Wichita’s Parking Problems and other Mid-Sized Misperceptions
Wichita’s Parking Problems and other Mid-Sized Misperceptions
A long-overdo (and much too long) local comment
[I’ve been meaning to use this space to talk about both the big meaning and the particular details of Wichita’s proposed downtown parking plan, and the controversy around it, for a few weeks. This weekend, partly thanks to the prompt of writing a much shorter piece for Insight Kansas this September, I finally got around to it. Hooray!]
Can a city that isn’t, and collectively doesn’t collectively think of it as, a bustling and busy major metropolis get away with imposing rules that make perfect urban sense but which also, in the minds of many, aren’t appropriate—and indeed, to their way of thinking, are downright damaging—to the sort of city the place in question actually is? In a week, the Wichita city council has the opportunity to struggle with exactly that question, which to my mind is lurking below the more specific one on the agenda.
That specific issue is parking in downtown Wichita, and whether, in the face of an apparently massive backlash to my city’s announced plan to (among other things) start installing metered parking throughout the downtown area, the city council will move forward with their proposed solutions to these problems, problems which the city has studied for years all while they’ve continued to mount, or else find some way to shelve the whole thing. Since I’m quoted in that last article as one of the seemingly near-non-existence Wichitans in favor of the city’s overall plan—if not every detail of it—I ought to elaborate on position somewhat. But first, it’s important to emphasize that this dispute is, I think, at least as much about what people believe is “fit” for our mid-sized city, as it is about free parking itself.
I suspect that a number of related issues could serve as the pretext for this kind of argument in any number of similarly sized cities. Whatever the issue, the dispute—dispute informed by doubts and defensiveness about a city’s size, its wealth, its limits, its future--might well develop in mostly the same ways. America’s mid-sized cities—or “mittelpolitan” cities, as I call them—house tens of millions of people, and are as historically, geographically, and demographically diverse as are America’s dominant urban regions. But that said, the bulk of mittlepolitan places over the past twenty years (see the U.S. Census graph below) have been and mostly remain cities that stand alone, separate from any great, multiplying urban agglomerations, with relatively stable populations ranging between 100,000 and 500,000 people.
Lacking the sprawling interconnectivity so often associated with America’s larger urban regions and their surrounding suburbs and supporting cities, and often rising up alone in the midst of a mostly rural expanse, a sense of isolation—perhaps constructively resourceful one which pushes a local DIY spirit, but more often, I fear, a defensively isolationist and self-denigrating one—is often present among the only slowly changing populations of these places, or at least such is my observation. More relevant to these policy issues, these cities may enjoy at least minimal air or train connections, but likely (particularly in the South, the Midwest, the Great Plains, and the Intermountain West) are instead mostly car-dependent, with state and federal highways stretching out from the city limits in all directions. And normally, those car-centric developments define the transportation environment within the city as well, with profoundly warping effects on budgets, zoning, construction, and, of course, parking. In other words, for cities like Wichita, and dozens of others like it, thanks to the suburban pattern having colonized nearly the entirety of the city’s footprint, with usually only a few, mostly downtown, neighborhoods and spaces providing an alternative, anything having to do with automobile traffic is something of a third rail, fought over with outsized and prickly defensiveness.
I don’t want to suggest that this arguably blinkered set of perceptions are entirely irrational. On the contrary, there are many reasons why cities of this sort, especially in the aforementioned parts of the country (Kansas definitely included), are heavy car-dependent, some of which are reflective of patterns of development driven by economic, political, and demographic realities reaching more than a century into the past. But nonetheless, misperceptions can really matter.
Smaller and slower-growing cities are simply not what most people think of when they imagine having to balance genuine urban concerns against the convenience of cars. The sort of “multi-modal solutions” to the entwined problems of urban access, street pollution, traffic, and maintenance costs typical in larger metropolitan areas usually include public transportation, pedestrian and bicycle routes, variously priced street parking and garage parking arrangements, road design elements to prevent speeding and overcrowding and more. For many Kansans, these are the sorts of policies they recognize as necessary, and maybe even beneficial, in Kansas City’s agglomeration of Overland Park and Olathe, Leavenworth and Lenexa…but probably not anywhere else in the Sunflower State. Comparing how Wichita manages its business to Kansas City—and, for the record, Kansas City has an extensive and relatively well-managed system of metered parking, free parking at select locations at select times, paid parking garages, and more--strikes many as plain nonsensical, because all that just doesn’t fit the urban reality which they perceive Wichita as possessing. Dion Lefler, an award-winning journalist for the Wichita Eagle and a friend I have great respect for, nonetheless speaks for many who oppose Wichita’s efforts to better manage its downtown urban infrastructure—in the same way they oppose other proactive urban solutions like road diets and traffic calming—when he writes that the “only advantage Wichita’s downtown has” is that “it’s easy to get to and there’s plenty of parking when you do.”
And yet, looking at and building comparisons to urban solutions of Kansas City (and Tulsa, and Des Moines, and Lawrence, and Omaha, and Oklahoma City) is exactly what the city of Wichita has done over a period of several years, and rightly so. Because Wichita, like all sorts of smaller or mid-sized cities across the country, face the same problems and patterns which America’s great cities do, even if those problems, because of our slow growth, manifest differently. Regardless of size, the built environments of cities—their streets especially—have costs in terms of maintenance, in terms of the development options and commercial opportunities (or obstacles), to say nothing of in terms of overall aesthetics and quality of life. There are, of course, a host of ways to respond to, cover, or otherwise manage those costs; there are general approaches (in the form of overall taxation), and there are piecemeal approaches, which might include specific arrangements hammered out by city engineers, developers, street designers, renters, and landlords, in terms of how to pay to for parking, how to manage traffic flow in different parts of the overall urban space, and more. Moreover, some of those latter arrangements may be long-standing, while others may have to be constantly renegotiated as businesses flourish or fail, housing options expand or contract, and traffic flows and transportation options change. If all that sounds terribly complicated, you’re right; it is, and there are multiple serious people in Wichita’s government who have wrestled with that complicatedness for a very long time.
The long effort that went into developing these parking recommendations isn’t in itself a reason to accept it all as an excellent plan, of course. But it is a reason to approach it with an open mind. There are serious criticisms to be made of the mix of approaches which the city council has settled upon (though now may be fleeing) for better managing some of the urban resources and challenges present in our downtown, and many who have come out to the public discussions have presented exactly that. But the majority of the negative noise on social media has been, from what I’ve been able to read, primarily a continuing repetition of excuses reflective of harshly negative assumptions about Wichita and the people who live here. We’re too cheap, apparently, since supposedly no one will be willing to pay $1.50 to park for 2 hours in front of a restaurant downtown; they’ll just eat elsewhere. We apparently can’t handle change either, since no business that built its budget around the assumption that the adjacent vacant lot would remain functionally free forever will be able to survive if it becomes paid; once people see that meter, no one will ever park there, and thus patronize the business, ever again. This kind of stuff can be multiplied ad infinitum, and most of it gives no credit to the ability of a city to adapt—something that, amazingly enough, even mid-sized, slow growth cities can and regularly in fact do.
So what can one say in favor of the parking plan? Simply that something like it is necessary and appropriate, even if Wichita isn’t Kansas City (or Tulsa, or De Moines, or Lawrence, or Omaha, or Oklahoma City, etc., every one of which, like KC, have various metered parking arrangements around their downtowns). The primary reason for this is straightforward: fully 60% of all the land in Wichita’s downtown is either untaxed empty parcels or parking of one sort or another (see the image below, created from the city’s data by Clayton Pearson). Some of that parking space is owned outright and maintained by the businesses or apartments adjacent to it, or is included in an existing parking district responsible for it, or is already managed effectively by the city. But all that describes only a minority of these lots, unfortunately, leaving the rest essentially unattended and mostly empty (though occasionally overused). And even those which fit into the above categories are often a financial drain, either because the parking district in question hasn’t been able to maintain itself (Wichita’s Old Town parking fund, thanks in part to the turnover and departure of key tenants, isn’t receiving the contributions it needs to meet its obligations), or because the city itself has consistently deferred maintenance necessary to keep the lots in good shape and those few areas which are metered actually functioning properly. The result, in the end, is not merely a financial drain; it is a small but persistent bias in favor of non-development. Even if having free or unenforced paid parking near your building is functionally a pretty small post-tax subsidy, it still is one nonetheless. That means that absent a strong case for some market-demanded development in some particular place—which does happen sometimes, even in Wichita--the owners, landlords, businesspeople, and others occupying all that downtown space, all of whom have long since figured the small subsidy of free parking into their cost-balance sheets, are likely to be influenced, in a slow-growth city like ours, by that tipping of the scales, thus contributing to businesses choosing not to expand, owners choosing not to sell, developers not pursuing in-fill proposals, and more.
That, I think, is the best case for respecting and trying to work with (and put pressure upon!) the city to make the best of this plan: Wichita may not be a busy metropolis with a cool downtown (though I think our downtown, and our cultural amenities in general, are still a lot cooler than many Wichitans normally give it and them credit for), but it is still an urban environment, and an overbuilt one at that, which means that the costs and consequences of undeveloped land and unmaintained parking are something the city is right to try to bring some consistency and revenue-generating to. This plan is an attempt to do just that, and deserves support so far as it goes. But how far is that, exactly? Not nearly far enough.
I have two general complaints with the plan as it has been rolled out so far, and two general concerns. None of these are reason to abandon it or put it off from another year or more; even if the odds of getting the city council to change its mind on either of my two complaints are extremely small, I’d still favor moving forward, even if somewhat reluctantly. But still, my complaints and concerns, which parallel some of the more serious reservations expressed by those who have thought seriously about what the city is trying to do, are worth being heard.
First my concerns. At a public discussion of the plan conducted by Assistant City Manager Troy Anderson at KMUW in downtown Wichita, he came close—at least on my hearing—to apologizing for the lack of detail in the plan. The plan includes a likely price range for metered parking (from $.75 to $2 an hour), and a likely increase in parking violation tickets to up to $30, but so much else—handicapped parking? surge pricing? discounts or alternative arrangements for those who work downtown? for those who live there?—is left completely unclear. Anderson said that he understood the people want clarity about what has been developed, that their idea was to receive feedback about the plan and use that to refine details, and he promised that such details would roll out within a couple of weeks. That hasn’t happened, probably because multiple members of the city council may be backtracking in the face of opposition to the plan. Now I’m concerned that the aforementioned clarity won’t be forthcoming at all, meaning the plan will be allowed to die, or will be quietly put in place months from now as a toothless reform, to be arbitrarily expanded upon later without input from citizens.
Another concern is that, while obviously I believe Wichita should be properly engaged with these urban realities, it would be foolish to get into those detailed questions about meter rates, times, and locations without being focused centrally on the existing problem, as opposed to some aspirational one. Anderson said that one of the primary drivers of the plan is that Wichita’s downtown was going to experience “exponential growth” in the coming years; the lack of evidence for such thus far he blamed on “extenuating circumstances.” All of which, I’m sorry, is just more of the same booster talk. I’m quite happy that KansasCOM, the downtown’s College of Osteopathic Medicine, seems to be mostly moving along in terms of its projected construction and development, and its association with other area schools likely really will add at least some numbers to Wichita’s population in its urban core. But given that even the Community Investment Plan which the city depended upon in developing its projections for downtown’s population up through 2035 has itself had to be scaled back in the face of continued slow growth throughout the city, I’d much rather see city leaders and planners orient their hopes around the problem currently on the ground, not the one they see in their dreams.
Those are concerns; I also have two outright critiques. First, it seems to me that the city has been purposefully ambiguous in how much of this plan is still up for negotiation. City Manager Bob Layton has agreed that the plan cannot be a “one size fits all” arrangement—which, of course, fits with what the city has already done in rejecting a general increase in property taxes (our low mill levels are apparently sacrosanct—the goal, said Anderson, was to “better utilize property taxes without raising them”) to cover these costs, and instead turning to pay-to-park and other arrangements. But are those “other arrangements” going to involve particular deals with owners and renters, and will there be transparency in knowing what they are? In our meeting, Anderson insisted that there would be no loopholes in the plan; that all would be affected fairly and equally throughout the downtown area. But if that’s so, then why simultaneously emphasize that small business-owners who are fearful for the plan’s effect on their bottom-line should meet with city staff and see what can be worked out? Is the Old Town parking district entirely going away, or is there going to be allowances made to businesses that have already paid in? If the city’s approach to addressing this issue is going to be a piecemeal one—and that seems inevitable, assuming anything happens at all—then the city needs to be willing to own that and make the specific, partial cases for shifting obligations and rates it would involve. Again, I would emphasize that this is no different than what has been worked out in dozens of other cities; no one is surprised to be visiting Lawrence or OKC and discovering that the two-hour free limit along one street might be only one-hour on another, or that meters which run until 6pm near a park only run to 4pm alongside city buildings. This is a complex reality; if the city is accepting of working through those complexities, they should say so.
Of course, one possible reason why there is confusion—or reluctance—on the part of the city may be that ultimately, they aren’t going to be the decider here, or at least not the only one. Car Park, the Idaho-based company that the city has committed to pay over $2 million a year to handle “Operation and Management of Parking Garages, Lots and Meter Collection,” is aiming to collect on what is estimated to be $3.3 million a year in parking revenue, which is more than twice what has been collected in past—meaning that, however generous one feels towards the no-doubt-sincere professionals running this company, the city’s ability to pay them is partly a function of how well Car Park does its job, which presumably puts some incentive upon Car Park to make sure rates are, shall we say, “sufficient” to their needs. When I asked Anderson about this, he assured me that rates would be decided via the “triangle” of Car Park, the city manager’s office, and the transit department,” all of whom will “help guide” parking rates, which is partly consoling—but only partly. One can speak all you want about the “efficiencies” of public-private partnerships, but it still bothers me that this task of urban repair and improvement, which needs to be presented in terms of civic responsibility if it is going to be accepted, is actually going to be enforced by private contractors (and the city ordinance had to be changed to allow for that too). It’s worth noting that the plan itself says nothing contracting out enforcement, instead spending some time talking about the city should expand its program of parking ambassadors, improve enforcement technology, and “shift the majority of public parking operations and policy under the responsibility of the Transit Department” (p. 27). Things change after the ink dries, unfortunately.
This has gone on too long, so let me wrap up. I have serious concern and criticisms of this plan, none more so than the simple fact that the city has not yet done the work, or at least has not yet made public the work, which would provide downtown residents, business owners, and more with the clarity which a civic shift of this size requires. It’s possible that if we had all those details, my concerns would be resolved—or they might be even greater. But even if the latter, I cannot imagine them being great enough for me to turn entirely against the idea of doing what every responsible city should and, almost always, does do: manage its urban space in part through thoughtfully figuring out to price out its cost. There are a lot of problems with Wichita’s parking, but they can be figured out; plans like these are a step in the right direction, and I have nothing but respect for the people doing the hard, quantitative work behind it. But the misperception that the residents of Wichita just aren’t the sort of city-dwellers who can afford, or would ever even want to contemplate, this kind of civic responsibility—that’s a problem which quantitative work can’t solve. That’s something whose resolution can only come—if it comes at all, I think—through practice. This is a practice long overdue in our city; here’s hoping the city re-applies itself to bringing clarity and honest assumptions (not aspirational booster ones) to this plan, and then stands behind its own work. Wichita deserves that level of leadership, I hope.