policy direction set in this document is that outside of processes like this and the 203 Project where consultant resources were engaged, the town has struggled to advance any significant policy changes in planning ordinances and regulations that move the needle on our problems. We may need a larger planning staff that dedicates more time to changing regulations to fit the plan to create this capacity. We may need the Council to set shorter time limits for project reviews and to put finite bounds on public engagement processes that have previously over-privileged wealthy homeowners at the expense of everyone else. But more than anything, we need the Council to provide leadership and make decisions. That’s the biggest barrier between the Town and its goals in this plan.

Lloyd Farm Is Only “Doing The Wrong Thing Better” And Should Be Voted Down

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One of Canada’s leading urban planners, Brent Toderian, shares this slide with communities he consults in to spur discussion:

As the Carrboro Board of Aldermen contemplate the Lloyd Farm proposal Tuesday evening (10/23), they should know that they are clearly dealing with a case of Doing The Wrong Thing “Better.”

Despite years of discussion, the principal flaws of the Lloyd Farm proposal remain the same.

A Missed Economic Opportunity

We need to maximize our tax value per acre on parcels in Carrboro to better balance our commercial and residential tax base, and that means building up in a denser format. An urban grid with rectangular or square blocks makes redevelopment much easier in the long run.

Instead, Lloyd Farm gives us the limited value proposition of the Timberlyne Shopping Center and its strip mall-plus-outparcel format. Joe Minicozzi from Urban Three found that suburban Timberlyne produces a tax value of about $950,000 per acre while the taller, urban format Hampton Inn in downtown Carrboro produces over $33 million per acre.

A Missed Design Opportunity

The two most damaging design features of this proposal are the curvilinear road running through the site, and the poorly placed stormwater ponds that will make creating urban blocks on the site financially challenging or impossible for future redevelopers.

One needs only to view Durham’s Patterson Place in Google Maps to see how a suburban site can be laid out in a grid-like fashion to be infilled later. Twenty years after it was first developed, the Durham Planning department is doing exactly that, and a five-story Duke Medical office building and a Springhill Suites hotel are the first signs of a new, more vertical, higher tax-base per acre urban future at Patterson Place.

A Missed Housing Opportunity

Carrboro will not address its housing cost challenges without building significantly more new units, many of which could be built on such a large site. It’s also disappointing to see only senior housing being proposed. While there are housing needs for senior citizens in Carrboro, it is worth noting that older Americans are generally wealthier than everyone else.

Median Net Worth By Age

Furthermore, the Town’s economic analysis indicates that the vast majority of the jobs expected to locate at Lloyd Farm will earn less than $15/hour, and are professions that are generally held by younger people. This proposal could have contained a significant number of micro-units in the 400 to 600 square foot size range so that people who worked at Lloyd Farm could live there, too, and walk to work- helping us be more inclusive in our housing while also reducing traffic.

So Where’s The Better?

The developer has made some changes to the original proposal. Getting buildings on the north side of the grocery store parking field may help that part of the site transform one day, and the addition of more floors of office space is better than those remaining one story buildings.

But while there is also a public gathering space/amphitheater designated, it does not have a real connection to the uses that would help activate it- the restaurants and retail. Instead, it is closest to the parking lot of an office building, and separated from those potentially synergistic uses by the beating heart of this proposal- the massive parking field for the grocery store.

Years of discussions have not changed the fact that the developer is basically following the punch list of a chain grocery store for their preferred suburban layout, where they work from the assumption that everyone always drives to the store, and that there’s no need to push back against that norm to do something better. This is the wrong thing to do in the 21st century.

Carrboro cares about equity, works hard to make transportation choices possible, worries about how to grow the commercial tax base, and proclaims a desire to make a difference in a world where the IPCC just told us we have about 12 years to turn the tide on climate change.

Carrboro can do so much better, and it should. The Aldermen should reject this proposal and immediately get to work on a comprehensive plan to help guide developers toward those better outcomes. If you agree, shoot an email to boa@townofcarrboro.org and let the Aldermen know.

Meetings on The 203 Project – Library & ArtsCenter Space – TODAY!

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The 203 Project

Just a quick note to everyone this morning- the Town of Carrboro has been pushing the word out that there are not one but TWO meetings being held TODAY, August 4th, to collect public input on The 203 Project – which will be the future home to the Orange County Southern Library branch, Town Parks & Rec offices, WCOM Radio, offices for The ArtsCenter and more.

If you’re a parent, I’d particularly encourage you to come and bring kids. The first meeting we went to (scheduled during bedtime for most families) was largely age 50 and up, and Carrboro is a much younger town demographically.

Here are the meeting times and locations:

August 4, 2018
Carrboro Town Hall
301 West Main St., Carrboro NC
12-2pm

August 4, 2018
Oasis of Love Tabernacle of Faith
8005 Rogers Rd, Chapel Hill, NC 27516
4-6pm

Here are some of the things I’ll be sharing if I can make it to one of the meetings today:

  1. The 203 Project needs to focus on the needs of the building program first, and how to get to the building by bike, bus, and foot second, and parking access third. Downtown Carrboro has over 2,000 empty parking spaces at any given time and this project cannot free up more of them; only town leadership at a downtown-wide level can do that.
  2. We have a small downtown with limited land available for economic development. While there is a terrific set of uses proposed for this building, we should also be seeking economic development at this site. Making the building taller, up to 5 stories- would allow for small company startup space on the upper floors. Some of the Alderfolks have talked about having “Affordable office space” for micro-businesses in town, and this building is a great place to do it. I’d like to see if we could get at least 5,000 – 10,000 square feet of such space into the building.
  3. The ground floor should have a strong orientation to the sidewalks on S Greensboro St and Roberson to embrace what we hope will be very lively pedestrian spaces.

 

Hopefully some of you can get to one of these!