Donjek :: The Cents of Place Blog

Donjek Tools: Transportation Consulting for Public and Private Clients

Donjek Transportation Consulting

Donjek is rolling out with transportation planning and policy service, so to speak.  Look to us to conduct travel demand projections and management analysis, evaluate streetcar finance, negotiate shared parking agreements, and determine whether to use tax increment financing for streets and structured parking.  We identify and present solutions in these areas on behalf of our public- and private-sector clients.  We are able to:

• Work with mid-size and large employers to reduce payroll taxes and parking lease charges.  We are able to analyze employee travel and parking requirements, to help employers identify and manage these costs, using travel demand management plans and other measures.
• Form urban and suburban transportation site plans to cultivate the vital places in your city.
• Develop shared parking arrangements and parking management plans that ensure efficient access and circulation.
• Prepare traffic impact studies to determine the effect of development on congestion, safety, and parking supply. 
• Analyze transportation markets to estimate demand and identify innovative, multi-modal solutions to transportation challenges.

Click here for a brief summary of Donjek transportation services and related background.

Getting Less Mileage Out of the Gas Tax

Last week, Congress recapitalized the Highway Trust Fund, a gas-tax funded resource available in the past for construction of roads and bridges as well as transit infrastructure.  If unaddressed, the U.S. Department of Transportation indicated the fund would empty as of October 1.  This article provides a sound recent overview of the move.  It also explores the increasing folly of levying gas tax as a dollar value per gallon, while inflation mixed with reduced fuel consumption by consumers is leading to deterioration of revenues and resources available for investment in transportation infrastructure.  Talk about a volatile mixture!

Learn more about the State of Oregon’s experimentation will replacing gas tax with a mileage fee in an article from Governing magazine available here.  If you have an afternoon to spend on it, see this document.

Revelations in Milwaukee: Historic Reuse, Natural-Lit Parking and Free Parking

I’ve returned from a recent junket to fair Milwaukee. I hadn’t been to Milwaukee in fifteen years, and parts of the city have changed dramatically since then. Two examples and a policy observation:

• I noticed on my tour of the lakeshore, the vital reuse of the Milwaukee River Flushing Station (pictured). Alterra Coffee (in combination with the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District and Milwaukee County) rehabilitated the station, which was built in 1888 to flush sewage harbored in the river into Lake Michigan. Does this strike you as an ironic piece of infrastructure to reuse as a coffee shop?

In fact, it works conspicuously well. The building remains owned by the sewerage district (“MMSD”), and the county owns all land from the periphery of the building to the edge of the site. The physical structure is aligned with its new mission: Pervious pavement and water filtration systems are narrated on displays constructed by the county’s parks department. The building’s lakeshore location is not surprisingly home to a brisk business moving excellent food and coffee; Alterra also sponsors a music series with wares ranging from opera to Latin American.

Special thanks to Bill Robison, Principal at Engberg Anderson, an architecture firm with offices in Milwaukee, Madison and Tucson. As the lead architect on this reuse project, Bill partnered with Alterra, MMSD and the county, and generously responded to my recent cold inquiry about its development.

• Milwaukee Art Museum’s renovation and expansion includes dramatic architecture and serves the need for a much-enhanced connection between downtown and Lake Michigan. Of course, as principal of a public finance and transportation consulting firm, I was most drawn to the underground parking garage lit with skylights (also pictured). Facilities Director Charles Loomis explained that sensors evaluate the quality of light admitted through the skylights and adjust the use of lighting to supplement, creating significant (but to date unquantified) energy cost savings to the museum.  And to preempt your question before you read below, museum parking is not free.

• A recent post at Urban Milwaukee cited SBT and Colliers data showing the median metered hourly parking rate in downtown Milwaukee is $0.63, versus a national average of $1.48. Author Jeramey Jannene suggests an oversupply of metered parking downtown has suppressed redevelopment efforts: The zoning code requires structured parking in site plans, which represents a mandate to lose money in an environment with an oversupply of cheap on-street parking.

In St. Paul, a very different discussion is taking place regarding the anticipated loss of roughly 85% of on-street parking on University Avenue as light rail transit is added to the street’s modes. At the same time, the Metropolitan Council has indicated their wish to discourage the building of structured parking just off the avenue in order to avoid the avenue’s use as a park-and-ride. Arguably, the main impact of this move is to drive up land values and favor those who control larger parcels near University. It also highlights the importance of the type of transportation consulting that Donjek’s Dan Walsh can provide, including analysis and negotiation for structured parking, shared parking, and travel demand management (TDM).

The travel log would remain incomplete without noting our visit to Sprecher Brewery, where I sampled their very fine Shakparo beer, fermented according to an African protocol using bananas.  The beer tent in Milwaukee continues to get bigger and bigger!

Photo of Milwaukee River Flushing Station: Retinal Fetish, Flickr. Parking garage photo: J. Commers

Parking: More Expensive Than We Thought

A dramatic reuse of an aging church for the new Stepping Stone Theatre required a variance of 104 parking spaces, or 92% of the requirement stipulated under the zoning code in St. Paul, Minnesota, meaning only 8% of the requirement is directly provided by the theatre's property. Do the City’s parking requirements create a structural oversupply of parking in the city? It’s likely. I will revisit parking requirements in coming months, during which city planners and stakeholders will engage the future of local parking policy. The focus of this post is to consider the public cost associated with requiring developers to meet the parking requirements currently in place.

Stepping Stone Theatre is a success story, providing children with training and experience in acting and stagecraft. Shows in the new theatre on Victoria Street
are sure to be well attended, leading the reader to ask:  How will the neighborhood accommodate the parking needs during performances? The theatre has arranged for patrons to park in existing surface lots at William Mitchell College of Law, located across the street, and at the House of Hope Church parking lot at Holly and Avon Streets one block away. A few scattered observations about the area we can use for housing or other uses, due to the shared parking arrangement in place for Stepping Stone:

• Each parking space requires 200-300 square feet of space. If the theatre had been required to purchase and renovate a site allowing them exclusive control and use of 113 spaces, surface parking would represent between 0.52 acres and .78 acres of land committed to a conspicuously low level of land use and productivity. This area is equivalent to between five and nine residential lots for single-family or duplex homes.

• A mixed-use development recently built in St. Paul, with structured parking underneath, is valued at $157/square foot of the lot; at this level, the area equivalent to 113 parking spaces would represent between $3.5 million and $5.3 million of market value. In the theatre’s new location, a site this size might accommodate 20-40 units of housing or mixed use development, leading to enhanced property and perhaps sales tax base.

The car is here to stay, so devising intelligent ways of storing cars during their many hours of non-use is essential for cities serious about their future vitality and financial wherewithal. Ideas worth exploration on this issue abound, but one in particular deserves note: Adoption of a payment-in-lieu-of-parking program. A sample of potential benefits:

• Allow building owners unable to satisfy a parking requirement to make payments to the City, parking authority or business improvement district, in return for parking credits

• Proceeds would be devoted to capital financing for structured and/or shared parking, and pay a parking liaison charged with connecting parties for shared parking arrangements

• The City could be separated into a number of “parkingshed” zones, so that payments would fund parking infrastructure and agreements in relative proximity to property owners paying the fees

• Potentially, a local market for parking credits could be established, further enhancing the efficiency of the program.

Parking policy is a confluence of real estate development, public finance, transportation and land use, and hence advocates in each of these realms get involved in parking discussions. In the theatre’s shared parking arrangements lies one critical tool for cities, the leadership of which must be absolutely focused on concentrating tax base with redevelopment and forward-thinking approaches to land use.

Photo: Courtesy of Stepping Stone Theatre.

Pricing Out Parking

Television advertisements for cars never show drivers pulling in or out of a parking space, or trawling around the block looking for a spot. In fact, most ads show car and driver all alone on a scenic, recently resurfaced stretch of mountain road. If only the financial picture of managing car parking was so seemingly idyllic!

Cities struggle with parking for a host of reasons: In an aesthetic sense, it’s nondescript. Poor visibility, access, and lighting can create safety issues. Excess parking is also a very costly way to employ urban land. Instead of a structure that could be used to generate jobs, commercial activity and hence tax base (or, alternatively, an open space that bears related benefits to adjacent property and broader health and social benefits), excess parking represents a spoiler on the economy and treasury of a community. For one, Donald Shoup of UCLA has raised the profile of issues around how to manage and price parking (and how to use parking revenues to leverage strength in local economies); read his most recent New York Times editorial here, or look at his 2005 book on the same subject here.

The continuing dominance of the car is unlikely to fade in the near future, and cities and urban merchants recognize that providing parking capacity is important for commercial viability. Michael Monte, Director of the Community and Economic Development Office in Burlington, Vermont, noted during a meeting Friday that the Burlington Downtown Improvement District (a small, dynamic business improvement district) funds two hours of free parking downtown in order to strengthen its hand against suburban strip retail not far down the road. While at first blush this appears to be in conflict with Shoup’s ideas, the free parking complements a range of transportation demand management (TDM) measures including aggressive metering (I have a parking ticket to prove it), shuttling and park-and-rides, prominent bicycle storage facilities, and transit provided through a five-city transportation partnership. And the free parking is an incentive for customers to shop on foot in the area surrounding the Church Street pedestrian mall in downtown Burlington.

Near Macalester College, a group of retailers in Saint Paul, Minnesota formed an association to lease space for parking from a nearby church. Each retailer pays for their customers’ use of the space based on the distance from their front door to the small parking facility. In operation since 1994, the arrangement is a flexible, relatively inexpensive (annual budget is roughly $18,000) way to provide fifty parking stalls in an urban area characterized by a mix of residential and retail uses.

Of course, no parking is truly free: There are significant direct costs associated with building and maintaining parking surfaces or ramps. There are also indirect costs including congestion, the cost of increasing water runoff from the impervious surface, and the foregone cost of using the land in a more productive fashion. A great challenge for cities in coming decades will be recognizing and paying for these costs in ways that support the efforts of customers and employers in our cities.

Photo:  Opening Day, Lexington ball park, Saint Paul, 1929.  Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.