Welcome to Bike talk, streaming in Southern California at KPFK, Western Massachusetts at Valley Free Radio, WMBR in Cambridge, and worldwide at BikeTalk.org. Galen Mook, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Bike Coalition, welcome.
Yes. I'm also an esteemed DJ here on Bike Talk under the moniker Mookmaster Bikes. Just throwing that out there for you.
Very good, DJ Mookmaster bikes. Our show today is going to be a lot about California. We just got the elimination of parking minimums signed into law by the governor of California.
I did see that; good job Newsom, go get 'em.
And Assemblymember Laura Friedman, who's a friend of the show, has been on many times, and we're going to talk about what it all means, with-- Have you ever heard of Donald Shoup?
Yes, High Cost of Free Parking, I believe, was the Bible that he was able to write.
That's right. And Bible is a good term for it. He's got a cult following. It's almost a religion of people who see the importance of not subsidizing parking.
Right.
So what's your understanding of that?
Well, you know, there's a lot of hidden costs that people don't think about when it comes towards parking, and not just to the individual, this is a public space that's to be maintained and plowed and all of that, it's very tangible... but the intangible detriment and cost that comes with providing free parking has a ripple effect that impacts housing, affordability, safety on our roadways-- and that has a spiral effect to make sure that people don't walk or bike; that adds to the kind of inequitable displacement of transportation, infrastructure and where transit is placed. And the general mentality in my mind after reading the book is: we give Americans this idea that they can drive and park anywhere. And that's backed up with policies like free parking, or, you know, there's like parking holidays where the city won't enforce meters to encourage people to come to business districts. It's basically a lie. It's a myth that free parking is free. And it's actually incredibly costly. I forget the numbers that Donald Trump puts in his book, but they're there, the health costs, the housing costs, the land use cost, the municipal cost, the individual costs. And if you tally those up, it's like, "oh, wow, we are paying societal debt, to allow people to have this, quote, freedom of parking." And that's the reframing of that. And I think it's a very important message that we need to keep showing.
It incentivizes driving over other modes of transportation. And we're gonna have a Donald Shoup on.
Oh, word, he's on the show, great! He actually came to Boston, I want to say close to like, 10 years ago, maybe eight years ago, and he hosted a parking conference I was a part of. My partner actually put it on. And I feel like that started the movement in Boston, about getting us to rethink on-street parking; we have been removing on-street parking, so that we can have things like bus lanes, expanded bike infrastructure, sidewalk cafes, etc, etc. I credit Donald Shoup coming all the way from the west coast to kind of give us the tools and the advocacy tricks of the trade in order to get that conversation started.
He's coming out and sparking this wherever he goes.
He's proselytizing, just to lean into that metaphor. We have something that's a half step similar that Governor Baker signed earlier last year, which is specific around MBTA, which is the Eastern mass transit. If you are a municipality that's developing around an MBTA hub, you are now required to densify. So it's not exactly the same in terms of on-street parking, or parking minimums or all that. But this is a similar law that Massachusetts has, at least in concept, of we need to do what we can to densify housing options close to transit. It's called transit oriented development. And that was put into law last year in April of 2021. And it's actually been pretty damn contentious because some suburban cities who have MBTA access were like, "No, we don't want to have three and four bedroom condo six story buildings, that's not in keeping with our segregated white rich suburb." So it's actually been pretty contentious how it's playing out. So I'm curious to see how California moves forward with this. Because NIMBYism has a way of rearing its head regardless of where you are. We're getting some of that here.
There's these parallel efforts and laws. Speaking of that, you're gonna host a conversation between Laura Friedman, who authored the elimination of parking minimums in California bill, and Lindsay Sabadosa in Massachusetts.
That's right, who's the local rep specifically for your Florence listeners. We're still scheduling it so all your listeners can stay tuned, it might be in a month or so - but the goal is to get the brain trust together so that we're really learning on each other and leaning on each other.
All right. I will be at the Florence Night Out tomorrow.
Oh, cool. We'll be there doing Bike Valet. So feel free to bring your bike and they'll watch it for you.
I'm actually - that's what I'm doing.
Shows how much I'm paying attention.
I'm volunteering with with Bike Valet.
That's really sweet of you. I appreciate you donating your time to the cause.
What else? There's something that I want all your listeners to start paying attention to: our act to reduce traffic fatalities. I've mentioned it before on the show. This is the three foot passing law, side guards on trucks, a whole bunch more; the governor has it on his desk. He put some amendments out back to the legislature. It might get signed by the time this airs or maybe even early next week, which means we'll have a new law to talk about in terms of road safety, not just for bikers, but for everybody. So I just want your listeners to stay tuned. And to know that if this actually gets enacted, we're going to need help spreading the message of the three foot rule, the vulnerable road users message, anybody who's connected to a bike shop, anybody who's connected to a police department, or library or school, a driving school, anywhere and everybody. This is going to impact all road users.
This is one piece of legislation?
It's a single bill that has like six different components on it. We got it passed unanimously in both chambers. The governor is supportive of it. He just has a couple of tweaks. So right now it's going through this sausage-making process; we're pretty confident that everybody's on board with getting us over the finish line. This will be, in my opinion, the biggest bike infrastructure legislation that we've passed since the Bike Bill in 2008. Designated bike lanes, three foot passing, I just want you folks to pay attention to Massbike.org. In my opinion, this is going to help everybody; it's gonna help drivers, gonna help cyclists and truck drivers, people walking, state troopers writing tickets, construction workers, everybody's going to benefit from this bill.
California just passed what they call the Omnibike bill, which has several different bike provisions.
It does Yeah, some of them got nixed, though. Didn't the governor veto the rolling through red lights and rolling through stop signs?
Well, that was a different bill. But yes.
It's good to see movement on both sides. We're pushing hard here in Massachusetts, my friend.
Right on Galen Mook, Massbike, keep up the good work.
Cool. Mookmaster Bikes, but I'll take it anyway. Thanks, Nick. I'm glad to be here. Yeah, enjoy your week.
You too.
Welcome to bike talk. I'm Lindsay Sturman. And I have such an exciting guest today. Professor Donald Shoup from UCLA, who is, as many of you will know, the parking guru, and the Wall Street Journal called him a parking Rockstar and the Yoda of urban planning. And he also has an incredible following on social media; people across the world understanding the importance of his work, including the seminal book, The High Cost of Free Parking that I'm sure a lot of us have on our bookshelves. It's over 700 pages. So maybe not everyone's read the full book, but it started this debate that is such an important debate about parking. And he has 6000 members of a group called Shoupistas (on Facebook) and 30,000 Twitter followers. Professor Shoup, Welcome to Bike talk.
Well, thanks for inviting me. I was certainly honored when The Wall Street Journal called me a rock star, although a parking rock star is what they said, which is different from a real rock star. Although sometimes I call myself Shoup Dog. I was honored to be called the Yoda of Urban Planning until I remember from Star Wars that Yoda was 800 years old. So I see a little bit of irony in both of those epithets for me, though I'm very glad to talk to you. I think that there's a big link between parking reforms and bicycling. And I hope we can concentrate on that today.
It's so tied. We all know cars push out all other forms of mobility. It's a safety issue. It's a space issue. And a lot of us are trying to figure out: how do we make a city safe for biking? And, you know, we also all know that land use, housing is tied to mobility. And there's a huge bill right now in California. I'd love to hear your thoughts about that. AB 2097 brought by Laura Friedman to stop cities from requiring parking, which really drives people to drive more.
I should start out with the top of the Shoup Dogma - that I recommend three things: one is to charge the right price for all the street parking, for curb parking, by which I mean the lowest price the city could charge and still leave one or two open spaces on every block. So wherever drivers go, they'll see one or two open spaces, which is just what they want. So they won't have to drive around hunting for parking if the price is too low and all the spaces are full. A lot of traffic is caused by people hunting for parking, because it's free. We should charge the right price for parking. The second thing I recommend is to make that popular, that right price; to spend the money on added public services on the metered streets. To fix the sidewalks, to clean the sidewalks. Some cities give free WiFi to everybody in a district with parking meters. Boulder, Colorado gives free bus passes to everybody who works in a neighborhood with parking meters. So the parking meters, instead of just a money grab, they really are very friendly to the neighborhood. And that will make the right price and popular. And then the third thing which gets on to AB 2097 is to remove all off street parking requirements. Parking requirements have been in effect in Los Angeles and most cities for about 70 years. Everything that has been built has ample off street parking. And that spreads the city out. Because if every every apartment building and every house and every grocery store and everything has to have ample off street parking, that spreads everything out and leads to a lot of surface parking lots. And nobody wants to walk past parking lots. And often the required parking is in front of the building. So the stores are not aiming for pedestrians or bicyclists. They're aiming for people who come by car, and it makes it a little worse for for people who walk and bicycle because everything's just spread farther apart. So I think that the three together will be a big change for the world. To some extent it's happening. It's like like a combination lock; every turn of the dial seems to achieve not very much or nothing. But when all three are right, then the lock opens. And I think that if cities removed all street parking requirements, chose the right prices for parking and spent the revenue on public services, that the cities would morph into a much more beautiful scene, more like the best European cities which were built before the automobile. Let's start out with AB 2097.
I mean, this is an amazing plan. I mean, it's incredible. There's obviously the equity concern about pricing parking. Is there a way to address that?
Well, yes, I have several answers for that question. One: not the answer to you, but the answer to many people who say we can't charge for curb parking, that that'll harm poor people... I say for many of these people, they are pushing poor people out in front of them like human shields, saying "don't charge for parking 'cause it'll hurt poor people," when they really mean, "don't charge for parking 'cause it'll hurt me." Now, that's one thing that is hard to distinguish - when people have a real concern for low income people. And I think that is an important issue. And I have several answers to that. One is that free car parking is a poor way to help poor people for two reasons. One, most people who own a car are not poor. So a lot of the subsidy goes to people who are not poor, and many poor people don't own a car. So free curb parking, most of the subsidy goes to people who are not poor, and most poor people get no subsidy. So it's hard to recommend a policy that is so off the mark in that way, but I think there are ways to deal with it. We give discounts for electricity and water for low income people. You could give discounts on curb parking to low income people. But if you do that you should give the same subsidy to low income people who don't own a car instead of always making the subsidy be - free curb parking is a very clumsy way to help poor people and it does a lot of damage for poor people because if you have free parking, curb parking, you have to have off street parking requirements to prevent all this cruising around hunting for free parking space. And the off street parking requirements are especially hard on low income people, because it raises the price of everything they buy; for housing, usually you have to have two parking spaces per dwelling unit. Now, how does that help somebody who doesn't own a car? So I think getting rid of parking requirements will get rid of a cost for housing that bears very heavily on low income people. And if you have off street parking requirements for everything, like grocery stores, it means that we raise the price of groceries, so that people who drive a car to the grocery store can park free. And people that don't own a car, they have to walk or take a cargo bike or the bus. So I don't think we should raise the price of everything in order to get free parking that you think will help poor people. When you consider the equity of the system that we have now with free car parking and ample off-street parking: that's not designed to help low income people. That's designed to help car owners, regardless of their income. I'm glad you asked that question.
There was a study that low income workers spend 30% of their income on a car. People call it car blindness. We've decided to accept that everyone should own a car, and then we push everything out. And of course, maybe this is the time to jump to AB 2097 and this huge bill to end parking minimums, if hopefully the governor signs it.
Well, that's right. And 2097, which was introduced by Laura Friedman who is the Assemblymember from Southern California, would prohibit cities from requiring all street parking within a half a mile of public transit. For a place like LA, that's most of the citiy. Actually, it is removing off street parking requirements for very much much of the city. That will counteract what has been going on for the last 70 years. They have here U turns that we make in urban planning, like urban renewal. We thought it was going to save the central city when we now of course realize it destroyed much of the central city and we now have historic preservation as a way to save the central city; or we wanted high rise public housing to solve the housing prices. Now most of them have been torn down. And we have scattered site public housing. Well, the same thing is happening with minimum parking requirements: for 70 years, we've been requiring parking everywhere for everything. And now we come along and the state legislature said you cannot require parking. So that's another one of these U turns; we made a big mistake urban planning. And it's hard to correct that at the local level in every city. Like, Culver City or Burbank or Gardena shouldn't have to debate in city council, "should we get rid of parking permits?" because the NIMBYs will say no, everybody wants to park free, including you and me. In any public debate, a community meeting on parking, everybody will say, "where will I park?" At the local level, there's a terrific opposition to removing off street parking requirements. But at the state level, we have different concerns. We're concerned about climate change, we're concerned about affordable housing, we're concerned about traffic congestion; there are a lot of concerns at the state level that don't get reflected at the city level. So at the state level, there is a very legitimate reason to say cities cannot require off street parking.
And of course, part of the absurdity of this situation is builders and developers can still put in parking; it's just not required. But I love the visual of the U turn and I think about urban freeways and putting a freeway through a city; the total lack of wisdom of that.
Well, that's right. And we thought that freeways would be the way to solve transportation problems and now we're tearing them down. See, I say too in retrospect, we realize this is a very big mistake. And I think that California is leading the nation at the state level, saying that cities cannot require off street parking near transit. So I think that it will slowly make a big difference, as you said that just because the cities don't require parking, it doesn't mean that developers won't provide parking because most people have cars. Most people want parking. So I don't think many sensible developers would build anything without any parking. So let's figure out how would they know how much the parking spaces cost if they cost $50,000 apiece for underground parking? They're not going to be profitable. They're not going to give it away for free because most apartments come with two free parking spaces. It'll lead to separation between the price of housing, and the price of parking. People who don't have a car should not pay for parking. And I think this will slowly happen.
That's a such an interesting concept of decoupling your rent from your parking space, so that people who don't own a car aren't forced to subsidize all the other people.
Well, that's right. And many opponents, I think, more emotional than rational. When it comes to parking, most people are emotional. It's the most emotional topic in transportation; people think about parking with their reptilian cortex of the brain to be developed to make snap decisions like fight or flight, how to avoid being eaten. And that's how people think about parking. They often say, "Well, if the developer doesn't provide parking, they'll just pocket the difference and they won't reduce housing prices, they'll just make more money." But just think of it - if there were a new apartment building and you have two identical side by side apartments, one of them has no parking included with the rent and the other one has two free parking spaces, do you think that the rent for those two apartments will be the same? Don't you think that the apartment without the free parking will have a lower market price? And who will benefit from that? It will be the people who don't own a car. So I think it's very clear that if we begin decoupling the parking rent from the housing rent, people who don't own cars, and who do mainly ride bicycles, will save a lot of money.
That gets into like a basic misunderstanding in housing, which is that, you know, 90% of Angelenos, they're not in rent control. They're not in deed restricted housing, they just are paying market rent. And the idea that like somebody is setting the price of rent; whether we like it or not, the market sets the rent. And as you say, if you just go on Craigslist, and look for a small unit without parking, you can actually like, click a box, no parking, I spent 10 minutes looking up the rents, they are already technically according to the state guidelines, affordable housing. It exists, we can build it. But the minute you jam in that parking, it's over.
Well, that's right. Well, the earliest studies on the effects of parking requirements was in Oakland, when Oakland began requiring one parking space per dwelling unit and somebody had been looking at apartment values in a four year study and this parking requirement came in right in the middle of the study. And it turned out the way developers respond to the parking requirement, which was one space for dwelling unit, is they built bigger dwelling units that were more expensive, because there was just one parking space per dwelling unit. The small apartments disappear. Because the cost of a parking space is a big percentage of the price of a small apartment, minimum parking requirements based on the number of units lead to larger, more expensive apartment.
And we know that real estate rents and sells pretty much by the square foot. We all would love to see a world with lower rent. But at the end of the day, small units without amenities are cheaper.
Well that's right, and it will allow these to be built. San Diego was the first city to remove aoff street parking requirements near transit. People were shocked when the developer proposed and built a 100 unit apartment building with very small apartments and no parking. People said, "well, we can't have this." And it is true that some people will want to buy or rent one of those small apartments and park on the street. And that's why it's important to manage the curb parking properly as well. But when he was asked, "How can you attract people to small apartments with no parking?" and he said, "well, there are 3 million people in this area. I'm just looking for 100 people to live without a car." So it should be financially very possible for a new building to have even no parking, because there are people who can't afford a car or they choose not to own a car for environmental reasons. And I think being able to rent an apartment without paying for parking will be a great boon for them.
What were the rents like for the 100 units in San Diego? Were they affordable?
I don't know what that was. In fact, they probably aren't really low because there is a terrific shortage of housing that we have been building. And the parking requirements have limited the supply of housing. It'll take a while, but we'll see probably many more small apartments with one parking space or one parking space for every two apartments or something like that. It won't be overnight, I'd say it will be a long time before the the city looks very different from what it does now.
And what is the role of 15 minute cities in this?
That's easy to describe. I don't think it applies to most people, certainly doesn't apply to Southern California. We're so far away from that; we have been building a city for cars for so long that almost everybody wants a car to get a job. It really helps to have a car. There are several studies that looked at whether ownership of a car makes finding employment much more possible, and it is true. But so many people have accustomed themselves to owning a car that the world won't change very fast, but I think it will; it will slowly approach a more humane environment. But I think it's probably best that it happens slowly. It will be slow to happen partly because even if we have 15 minute areas of the city, if the rest of the city is not a 15 minute area, how are you going to get to these other parts of the city? How am I going to get to Pasadena or Burbank or Long Beach? I'll probably have to take a car, because we won't have subways that go from Westwood to Long Beach. Even if you want to walk or bicycle for almost every trip, you have to have a car in Southern California to reach a lot of destinations. So I think that even if places like Westwood become 15 minute areas, and already are 15 minute areas, I live in Westwood, and I think you can walk to almost everything. But you can't walk to almost everything in Southern California; I think most people will say, "well, sometimes I want to go to Hollywood, sometimes I want to go to Santa Monica." And so I think that most people will, if they can afford it, probably want a car.
I'd love to ask you about your research on Georgeism and land value tax. Maybe you can explain to the audience because it's a complicated concept. But I think it's quite brilliant.
Well, it's almost a simple concept. Henry George was a 19th century reformer. And in the 19th century, he was far more popular among radicals than Karl Marx. All of the young radicals talked about Georgism, and his idea was that at the city level taxes should be on land values, not on total property values. If you tax the value of land, it will encourage people to develop land at a high density. But if you tax property, anybody who builds an apartment building pays extra taxes. So as a disincentive to build housing or anything else, it never really took off. It's still theoretically very appealing. Many Nobel Prize winners in economics think it's the best tax. But it's hard to switch toward it. Hawaii started in that direction, they did have a lower tax on properties' improvements than on the land itself. It's been hard to separate the value of the improvement from the land value. It's more of a theoretical idea, though. My policies for parking benefit districts are very similar. You mentioned you grew up in Manhattan. I used to live in Manhattan as well. Talk about a 15 minute city; that's exactly what it is. So I did a study of all the public parking benefits districts do in the Upper West Side, which is one of the densest areas in the country. There are about 20 people for every curb parking space, so only a tiny percentage of the people could park on the street and most of the parking spaces are free. So you often hear about people driving around cruising for parking; it's the big feature in Seinfeld. The episode where Elaine was a passenger when George was driving to Jerry's apartment and he couldn't find a parking space and he was circling around and she said, "Why don't you park in the garage?" and he said, "Well, I never pay for parking. Paying for parking is like going to a prostitute. Why should I pay when if I apply myself maybe I can get it for free?" But I think that we're all like that. So in a world with a lot of George Costanzas, how do you tell people that they ought to pay the right price for curb parking? Because the price of off street parking, the lowest price on the Upper West Side is about $35 a day, how could you charge that much for curb parking? Well, if you spent the revenue to give free transit passes to everybody on the block, just to get one block, I did a study - one block, they're all long rectangular blocks; if you charge the right price for per parking, you would generate about a million dollars per block.
Wow.
A million dollars could pay for free transit passes for everybody who lived on the block or free Wi Fi. And if you lived on that block, and only one of 22 people could park at the curb, and they asked you would you rather have free curb parking, or much better public services, I think most people will say they'd rather have better public services. And the curb lane is about 9% of the land in the block. It's land rent, the parking prices, it'd be a very Henry Georgist thing to say we will rent that land at the market price. And we will spend all the money on public services on that block. And then I think it would make Henry George very relevant for the 21st century. Instead of talking about taxing private land, let's start charging for the public land we already own.
That's so interesting. It was one block; it was the four sides of it, or both sides of the street?
In practice it would be just face block. It's parked on both sides of the street. But I looked at the four sided block because it's easier to get the data on that. I think that Jerry Seinfeld lives in the Upper West Side. And he's spent over a million dollars buying a hardware store, a plumbing store to convert into a garage for his collection of Porsches. Yeah, he's very famous car collector. It took four years to convert the plumbing store into his garage. And people complained a lot to him: "you're living in the Upper West Side, you want to remove something for off street parking, meaning there has to be a curb cut as well. So there'd be one less curb parking space. And he said, "I've been working on this conversion for four years. And if at anytime I found a curb parking space during the four years, I would stop construction." Even Jerry Seinfeld, who was always making fun of parking, was spending a huge amount of money to convert a plumbing store into his personal garage. He's like many people, they think parking is like sex, if you have to pay for it is just not right. So I think you have to tempt people with the benefits that can be paid for by the parking revenue. And in a dense area like Koreatown in LA or Downtown in San Francisco, I think it would be very popular.
And of course, because we're Bike Talk, we love bikes, and we talk to Dutch engineers and experts all the time. And we know from them that when you make it safe for kids, and you make it safe for seniors and you make it safe for people who aren't just the brave and the fit, 60 to 68% of trips become by bike. And in LA right now, 90% of trips are by car because of, really, safety reasons.
Yes, and many people say in response to a statement like yours, "but we're not the Netherlands, we're not Amsterdam. But Amsterdam wasn't Amsterdam 40 years ago. I can remember that was the first European city I ever went to. That was in 1962. But it was just full of cars. It was like an American city- all the squares were filled with parked cars and there were cars everywhere and terrible traffic congestion. And they decided eventually, that this was not what they wanted. And they began slowly reclaiming the land that have never been used for cars-it wasn't meant for cars, it had been overtaken by cars. So they reclaimed that, and other cities are doing the same thing. In 1964 I worked for the Copenhagen telephone Company as an exchange student. And I had a car, which was considered just amazing, that a student from the United States would arrive with a new VW. And I drove 20 miles to downtown, I had stayed with relatives, but I drove 20 miles down and parked free in one of these leafy squares that had been turned into parking. And slowly, they began reclaiming them. Their policy is to reduce the number of parking spaces in Copenhagen by 3%. It was very gradual. And I think that slowly, the city has gotten back to what it looksed like, before World War Two. On my first day at the Copenhagen Telephone Company, I had a very big office, the building covered an entire block and I went through the whole building showing the different technologies they had. Then they took me into the basement, which was full of bicycles. "Here's your bicycle." Every employee had a bicycle, that was part of the basement; you would roll it up around to get onto the street. But whenever anybody in the building was expected to go to someplace else in the city, they were expected to go to the basement to get their bicycle and bike wherever they were going. And they had the earliest - I'd never seen it before - separated bicycle lanes. You didn't ride in the traffic. We can get closer to that; we'll never look like Amsterdam or Copenhagen. In some ways, America is... we've accomplished a lot. When you look at... so many areas of the city are really quite beautiful. If we reform our parking policies towards the right prices for curb parking, spend the revenue on the metered streets and remove off street parking requirements, we'll get part of the way. And I think as you mentioned at the beginning, that the other big reform is congestion pricing; the roads are so filled with cars, it's a nightmare. To go to Long Beach - I was born in Long Beach, I occasionally go back there, it's a 30 mile drive - And during COVID, the beginning of COVID, it was terrific. You could get there in 25 minutes. Now the COVID is disappearing, now it's an hour, an hour and a half.
You can do it both dynamically and progressively. Daniel Marcin is a economist, he's talked about this on Twitter a lot. You can price it like Uber surge pricing, right? And you can make it progressive where you know, the barista pays $1. And the banker pays $10 for the same usage.
Yes, it's like parking, I think everybody should be charged the same price, but that you could give an allowance to low income people. If you can solve the equity problem, I think a lot of things will become more possible. And I think with parking, it is possible to solve the equity problem. We're so accustomed to giving lifeline rates for electricity and water and we can do it for parking as well. In the denser areas, it'd be foolish to think that getting rid of parking requirements would harm low income people. And charging market prices for parking; because if you did give a free transit pass to everybody, which is easy to do with the meter revenue, because the current parking spaces are so valuable... I think we're so used to parking free, it's hard to imagine that the spaces are valuable. I mean, if they're so valuable, why wouldn't it cost anything? Well, it's because we have forced people to provide so much off street parking. That's back to Laura Friedman; she has seen this problem and explained it clearly.
And back to Manhattan, could you imagine a Manhattan with almost no cars? Only, you know, ADA, only work vehicles, only the necessities? What could that look like?
I'm afraid I'm more of an academic than activist. So what academics are best at is doing a study. Instead of working retail, I will be working wholesale and try to publish articles. And I have published a lot on parking that gives support to people like Laura Friedman, and you. That's what academics can and should do.
Professor Shoup, thank you so much for joining us on bike talk. This has been fascinating and so educational for all of us doing this work and trying to understand how cities work. Thank you so much for coming.
Thanks for inviting me.
John Bauters, Mayor of Emeryville, California and Seamus Garrity, Field Representative of Assemblymember Laura Friedman. Seamus, you're located in Los Angeles.
Yes.
And John, you're in Emeryville.
Yes.
The big news is elimination of parking minimums in California.
It's just an honor to be part of the team that did that. The Assemblymember, she worked so hard to introduce this legislation several years in a row. And it's just been such a heavy lift, but she really did it.
How long did it take?
I've been with her for six years. It's come up, I believe, every year; definitely the last three years there have been bills.
So elimination of parking minimums means that we're not subsidizing driving anymore.
Yeah, I think that- I mean, it's hard for me to talk about this. But I would say that it feels very much like we have broken through. You know, a movement that has been going on for a long time is now being codified in positive ways.
I don't think the average person really knows what the significance of parking minimums is.
They will soon. I think that it is a wonky idea to get behind. I remember the first time I heard this idea was before I worked for the assembly member- from Don Ward, friend of the show. When we were talking, I think it was an election cycle, like maybe 2012, or something like that, or 2013- and he was the first person to say the real way we're going to address climate change is getting rid of parking minimums. And it didn't make any sense to me at the time, but since then, you know, working for the Assemblymember- it's interesting, I've learned so much just as a staffer, just driving her around, because she's just always discussing all of her legislation. But I think the main way is that it incentivizes multimodal transit, right? People like John and myself, I mean, we ride our bikes to the things we go to.
So first of all, I mean, gay men are allowed to say that we have crushes on certain people. I have a policy crush on Laura Friedman. It's not a secret lover. But yeah, 2097 being signed into law is great. We abolished parking minimums in Emeryville, a few cities up here did that in 2018-19, San Francisco, Berkeley, but to do it statewide is super, super significant. It's one thing to do it in Emeryville, in Berkeley, where, you know, yeah, we had opposition to it. But it's different when you have to deal with some of the cities that I just can't believe exist; cities sometimes that like the Assemblymember and the others have to deal with in districts. I would not want to have to deal with that.
Time has come.
Emeryville, the whole Bay Area is progressive in terms of transportation.
We're not as transportation NIMBY as LA, I would say; progressive on a California scale, sure. But progressive to most of the places in the world that understand transportation and parking and car use, like no, the entire United States is not progressive on transportation.
That's true. That's true. I do really feel like- you asked- one of the things that's so significant about this bill, and from my my perspective as a field rep, is that I really feel like things are changing. I really do. The fact that this bill passed, and then signed yesterday, was probably the happiest day in our office in the six years I've been there since the very beginning. It was euphoric.
So I'm gonna tell a little story about Laura Friedman, by the way, that like... this is how great of a policymaker she is. So she and I both went to Cop 26 last year in Glasgow, and each day I was there a big thing for me was- this is a global climate summit, I'm a sub delegate from California and... the average person doesn't get to go to that. They can't even get- there's a green zone, a blue zone, like you can't even get into the first layer of the event. The UN is so particular about who goes and so there were several assembly members and senators from California who went; she was one of them. And so I was interviewing somebody different each day and sending those interviews back, 10 minute interviews back to the air district that I sit on, to share with people in the public about what we're doing. And I had a really great interview with Assemblymember Friedman. And then we spent about an hour together afterwards, just chatting, having lunch. And she, you know, she just asked me, she's like, "you're like a bike guy." She's like, "I love following what you do on bikes." And she goes like, "what do you want to see?" And I said, "You know what, I have this little, little pet issue that like really pisses me off." I was like, "I hate bike license requirements and cities because they're inherently inequitable and racist." And we had this talk for like, 15, 20 minutes about it. Yeah. And she's like, she's like, she goes, she goes, "I'll do it." I was like, "really?" She goes, "yeah," she goes, "I'll run the bill." And then out of nowhere it's in the Bike Omnibus, just like, eliminating it. And everyone's like, "Oh, did you see this thing?" I'm like, "I did see this thing. I actually know a little bit about this thing." I was like, "she just like, just put it in the damn thing." I was like, "this lady is the best," like she has a conversation with, with the bike guy on Twitter. And he's like, "Yeah, this is this like, little nerdy pet thing that drives me crazy. So you shouldn't be doing this, shouldn't be on the books. It's just terrible for public engagement to begin with." I'm like, "we need to get rid of it. This is why." She's like, "Okay." I did an interview with a graduate student program at the University of Toronto. They wanted to talk about, like, policy, making cities and streets more people oriented. I'd been there this summer, we're just talking about bike policy, and they're like, "What do you think is one of the best, you know, bike policies?" I was like, "parking minimums." And they're like, "huh?" and I was like, "oh, yeah," I was like, great bill- but it was really like the same conversation. I was like, "great bill," I'm like, "I'm going to be on a different call about this in about an hour and a half." I'm like, "But yeah," and they're like, "Well, why parking minimums?" I explained, I'm like, "Well, you got to start making people have to make meaningful choices, right? Like people have to have choices. And it's not like, I don't- 'aw, you're always trying to get everyone to ride a bike.'" Like, I am not trying to get anyone to ride a bike. I'm trying to make choices available so that people who could or want to ride a bike can do so because they have a meaningful choice when there's, when it's like, "oh, I can roll the dice and, you know, bike down, you know, a car sewer that's 45 miles an hour with no- with a parking lane and no, no other buffers." Like, well I'm not going to do that, it doesn't feel safe. But if you give people meaningful choices, and I said parking minimums matter, because when people have to start choosing the alternatives to work, then they start caring about the other infrastructure. They care how frequently the bus runs, they care where the stations are, they care whether there's a bike lane from the train stations where they work, like they care about those things, and they start and I get those emails. "Why isn't there a bus stop at this corner?" Oh, well, thanks for riding the bus. Let's figure that out. So a lot of the stuff I do is like really low level unsexy to folk; like we're putting a bus bench at every bus stop in the city, we have about 50 bus stops that didn't have them. I saw an old guy leaning on a trash can. I'm like, "Man does not need to write me a comment card to my email to know that this needs to be fixed. Like we're just gonna go fix it."
You said it's unsexy to most people. And that's got to be true. But there's just people who find that to be the most exciting thing, when you- when you put bus shade up, and eliminating parking minimums in certain subgroups. How far ahead are these groups of the rest of the population?
I work in Laura's office, but also I've worked on campaigns and I've worked in coalition building. Right now, there are people who are newly enthusiastic, I think, about everything around Complete Streets. There are new organizations springing up that are going to advocate for better infrastructure through neighborhoods like Hancock Park, which is famously NIMBY, like a famous historic preservation zone that just tries to block all kinds of things. And, you know, when I first heard about parking minimums being a thing from Don, like, a decade ago, maybe he was, you know, 15 years early. That's Don. I feel like it's all about to change right now. I feel like it's happening right now. I do. That's how- I mean, maybe that's just cuz it was signed yesterday, but you have people from environmental communities, you know, who are really championing BRT now-
bus rapid transit
that -yeah, that the environmental community, and people who are very upset about climate change are now pressing for better bus infrastructure. I think that is equally important to bike lanes. I really do.
So John, one of the things you do is you're on the AQMD Board.
That's the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Yep.
Seamus rides 20 miles through the San Fernando Valley to his VICA meeting, the Chamber of Commerce in San Fernando Valley. How does getting to the meeting by bike increase the resonance of the types of things you advocate for at these meetings?
Well, I will say that for me, it started off as... I think people thought I was a clown. And now people take me a little more seriously on a lot of things. It actually began without it being a bike. The first time that there was a meeting a chair had several years ago, one of our former chairs, he's like, "Well, we're gonna go to this other community, and listen to them about this specifically, very niche issue." An odor issue they were having in their community that the air district would have research and enforcement over. And the committee I was on had that responsibility. And so he said, "we're going to have a remote meeting at this location." It was five miles from the nearest transit location. It wasn't in a place in the city that was in that city. It wasn't at their city hall. They had a BART station, it wasn't even near the BART station. So I took BART and I wore a little running singlet and tiny shorts, you know, so I didn't choose to take the bike. And I ran and I walked into the meeting about one minute after it had started. I blame a very long traffic light without appropriate pedestrian crossing for that. But I walked in the meeting covered in sweat. I walked straight up to the dais in this meeting. Security in the building tried to stop me and the staff had to be like, "No, this is one of the directors." They thought I was crazy. And I sat down at the end and they brought me two water bottles and a towel because I was just drenched in sweat. I had run a 5k, 10k, something in between. "In the future," I was like, "all meetings need to be accessible by transit or walking. For people for whom a car isn't their first choice. I'm not here to make other politicians happy. I'm here to like speak on behalf of people who aren't in this meeting because we didn't make it accessible to them." My big thing has been, "why do we not have a bike path on the western span of the Bay Bridge?" Like we're literally- the center of the East Bay and San Francisco are accessible by bicycle to one another if we just finished it. And so I biked around the whole North Bay; it's 41 miles for me. I bike across the San Rafael bridge through Marin County,across the Golden Gate Bridge, through San Francisco. Because the Bay Metro Center is right at the foot of the Bay Bridge and I live at the foot of the other side of the Bay Bridge. It's an eight mile bike for me if the bike lane was completed, it's 41 miles to go around. People are like, "Oh, you just choose to do that." I'm like, "but this is about making choices. And like, this is about choices. And this district also gets to make choices about what we incentivize, how we spend money." So when CARB put out its Clean Cars For All program, my hand went up and I was like, "why are we only incentivizing car replacement with car? Why aren't we incentivizing car replacement with other things like transit passes and you know, a grant to buy a bike or some other incentive? Why don't we give people other choices?" Really, my point was, like, all the programs and policies we have, have to be accessible to all mode users if we're really an equitable society, and so that has grown. And I have people who bike segments of it with me, the people who meet me at a bridge and bike bridge to bridge with me, or meet me in San Francisco and bike the San Francisco segment. When we return, since I'm the chair of the board, now I'm going to actually invite staff to bike with me when we get to the Golden Gate Bridge, so that there's a staff contingent that bikes to the office together to show people, like, this is a doable thing. Like, you can bike across the city of San Francisco to work. It started mostly because I just wanted to make the point that, like, what we do is really not in line with our mission at times. I mean, the other thing is I'm grateful the governor just signed a bill and I want to thank Assemblymember Lee for running the bill. I wanted to add, and it's been- I've been arguing for four years, and the board voted to put it in the bill- to create an active transportation incentive program for district staff and board members. So we can actually design a way to compensate people for choosing to not use a car. We reimburse people their tolls, we reimburse them their gas mileage, we give them free parking at the Bay Metro Center. If you're an employee or a board member, you can drive from wherever you want. And you'd have free parking, free tolls, and gas. And I was like, "How is this modeling clean air?" Like, the attorney for the board at the time said, "Well, you know, it goes- there's a federal compensation rate for bicycling, it's 8.5 cents a mile." And he's like, "that's the compensation rate." So like, I would bike my 40 miles and I would essentially get $3.20, whatever it was, it would come out to some silly amount. You externalize all your costs if you're a car driver.
Your fuel then is a Clif Bar.
Yeah, you should buy my lunch, right? Like you should buy my lunch. People are like, "Oh, that's crazy. I'm like, "why? We pay for your car." Well, that's a reimbursable expense. And I'm like, "But why have we made it so like, you chose to take a lifestyle that you externalized on the planet through environmental harm. And so we say, "okay, thank you for doing that air district member, we're going to give you money to let you keep doing that, we're going to make it possible for it to not cost you to harm the planet." And then I go and use a carbon neutral net zero approach to come into the job. And "oh, my God, you want lunch? You're just greedy.? My employer offers parking in Oakland, $120 a month for a parking pass in Oakland for employees. I don't drive so I don't use it. So I went in, like five years ago. And I said, "I would like a bike share membership." And they're like, "well, we don't do that." I'm like, $23, for me to have a bike share membership." And I said, "or I could just take your $120 and make you pay for a parking space for me that I'll never use, just because I want the benefit. How about that?" And then they kind of were like, "Huh." I'm like, "Yeah, I could just say pay $120. And I will park my bike in the bike spot." They were great. They looked into it. They're like, "Okay, we'll pay for a bike membership." So I actually get now a bike membership. And I get $35 a month to use towards any health incentive or benefit I want. And I pay for access to the Oakland ice rink; I have paid for, like, you know, like one off classes, dance classes, things I want to do, because I have chosen my lifestyle, how to do it my way. And like, I'm not telling anybody who has a car, don't get your parking payment. But when people have suddenly, like, "oh, I can go do these other things with the money?" Like then they have to start thinking about what their money is going toward. I want the Air District to be modeling that and I want to start saying, "I got a lunch today downtown at this place." Why? my board is recognizing that I'm conferring a good thing on the economy and the health of the planet and rather than pay me a whole bunch, ton of money for paying for gasoline and tolls, they're gonna buy me a bunch that's healthy for me instead. And I walked here today and I'm happy. Like, why don't we do that? So that's the conversation I'm trying to change in my own way and we've made progress on it. I mean, CARB took up the Clean Car for All Program; you can get an E bike instead. So that's all progress. So I agree with Seamus, like, I do feel like there's some recognition that we are moving in the right way. Is it fast enough? Not to my liking. Is it soon enough? Absolutely not. But is it progress? Yes.
That's awesome. Incredible story. I wanna come up there actually and do the ride with you.
We'll bike to an Air District meeting. But they start at nine so I leave like 630 in the morning, but you know,
then we'll just, you'll show me the ride later in the day.
Correction after lunch, we'll go on to Sunday.
Yeah.
Making connections.
we should see some thing like, the whole network in one day...you know what I mean? Instead of... I love going to CicLAvia Hollywood to Hollywood. All of that is awesome. John, that's actually what you should come down for, the CicLAvia.
I need to.
Yeah, but it's supposed to highlight the network, you know. So let's just see the whole thing. One day like a monster CicLAvia, you know what I mean? Like the entire thing. Just shut it all down. Why not? I mean, why not? on a Saturday or a Sunday? Like, just in the middle? Like, who cares? Like people can... we did that when we widened the 405 freeway, like no one drove and there was like a mini baby boom. People, when they shut that down, there was a surge in babies nine months later.
when they shut down the 405, really?
Yeah.
This is a really appropriate data point for me, I need to know, I need to know your sources though offline, because I have a large announcement I'm going to be making in the next 30 to 60 days about a very big event. And I need to have this data so I can track it...
I'll look it up. I'm pretty sure that I heard it on KCRW or something, but I'll find it. Well, it's true. It is true. As far as I know. As far as you know.
I'm gonna trust other people to tell me that information.
Yeah. But that if we did it for that, you know, that was a stupid project, the 405 widening, it's a dumb project. Why can't we do it for CicLAvia, for a monster CicLAvia. That'd be amazing. The whole thing, the whole network, just do it for a day,
You and I should definitely talk because I have been working for four years on shutting down a major thing for a day. And I will tell you how many people have opinions about that you don't even know and it's not the businesses and it's not the politicians. It's like engineers and all kinds of other random people. So yeah, it's true, everybody, there's a whole army of people who are below the surface in public infrastructure spaces who have strong opinions about that. And you have to like, meet them in their workplaces and work with them. And they're fantastic people as soon as they realize like, I'm not here to harm your job. I'm here to do something good. And it's actually going to be good for all of us in different ways.
Yeah, that is true. I call it Bike-a to VICA now I am recruiting other government affairs people and reps from other offices to participate in Bike-a to VICA. So I'll send out, you know, "I'm doing it again!" And then the more the merrier. You know, tell me your route. I'd love to know your route. And in a real sense, I think that it demonstrates that people are willing to... a prominent business organization, VICA or any Chamber of Commerce, needs to see the benefits of complete streets for the people, they're representing the community, they're representing... the business community sees huge improvements if people are walking and biking and taking buses. It's like everybody thinks it's going to upend business if we get rid of parking. But the exact opposite is true. You'll see a vibrant business community, you'll see cafes, you'll see all these... less cars, more people, right, less cars, more people.
Those things are synonymous. Yeah, literally, they go together. It's true.
It is true. That's what it's about. It's about demonstrating and advocating, and just living it. It can be scary for people. But once you do, and you realize it's totally possible. And not only that, but it's like a much more exciting way of life. You know?
John and Seamus, we could go on but maybe we'll just stay in touch.
Next session I will plan a trip down. During COVID I went down to LA but it was mostly south LA and Long Beach and I did some rides. I went to Culver City and saw some folks and I...
Culver City's done a lot.
Yeah, I did all the River Trails which have their own pluses and minuses in their own ways but haven't been back to her district in a while. So-
if you come down it's like a hobby of mine is showing people weird routes and stuff.
We will do it, we will do it.
Cool.
cheers.
Okay, I am live at Florence night out at a bike valet in the middle of things. And I'm here with two bike valet volunteers from MassBike, Trey and Becky. Trey, is this your first bike valet?
Yep, it is.
When you first heard bike valet, did you know what a bike valet was?
No, I did not.
What did you think maybe it was, or how did you hear about it?
Well, I'm in the Honor Society in my high school, so we get emails about volunteer opportunities, and I just heard about it; and I thought sounds interesting, you know, because we get to be outside, and I thought it was gonna be, like, I was gonna like ride a bike to like a bike station and like lock it up, but we're just hanging them up on the stand. It's neat.
So if you came to an event like this, like Florence Night Out... what do you think of the event by the way?
Oh, I think the event's pretty good. I like the all the live music. It's great having all these, you know, local musicians going on and everything.
Do you ride a bike?
Yeah, I ride bikes. It's fun. If I went to an event like this, I would totally, you know, give my bike to bike valet, have it hang up and everything. It's really easy. You know, they'll call you if you're lost or something, I don't know. But yeah.
Are you local?
Yeah. I live in Chesterfield.
Well, thanks for coming out. You're gonna do it again, bike valet?
Yeah, probably. Yeah, this is fun. Nice, easy, volunteer hours, get to be outside, listen to music. It's great. I love it.
All right. Thanks for talking, Trey.
Yep.
And Becky!
Hi.
How did you find out about bike valet?
Well, I'm a member of MassBike and been a member for quite a few years. And I just got an email, and I thought, "Oh, that'd be a fun thing to do." And I was free. And so yeah, just signed up. And seems like it's really well organized. And it's been great.
Not everybody knows what a bike valet is. When you first heard it, did you know?
I had no idea. I thought car valet at a fancy restaurant. So it seemed, you know, interesting. I had no idea what was going to be involved, but I think it's very cool. Because you can just leave your bike here and not worry about it, not lock it up and know that it'll be here when you come back.
You're local?
Yeah, I live in Hadley.
Had you seen Florence Night Out before? Have you ever been?
Never been to Florence Night Out. So this is a new thing. I've been to Northampton Night Out, but never Florence Night Out.
Would you give your bike to a bike valet? Or would you feel like you should have it locked up?
Oh, no, I'd totally give my bike to a bike valet. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it seems, you know, very, very well organized. And yeah, I know, some of the people were a little concerned, they wanted to lock their bike up anyway. And of course, they could if they wanted to, but you know, it's got a big fence around it. And there're people watching and yeah, so it's great. Good service.
What's your bike life like?
I bike pretty much every day, not very far. But I love to bike and I live close to the bike path and Hadley so you know I can go to Amherst, Northampton or pretty much equidistant and I love it. No, it's great.
Well, thank you very much and I hope you enjoy the rest of your Florence Night Out.
Okay, thanks.
That was bike talk. Check us out at bike talk.org and get in touch. Support us if you like our work; we post every week, so check back next Tuesday. Have a good week.