NW Portland parking

The city of Portland allocates 51 percent of the revenue generated from parking meters installed on and near Northwest 21st and 23rd avenues for neighborhood transportation improvements.

(Gordon Oliver/Special to The Oregonian/OregonLive)

On-street parking in Northwest Portland serves many masters – residents, visitors, businesses, and Portland Timbers fans among them. Unfortunately, it serves none of them well.



Now, in the latest attempt to more closely align parking demand with supply, a city-sanctioned parking advisory committee is expected to recommend tripling the annual on-street parking permit fee from $60 to $180. It also is considering a cap on new parking permits, which are now available to residents, employees and visitors who meet eligibility requirements. Already, the number of neighborhood permits issued outpaces available spots 2 to 1.



The Northwest Parking District Stakeholder Advisory Committee will meet Wednesday afternoon to consider its recommendations to the Portland Bureau of Transportation. The agency, which has final say on the matter, is expected to endorse the recommendations, said spokesman Dylan Rivera.



The fee increase would have a low-income exemption and raise a projected $600,000, which the neighborhood could use on transportation improvements and incentives to reduce auto use, said Rick Michaelson, the advisory committee chairman. The city also allocates 51 percent of the revenue from parking meters installed last year on and near Northwest 21st and 23rd avenues for neighborhood transportation improvements.





If you go

What: The Northwest Parking District Stakeholder Advisory Committee is expected to recommend tripling the annual on-street parking permit fee from $60 to $180. It also is considering a cap on new parking permits.

When: 3:30-5:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 19

Where: Friendly House, 1737 N.W. 26th Ave.

But easing the shortage is by no means simple, and the search for solutions is entangled in competing viewpoints about the neighborhood's future. A central debate is whether the city should compel developers to include parking in new multifamily projects, or whether that requirement would increase housing costs.



Michaelson would like to see more parking, and he hopes to find a balance that eases parking congestion and keeps car ownership affordable to those who need one, even occasionally, for their daily lives.



"I'm concerned that if parking is not handled, only the upper middle class that can afford permits and the poor who don't work and don't need a car will be able to live here," said the longtime community activist.

But housing advocates contend that a parking mandate for new residential construction in the densely populated neighborhood would simply drive up costs at a time when affordable homes are in short supply. The Portland City Council agreed with that assessment last July, unanimously rejecting minimum parking requirements for new condo and apartment buildings.



A parking mandate for new residential buildings would raise rents by hundreds of dollars a month, whether tenants own cars or not, said Tony Jordan, founder of Portlanders for Parking Reform. Also, developers typically build fewer units when they're required to include parking, he said.



Jordan favors setting on-street rates closer to those of private parking lots, which charge as much as $150 a month in the Northwest district.



"At its core, parking is not free," Jordan said. When we consider on-street parking, its parking that is subsidized by the community as a whole."



More permits than spaces



Already the city has issued some 9,000 permits for 4,600 on-street parking spaces in Zone M, which encompasses a large portion of Northwest Portland. Some see the permits as little more than "hunting licenses" for scarce spaces. A parking consultant concluded last year that 2,000 permits would have to be eliminated to achieve the ideal balance of supply and demand.



The overbooking isn't as extreme as it might appear: Visitor permits have four-hour time limits, and some businesses use them infrequently.



But daytime and evening parking scarcity isn't the only problem. Overnight on-street parking has grown increasingly scarce with the apartment and condo housing boom. The permit system, created to prevent commuters from parking on the edges of the business district, doesn't have tools for managing nighttime parking.



Neighborhood leaders are in the early stages of working with businesses and churches willing to open unused nighttime spaces to residents.



Shortages spark anger



To some residents, the steady addition of new buildings with little or no parking has become an emotional tipping point in the neighborhood's parking conflict.



When talk circulated in the neighborhood that the annual fee could go as high as $300, nearly 100 people, many of them renters, showed up on short notice for an afternoon committee meeting. Many testified against the increase even after learning the panel was actually considering $180 a year.



The crowd broke into applause when one speaker blamed developers who built apartments without parking. Others disputed the argument that the lack of a parking mandate reduced housing costs, saying that rents in new buildings were high even without parking spaces.



Carrie Miller, an Oregon Health & Science University nursing student who rents in the neighborhood, learned of the possible fee increase from her landlord and attended the meeting.



Miller typically bikes and uses transit to get around, but says she still drives to visit her parents in Central Oregon and that she'll soon need a car for clinical placements. She's purchased a parking permit and a guest permit for visitors. If the fee had been $180 or more when she moved into the neighborhood, "it might have affected my decision to move here," she said.



"I do think the cost is going to disproportionately affect students like me," she said. "It will dictate the future ... makeup of the neighborhood because it will affect who will move in."



The fee increases, if endorsed by the committee and approved by PBOT, would take effect in August.



-- Gordon Oliver

Special to The Oregonian/OregonLive



