Parking Reform and Management
Urban Growth Boundary ExpansionCompact Mixed Use AreasParking Reform and ManagementEfficient Industrial OperationsTo create vibrant, walkable mixed-use areas with less driving, it helps to reduce mandates that require new developments to provide parking and to manage parking availability. One way to do this is limiting the amount of parking spaces on or near streets designed to be friendly to bikers, walkers and rollers.
For example, zoning codes could require that private parking must be located behind businesses or restricted to parking garages. This helps make the street more vibrant near those businesses, which benefits them and their customers who walk, bike or roll.
Charging a fee to park in some areas of a community can also help. Parking fees can generate revenue for cities. Fees can also encourage workers and shoppers to use non-car transportation like bikes or public transit.
Parking reform and management: emissions reduction vision
By 2050, at least 25% of workers in Oregon’s larger urban areas pay to park with fees that are about three times higher than current parking fees.
How Oregon is doing
Oregon’s larger urban areas and downtowns have parking management programs and fees in place. The Department of Land Conservation and Development analyzed parking strategies and provided guidance for local governments on parking management programs.
Parking management progress
New Oregon standards reduce how much residential parking can be mandated by local governments in larger urban areas. Reducing one-size-fits-all, costly parking mandates can reduce housing costs and increase business development. Particularly when that new housing is in mixed-use areas and transit corridors.
Oregon’s Transportation and Growth Management program helps cities and counties reduce or eliminate off-street parking mandates and develop parking management plans to increase land use efficiency for parking. Cities and counties in these urban areas also track progress on parking management within mixed use areas.
Parking fees lag behind
Parking fees have not kept up with inflation and are often too low to encourage non-driving modes of travel.
How Oregon can improve
The state could provide grant funding to help cities implement actions in the 2026 Parking Management Jump Start Guide.
The state can also support cities and large employers with resources to implement workplace commute programs that help workers with commute options, like discounted transit passes and lockers for bicyclists.
Employers can also use parking “cash out” programs that reimburse employees or provide a “transportation wallet” of non-driving incentives.
Urban Growth Boundary ExpansionCompact Mixed Use AreasParking Reform and ManagementEfficient Industrial Lands