The parking rules changed on July 1. Here is why the counties were right to worry.

As of July 1, Virginia localities can no longer require more than a set amount of parking for new housing within a half-mile of a transit station. The General Assembly passed the change this spring over the objections of the Virginia Association of Counties, and the governor's amendments narrowed it before it became law.¹

The intent is reasonable. Parking is expensive to build, and requiring more of it than a project needs raises the cost of every home above it. We agree that a locality should not demand spaces nobody will use.

The cars don't disappear

The trouble is the assumption behind the cap: that people who live near a station won't own cars. In Northern Virginia, most of them do. The region's commute remains the worst in the country, transit covers a fraction of the trips people actually make, and a household with two working adults in Fairfax or Loudoun usually has two cars, station or no station.²

When a building is approved with fewer spaces than its residents need, the cars go somewhere. They go onto the surrounding streets, into the lots of nearby businesses, and into the spaces of the neighbors who were there first. Streets that were designed to move traffic fill with parked cars, and traffic slows. The cost of the shortfall is moved from the developer to the neighborhood.

Transit works best when you can drive to it

There is a second problem, and it cuts against the law's own goal. For most Northern Virginians, the practical way to use a train is to drive to it. A commuter in western Loudoun or southern Prince William who can park at a station keeps the simple part of the trip in the car and leaves the worst of the traffic, the stretch into Arlington and the District, to the train. That is exactly the behavior the region should want more of. Every car that parks at a station is a car that isn't on I-66 at 8 a.m.

Squeeze the parking out of the area around a station and that commuter has two choices: circle the neighborhood looking for a space, or skip the train and drive the whole way. Neither helps the station, the neighborhood or the highway. Parking near transit is not the enemy of transit. For a region built the way this one is, it is how most people reach it.

Local judgment, local conditions

This is why we think the counties were right to object. Parking is a local condition. A station in Arlington, a station in Loudoun and a station on the Route 1 corridor serve very different neighborhoods, and the people who sit on local planning staffs know the difference. A cap written in Richmond cannot.

Our roads position is simple. Most of us drive, and we will for a long time. Roads and parking are the backbone of getting to work, to school and to the store, and they need to keep pace with the homes we approve. We are for building those homes near transit. We are also for building them in a way that keeps commutes simple, keeps cars out of the worst traffic, and doesn't leave the neighbors circling the block.