Organize, organize, organize
Meyer’s Shoup stunt paid off, but achieving parking reform at scale had to wait.
After Minneapolis eliminated parking requirements in less-than-50-unit buildings within a half-mile radius of transit stations, advocates set their sights on a more far-reaching ban, this time leveraging an upcoming election to encourage candidates to put parking reform on their platforms.
Meyer himself was eventually elected to the Parks and Recreation board, which lead to a spot on the local planning commission, too. But he stresses that any advocate can use the campaign cycle to help propel big changes, whether or not she runs for office herself; the candidates he helped lobby as an election delegate, for instance, were instrumental in getting parking reform included in the city’s far-reaching climate action plan,
Minneapolis 2040.
“The difference between 2015 and what we did in May is kind of like the difference between civil unions and marriage equality,” jokes Meyer. “We have enough transit in Minneapolis that most of the most substantial effects of [the policy] were already in place the first time around, but it still wasn’t good enough. We really wanted to establish the principle that we should not force people to build auto infrastructure against their will — period.”
Point to other cities’ success
Minneapolis’s incremental progress was frustrating, but it
was progress — and in the meantime, it inspired its sister city speed up its own efforts.
St. Paul’s own parking reform advocates were quick to encourage their own electeds to follow the Mini-Apple’s lead and expand exemptions for parking requirements beyond the areas adjacent to city’s famous Green Line light rail stations, where the city had already eliminated minimums
roughly a decade before.
City leaders say that policy succeeded in reducing parking at projects in that region almost 30 percent while encouraging a flurry of new development, but leaders had dragged their feet on instituting wider reforms.