Bike Parking Requirements Kill Housing Opportunities in Seattle, Portland

It’s well known that parking requirements for motor vehicles are a major impediment to the creation of new housing in cities desperately in need of it, as well as a significant factor pushing up housing costs. But can mandates to provide bike parking, if not thoughtfully designed, cause many of the same problems?

In 2018, Seattleforgrowth.org published a letter from David Neiman (of Neiman Tabor Architects) to the city of Seattle expressing his concerns about bike parking regulations. Neiman highlighted that regulations are too rigid, arbitrary, overreaching, and threaten housing quality. Five years later, The Street Trust in Portland, Oregon, without any knowledge of David's letter, wrote its own letter which mirrored Neiman’s concerns: that Portland's bike parking regulations were also too rigid, arbitrary, overreaching, and reduced housing production.

Are we heading into an era where bike parking regulations hinder housing production? Portland's commissioner, Carmen Rubio, thinks so. In fact, she requested her bureaus submit recommendations on cutting or modifying bike parking regulations to increase housing production. This was in response to a 2023 housing regulation survey result that listed bike parking as the top regulation that the city of Portland should consider suspending or modifying to support increased housing production. This is an astonishing result: it means developers perceive Portland's bike regulations as more restrictive than system development charges (SDC) and floor area ratio limits (FAR).

*Portland’s 2023 housing regulation survey results.*

What is so bad about Portland's bike parking regulations? And why do they mirror Seattle’s bike parking challenges?

Poorly Written Regulations

The common denominator between Seattle and Portland in regard to regulation is that there is too much of it and it’s poorly written. More regulation is fine when needed, if it’s carefully done. But often, this creates more conflicts, ambiguity, and difficulty for the builder while creating a worse living experience for residences.

Portland has opted to limit in-unit parking and prioritize the creation of centralized bike rooms in apartment buildings. Only 50% of units can have bicycle parking inside the unit itself. In a city whose goal is to increase bike usage to 25% by 2030, it’s counterproductive that we would actually limit bike parking count as a regulatory solution. This means developers are prohibited from adding more bicycling parking than minimal requirements. A far simpler solution is to not have a regulation capping bike parking count at all.

Regulations in both Seattle and Portland are detached from the reality of construction. They give the impression of having been written in a vacuum, not informed by those who deeply understand how buildings are created. I often hear that bike rooms don’t add space. That couldn’t be more wrong. The reality is that when increased space requirement is added, more square footage is often added, and this, in turn, increases unit costs, or worse, removes units. It’s that simple. Another example is that Portland's bike code arbitrarily prohibits bike parking more than 15 feet away from the dwelling unit front door. This is highly problematic since some units require a hallway to connect the front door to the main circulation corridor.

Our regulatory priorities are backwards. The quest to be the best bike city in the world skews priorities in Seattle and in Portland. Yes, bike parking is important, but not more important than housing, not even close. Portland's own data suggests less than 4-7% of travel occurs by bike, while 100% of our community need housing. Resources should first go to housing, then figure out bike parking from there. Our regulations should reflect these priorities. Portland's bike code upends this delicate balance with regulations that suggest bikes are more important than people who need housing.

Micromanaging and Biased Assumptions Influence the Bike Code

Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) staff and committee members repeatedly cited storage or furniture in front of bike racks in dwelling units as reasons for rigid bike alcove regulation. Embedded in this idea is a cultural assumption about how space should be used; there is no underlying health or safety issue here which warrants regulation.

Many people of color I have spoken with found it telling that PBOT illustrated this offense in their PowerPoint presentation with an image of an ethnic woman to justify their regulation (page 8). Regulators should never judge how people live in the privacy of their homes, because it’s often culturally insensitive. Simply, the bike alcove is one of many examples in the bike code of how biased assumptions created well-intended but restrictive regulations that inaccurately meet the needs of our most vulnerable communities.

*Page 8 of PBOT August 8 presentation to the Bicycle Advisory committee.*

What are some solutions? Keep it simple, flexible, logical.

1. Regulations Need To Be Simple

Simple regulations are easy for people writing regulations, easy for builders, and ultimately provide a seamless experience for the building occupants. Stay focused on the big picture and overall objective of the code. Avoid micromanaging details through regulations when possible. The bike code isn’t a fire or life safety regulation, so most of the code could allow design options, which in turn naturally keeps regulations simple.

2. Housing and Bike Regulations Are Compatible Goals

It’s entirely possible to have great bike parking and increase housing production. They are not competing goals. It’s the recent over-regulated bike parking code that competes with housing and adds significant costs. The solution is to look at precedence: Portland’s older bike code may be outdated, but its regulations were logical, simple, efficient, and didn’t significantly compete with housing while in use for more than 25 years. There is something to be learned from that. For reference, Portland's old bike code removed about one out of 200 dwelling units to accommodate bike parking, the new code removes approximately one out of 15 units for bike parking.

3. Regulations Need To Be Flexible

Portland's bike code now limits in-unit bike parking to 50% in an effort to prioritize bike rooms for all projects, which means new projects must include bike rooms. The problem with bike rooms is that they are expensive to build, and they end up replacing precious space for people, like community rooms and additional dwelling units. In-unit bike parking, on the other hand, generally does not require additional square footage. (The exception is when an apartment is built with a bike alcove.) Bike parking can fit in most units without significant modifications, it is inherently more secure than bike rooms, and bike parking space can be reclaimed as living space, or for storage when needed. Smaller, more efficient bike rooms, supplemented by in-unit bike parking, addresses the convenience of a centralized room, while keeping waste to a minimum. For smaller projects, there may not be space for a bike room, so bike parking may only be possible in dwelling units. As long as the bike–parking ratio is met, the flexibility between bike room versus unit parking should be up to architects and builders, not regulators.

*A bike room reduction of more than 60% is possible when 100% in-unit parking is allowed, cargo bike size is reduced, and the 8-foot wide maneuvering clearance aisle reduced to 5 feet.*

4. Smarter Cargo Bike Regulation Is Needed

While it’s admirable that Portland is trying to accommodate all types of bikes, it’s also inadvertently catering to higher-income residents. The larger bakfiets-style cargo bike costs upwards of $10,000 and Portland’s bike code requires space about equal to one car stall or more than five times the space requirement of a single bike. Instead, Portland needs to prioritize smaller cargo bikes similar to how we prioritize parking for compact cars and discourage parking for oversized pickup trucks.

The current cargo bike trend in Portland is already moving away from larger, bakfiets-style bikes to smaller RAD wagons and TERN cargo bikes that are more maneuverable and relatively compact without sacrificing cargo capacity, and cost as little as $1,900. These smaller cargo bikes are about the same length as a single bike, making bike rooms efficient while reducing parking requirements by up to 50%.

*Portland’s cargo bike with maneuvering clearance is about equivalent to one car parking stall.*

5. Check the Policy Language With Drawings

Regulations can often contain powerful words, but do those words translate to floor plans that are constructible? Diagrams are often a great way to make sure the regulation math adds up and doesn’t inadvertently compete with living spaces. For example, the bike alcove was never illustrated in Portland's bike code. If it were, regulators would have realized alcove walls could be up to 15 feet tall on most first floors, does not fit mountain bikes, and is incompatible with dwelling unit hallways and typical apartment bedrooms.

In a typical 10x10 bedroom (left), Portland’s bike alcove does not allow a bed and bike parking to share the same space due to required 5-foot maneuvering clearance (right). Portland’s required 5-foot maneuvering clearance does fit in a typical 3-foot-wide unit hallway and a typical 2-feet-wide closet does not fit mountain bikes, which require at least 32 inches of closet depth space (outline in red).

Victor Duong is a first-generation Vietnamese refugee who grew up in Portland and is a lifelong cyclist of more than 34 years. He earned a degree in Architecture from the University of Oregon and is currently a project manager at LEEB Architects. Victor is also a board member of The Street Trust, Oregon's leading advocacy organization fighting for safer streets and a more equitable transportation system.