The City of San José is evaluating its parking and TDM standards to improve consistency with Climate Smart San José and the Envision San José́ 2040 General Plan. At present, off-street minimum parking requirements are based on outdated transportation models aimed at satisfying peak parking demand. However, these requirements are largely inconsistent with the City’s expressed goals including housing and commercial affordability, decreased traffic congestion, greenhouse gas emissions, and walkability, safety, and urban infill opportunities.

City staff is reviewing the TDM requirements in the Zoning Ordinance (San Jose Municipal Code Title 19). TDM is a set of measures that encourage and make it easier for people to take transit, carpool, bike, walk, or otherwise shift away from driving alone. City staff will be proposing updates to the TDM measures in the future in order to reduce drive-alone trips, parking impact, and traffic congestion generated by new development projects. Staff will propose updates to the City’s TDM standards to Council in the future to take advantage of new mobility options such as micromobility, mobility-on-demand, and shared transportation services, major transit projects and bike infrastructure improvements, and urban infill projects in San Jose.

Minimum parking requirements are local laws that require new development projects to provide a certain number of off-street parking spaces. They are currently located in Section 20 of the City of San Jose’s municipal zoning code.

These requirements are one of the most significant factors shaping how our cities are built and laid out. Minimum parking requirements can be detrimental by filling cities with unused and underutilized parking spaces that don’t add value to the community, can push homes and businesses farther apart, impede the walkability of neighborhoods, raise the cost of housing, and place an especially costly burden on development and new businesses. By eliminating parking minimums, there will still be parking—but the market will decide how much parking is appropriate based on tenants’ needs and a project’s location. By removing minimum parking requirements, developers are incentivized to “right size” the parking that is appropriate for their project.

Transportation demand management (TDM) is a set of measures that make it easier for people to take transit, carpool, bike, walk, or otherwise shift away from driving alone. By updating its TDM standards in all new development, the City aims to reduce drive-alone trips, parking impact, and traffic congestion by increasing accessibility and the provision of alternative transportation options and increasing accessibility throughout the City, which benefits the environment and public health, and can ease congestion. Examples of TDM include:

1. Car share vehicles
2. Subsidized transit passes
3. Bike share membership
4. End-of-trip bicycle facilities, such as secure parking for bikes, along with showers, lockers, and changing rooms 
5. Cash-out parking- where parking is provided for free, give employees the option to receive the cash value of free parking in-lieu of their parking space 
6. Unbundled parking- parking costs are detached from residential rents or commercial leases. Residents and employees would have the option to pay separately for parking space access. This allows households to decide if they would like to take on the expense of a parking space, as opposed to that parking cost automatically being bundled into the lease or sale price

Modernizing the City of San José’s parking and TDM standards are both strategies to help achieve many of the goals and community values expressed in the Envision 2040 General Plan and Climate Smart San José Plan. Eliminating minimum parking requirements enables “right sized” parking, such as low-parking development where the market supports it, while TDM can provide new residents, commuters, and visitors more travel options to reduce the need for driving alone and parking" Additional areas this policy seeks to address include:

• Growing impacts to San José’s transportation system: San José’s population is expected to grow by 40 percent in the next two decades, highlighting the need to minimize the impacts of new residents, commuters and visitors on the city’s transportation system.
• Affordability: Rightsizing parking requirements lowers the cost of construction and housing rents and ensures more efficient use of land and other community resources.
• Enhanced Access: By providing a series of TDM measures in new projects, more car dependent trips can be shifted to alternative modes such as walking, biking, transit, and shared modes.
• Improved Public Health: When trips are made by active modes, primarily trips made by walking and bicycling, harmful air pollutants and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are reduced.
• Climate Friendly: Shifting commuting and travel habits away from single-occupancy vehicles trips to other means of travel will help reduce the amount of GHG being generated by the transportation sector.