Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Cars per unit

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

On Mon, 30 Sep 2002, Stacia Leech - e-mail address: garykent [at] uniserve.com
wrote: 

> The Roberts Creek Cohousing Project (south western B.C. Canada) is in the
> first stages of zoning amendment application.  We are asking to have our
> parking area reduced to 1.5 parking stalls per unit.  We have been advised
> by the planning department that:
> "unless supported by a detailed investigation of potential vehicle use, the
> number and size of parking stalls should be allocated in accordance with
> existing provisions of the zoning"  (two parking stalls per unit).

In light of my recent post about "[C-L]_Street Reclaiming" 
http://csf.Colorado.EDU/cohousing/2002/msg01734.html , I was also hopeful
that there would be posts about cohousing communities needing fewer cars /
parking places per unit.  I remember car sharing and reduced car use being
mentioned here.

I did a quick search of the archives for "parking" and "cars":
http://nzpp.virtualave.net/coho/search.pl?string=parking
http://nzpp.virtualave.net/coho/search.pl?string=cars
and found a few reports of communities that built 1-2 parking places per
unit with varying levels of saticfaction at various numbers.
They reported being required to have 1-3.5 (!) per unit

The minimum number of parking spaces that makes sense depends on your
location, (urban, suburban, within walking distance of facilities), public
transport availability, commitment of community members to minimize car
use etc etc. Some communities are commited to reduce car use but it
seems the exception.  And could change over time. 

It was unclear from your web site, where you fall on this scale:
http://www.cohousing.ca/robertscreek/
Somewhere in the middle to the more suitable to fewer than 2 cars per
unit, I'd guess.  Regulation is another matter...

One possibility is to fudge the definition of parking in terms of surface,
lines, actual use.  As I recall Doyle Street Cohousing, Emeryville,
California built parking on their small site that they agreed internally
not to use for parking and put movable planters to make it not look
like parking so they could use it as more of a patio. 
See http://www.emeryville-cohousing.org/  (I did not see anything about
parking)

A few excerpts from my seacrh: 

In http://csf.colorado.edu/cohousing/jun98/0131.html
RoseWind Cohousing in Port Townsend WA  (lot dev. model)

 A parking place needn't be paved or even gravelled to be functional, 
 especially for overflow numbers. Some of our homes showed two on-lot 
 parking places on their plans, but left them in grass, and rarely put 
 cars there. 


New View (Acton MA)
http://csf.colorado.edu/cohousing/jun98/0133.html

 We never painted in the parking space lines and numbers shown on our 
 plan. Generally, it looks like people are parking tighter than they 
 would if there were lines, so we end up with more space. 

Fred whose 2 adult household owns 1 car and many bicycles

--
Fred H. Olson  Minneapolis,MN 55411   (near north Mpls)
fholson [at] cohousing.org 612-588-9532 (7am-10pm Cent time) 
List manager of Cohousing-L & Nbhd-tc  Ham radio:WB0YQM          
More info:   http://www.mtn.org/~fholson/sig-detail.htm



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