The Dallas City Council is moving forward with reforming the City’s parking regulations, which are nearly six decades old.
Council Member Chad West has spearheaded the efforts to overhaul the City’s parking code.
West has proposed eliminating minimum parking requirements throughout the City. Wednesday’s resolution directs City Manager T.C. Broadnax to “begin planning and implementing actions to reduce parking in the city and provide briefings on the status of parking reduction and the elimination of minimum parking requirements.”
West said he wants to renew the focus on parking reform as the issue has stagnated in the City Plan Commission since 2019.
Council Member Cara Mendelsohn qualified her support of the move, noting staff should develop a plan that specifically tailors to parts of the City where eliminating parking requirements makes sense.
“I’ll second that,” West said. “It doesn’t work for all parts of the city.”
During a briefing last week, Mendelsohn pushed back on the blanket elimination of parking requirements as a “one-size-fits-all” approach, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
West said last week that developers are required to install excessive parking in apartment complexes. City code states that one parking space is required per bedroom, meaning that a two-bedroom apartment with a single parent and a child would have a mandated two parking spaces despite only needing one.
However, Mendelsohn said it is more common in her district to have multiple adults living in a one-bedroom apartment, resulting in a deficiency of parking spaces. This lack of dedicated spaces translates to an excess of street parking that causes problems for residents and public safety departments, she explained.
The same resolution passed Wednesday also recognized this Friday as “Park(ing) Day” — when City departments, residents, businesses, and other organizations transform individual parking spaces downtown into miniature parks. The City has designated September 15 to be Parking Day each year.
