In this May 22, 2018, some tenants park on the street at the Bellevue Crossing apartment complex near U.S. Highway 20 east of NE 27th Street. 

Thirteen Oregon cities and one county are suing the state’s land development department over a sweeping set of policies meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Bend is not one of them.

Gov. Kate Brown’s Executive Order 20-04 from March 2020 mandated certain state agencies prioritize climate-conscious policies that would adhere to the state’s greenhouse gas emission reduction goals. Those goals aim to reduce emissions at least 45% below 1990 levels by 2035 and by at least 80% by 2050. In turn, the Department of Land Conservation and Development adopted the Climate Friendly and Equitable Communities Rules, which begin with parking reforms.

“The rules are pretty clear that they want cities to look and function a certain way. When you tie the rules together — all of them — they’re trying to create areas that are more dense where you can do the things you need to do without your car,” said Brian Rankin, a long-range planning manager with the city of Bend.

According to the state Department of Land Conservation and Development, Oregon is especially off-track in reducing pollution from transportation, which accounts for about 38% of Oregon’s pollution.

The city of Bend currently has parking minimums and maximums, which dictate how many and how few parking spaces a development can have.

If approved by the Bend City Council, changes aligning with the new climate rules would eliminate parking minimums, allowing developers to decide how many parking spaces to put in a development instead of the city. The market will drive the number of spaces, said Pauline Hardie, a senior planner with the city.

Removing parking minimums is just the first step. Bolstering walking, biking and transit systems and infrastructure could eventually incentivize less car use, Hardie said.

“Down the road, I think the goal is to see fewer people driving, and that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Hardie said.

In the meantime, Hardie said the city is working on improving sidewalk connectivity and incentivizing better infrastructure for alternative modes of transportation.

The City Council was presented with three options at its Nov. 16 meeting for parking reform.

Option 1, the most straightforward and exhaustive of the three options, removes all parking minimums in Bend.

The other two options require a more onerous, piecemeal approach to either reducing parking policies or adopting more parking restrictions, but parking minimums would be kept in place. Councilors expressed their interest in Option 1, which would eliminate all parking minimums. If minimums were kept in place, cities like Bend with over 100,000 people would have to charge at least 50 cents per day for 10% of on-street parking spots.

Despite the streamlined nature of Option 1, city staff identified a major gap in the possibility of removing parking minimums. State land conservation and development failed to account for Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant parking. Under current rules, if no parking is required, then no ADA parking is required either.

The council has the ability to create parking requirements specifically for ADA-compliant parking spots that mirror the accessibility requirements of a business or development.

At the meeting on Nov. 16, some councilors were hesitant to add ADA-compliant parking rules because of the propensity for unnecessary parking spots especially among buildings that aren’t required to be ADA compliant.

“It’s important to think about the need for van-accessible parking,” said Councilor Melanie Kebler. “It’s also important to think about a lot of folks who are disabled use transit, don’t have a car, can’t afford a car.”

Central Oregon LandWatch, a local land use and environmental watchdog organization, encouraged the council’s adoption of the parking reforms in a joint letter with Bend Bikes and the Environmental Center. They also recommended the council consider “designated parallel on-street parking spaces for ADA use.”

“It’s a balancing act,” said Corie Harlan, the organization’s cities and towns program manager, in an email. “Removing parking minimums in areas like the Bend Central District removes barriers to the types of development we need and want — including more affordable housing, mixed use development and safer transportation routes for people who walk, bike, and roll — in the heart of town.”

By designating ADA parking in areas like Bend’s Central District, which stretches along the Third Street corridor from roughly NE Franklin Avenue to NE Olney Avenue, the city can become more welcoming to people with disabilities, Harlan said.

The council is expected to revisit the parking reforms and hold a public hearing at its Dec. 7 meeting.

Later on, the city will begin studying what the climate rules classify as “Climate Friendly Areas,” which are dense, mixed-use areas where people can access their daily needs without having to drive, according to the land conservation and development department. Potential areas should be studied by the end of 2023 and adopted as climate friendly areas by the end of 2024, per department guidelines. The first phase of parking reforms will first be adopted by the end of 2022, and more by the end of June 2023.

The proposed parking rule changes aren’t popular with everyone.

“In a city like Bend that is car dependent without efficient public transportation, it’s a fantasy that by eliminating parking mandates you will force people to give up their cars,” wrote Bend resident Roberta Silverman in a public comment.

“The city should focus instead on measures to build out the electric vehicle charging infrastructure since the reality is EVs will soon be replacing polluting gasoline-powered cars,” she said.

Electric vehicle-focused incentives will come with the second round of reforms in March. The land conservation and development department envisions 90% of new vehicles in Oregon being electric by 2035. They will require new private multifamily residential or mixed-use developments to install enough charging stations to serve 40% of all parking spaces.

Rankin, the city’s long-range planner, said the climate rules acknowledge that just driving around in more electric vehicles or making the grid more efficient won’t create the kind of substantial change needed to meet the state’s greenhouse gas emission reduction goals.

“The state believes we have to change the way cities are designed and operate,” Rankin said.