City Engineers Are Unbelievably out of Touch on Parking Reform
Parking reform creates interesting coalitions. This is evident here in my home state of Minnesota where the People Over Parking reform bill is advancing at the legislature. A recent senate hearing brought together advocates for more housing, small businesses, property rights and environmental protection to push for this needed reform. Strong Towns has already thrown its support behind this simple and targeted reform measure.
Some groups and individuals don’t support parking reform because they think this is a local issue that the state shouldn’t be involved in. Yet, there is one group that opposes parking reform on its merits: city engineers.
Let’s take a moment to examine their reasoning. It is a case study in tone-deaf, echo-chamber thinking.
The City Engineers Association of Minnesota (CEAM), on behalf of their members — city engineers across the state — presented written testimony for the most recent hearing. Their words demonstrate, once again, why engineers should stick to engineering and not public policy or value judgments.
Engineer’s Claim #1: Removing Off-Street Parking Mandates Will Make Streets Overcrowded
As city engineers, we understand the importance of effective street widths, especially when dense parking is present.
This is how CAEM begins its written testimony. It begs the question, what does an "effective street width" do effectively?
If we ask that question through a Strong Towns lens, an effective street width is one that builds community wealth. This is done by dramatically slowing vehicles, making streets more walkable and bikeable, and adding street trees, sidewalks, and amenities. Essentially, an effective street width is one that lets the street serve as a framework for building a prosperous place.
Sadly, that is not what city engineers mean when they use the word “effective.” They mean moving traffic at speed.
In their testimony, they suggest (without citing any evidence) that eliminating parking mandates will cause overcrowding as more people park on city streets. That contradicts studies that show that eliminating mandates does not mean a lack of parking: In many places, people will build what they need but not more than that. It also ignores the obvious outcome that allowing neighborhoods to thicken up and mature means fewer automobile trips and more biking and walking, which means less demand for parking.
The engineers assert that the feared overcrowding will make it “difficult for emergency vehicles to access buildings and for maintenance crews to perform necessary tasks such as snow plowing.” Again, these are gut feelings, an assertion of values, and not some kind of dispassionate evaluation of public policy options.
An approach to public safety that focuses on saving lives will quickly recognize the perils of over-engineered streets. And beyond the observation of sneckdowns revealing how little street width is actually needed for automobile passage, wider streets mean more snow removal costs, not less.
There is no evidence that not forcing a private property owner to build public parking will cause street overcrowding, but even if there was, it is the wrong public policy issue to be sensitive to.
Engineer’s Claim #2: Removing Off-Street Parking Mandates Will Make Travel Extremely Difficult
Even a loss of two feet on each side of the street will result in a travel way width of 9–12 feet, making bidirectional travel extremely difficult.
It is easy to get lost in the technical-sounding minutia about street widths and parking widths that the city engineers make in their letter. Much like the first claim, there is a lot of “given this thing that isn’t true, then this is likely, making this resulting terrible thing a near certainty….” Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt diagnoses these kinds of arguments as post-hoc rationalizations, the human propensity to justify current practice as opposed to a rational sequence of logic.
To understand this claim, one need only focus on the absurd notion that having travel lanes reduced to 9-12 feet will make “bidirectional travel extremely difficult.”
A twelve-foot lane is a highway lane. The idea that on-street parking may reduce your local street to a mere two highway lanes — and that this poses some form of extreme danger for two cars traveling in opposite directions — is absurd even by the engineering profession’s speed-centric logic. If this is true, then every design manual that calls for 11- and 12-foot lanes creates “extreme difficulty” for drivers. That is every design manual. This is a ludicrous assertion.
Engineers do struggle with and often push back on the idea of 9- and 10-foot lanes. Such lanes do pose an extreme difficulty for drivers when they are driving fast. That is why, when we use 9- and 10-foot lanes, drivers slow down. On local streets, slowing traffic is exactly what is needed for safety reasons.
This claim by city engineers is all about traffic speed. If your city engineer is choosing wide lanes through your neighborhoods, they are asserting a value system that prioritizes automobile speed over public safety. That is a value judgment they shouldn’t be allowed to make.
Either way, the disconnected logic regarding the relationship between government parking mandates and on-street parking is certainly not a reason to oppose parking reform.
Engineer’s Claim #3: Removing Off-Street Parking Mandates Will Make Streets Less Safe
Additionally, dense on-street parking will have impacts on sight distance at intersections and driveway and alley access points. This reduced sight distance will create more safety concerns for vehicles and pedestrians.
In "Confessions of a Recovering Engineer," I wrote an entire chapter on how American engineers don’t grasp the basics of intersection design. This is, once again, because of the way they prioritize speed over other design aspects.
Put succinctly, the faster traffic moves, the more gap there must be between vehicles for another car to cross traffic or merge into the traffic stream. The American approach to intersection design starts with lethally high speeds and then adds safety features like buffers, clear zones and breakaway devices to handle conflicts. This arguably reduces crashes but also ensures that the crashes that do happen are generally very traumatic (and can be blamed on driver error, not irresponsible engineering).
Reducing design speeds not only improves safety by reducing the kinetic energy in the intersection, but also reduces the necessary gap spacing and makes the buffers, clear zones and other expensive engineering solutions unnecessary.
This makes the city engineer’s argument circular: The reduced sight distances they are lamenting become largely meaningless if the lane narrowing and slower speeds they are lamenting actually occur. Which one is it?
All of this assumes that street designers are powerless about where people park. We all know that is absurd. A little bit of yellow paint and a sign is all it takes to expand an intersection’s clear zone. What are we talking about, here?
And because I know the engineering mind reels at this logic — again, the brain works to reject truths that the gut can’t handle — I am going to share this video of a shared space intersection in the United Kingdom. The design, done by the late Ben Hamilton-Bailey, accommodates 26,000 vehicles per day without any signalization or signage, merely by slowing the speeds at which vehicles enter the intersection and by allowing humans to act like decent humans.
Yes, the United States is not the United Kingdom. We insist on spending more money for worse outcomes, a hallmark of ridiculous affluence combined with hubris. The sooner city engineers come to grips with their role in declining affluence — and widespread municipal insolvency — the sooner we can overcome the hubris blinders.
Engineer’s Claim #4: Removing Off-Street Parking Mandates Will Conflict With City Ordinances
The majority of cities and townships have bans on overnight parking on public streets. Over time, this legislation will force cities to modify those ordinances and will have impacts on the operation of city activities.
What? The majority of cities ban overnight parking on public streets? I looked at the signatories of this letter and this isn’t even true for their cities, let alone a majority of cities in Minnesota. This assertion passes from absurdity to near fraud. Certainly, it is a professional misrepresentation, something I’ve been told that licensing boards take very seriously.
I’ve written codes for cities all over the state. I’m not aware of any that ban overnight parking on public streets. I did an informal Twitter poll and the results affirm my experience. What are these city engineers talking about?
And let’s pretend this absurd assertion is true. What happens then? Cities will need to “modify ordinances.” Oh, the humanity!
This is laughable, and I feel like I’m piling on except for the fact that I’ve been in countless meetings where licensed professional engineers stand up and make absurd assertions like these and, because of their status as licensed professionals, aren’t questioned about it.
Only a group of people so insulated from reality could be so cavalier with their words. We can laugh at them, sure, but we must also admit that few of them care that we do.
A Note on Engineering Ethics
I made a reference to fraud and misrepresentation in the last section. I did that to make a point. I think that professionals can discuss these things in public, can even disagree on substantive matters, and that such dialogue is the fruit of a healthy profession.
Are the assertions in this letter -- many of them laughably absurd misrepresentations, things these professionals know are not true -- something the state licensing board should take action on? I don’t think so. If licensed professionals are not able to make questionable statements on policy and have those statements debated in public, there is no path to reform. There is no healthy dialogue and our profession will become more insular, even more of an echo chamber, and increasingly more and more irrelevant.
I say “our” profession because some of you reading this might not be aware that I am a Professional Engineer, albeit one whose license is in retired status. I’ve been reported to the licensing board multiple times by fellow professionals for statements I’ve made in this space. I’m currently embroiled in a federal lawsuit with the licensing board over my ability, and any engineer’s ability, to speak on matters of public policy without fearing state sanction. My license is in retired status just to place another layer of protection between me and those who abuse the licensing process to quash dissenting opinions, including licensing board members themselves.
Here’s the thing: I speak to licensed engineers that are ready for reform all the time. They think the mindset represented in this CEAM testimony is outdated, wrong, and dangerous. Their numbers are growing, especially among new engineers who are not emotionally married to decades of bad practices. Change is coming.
If you are a city engineer and are ready to be part of that change, if you are ready to move beyond the narrow and reactionary conversation of the current city engineering profession, know that there is strength in numbers. Add your name to the comments section below. You don’t have to support everything I’ve written to want this conversation to occur. Just being present will mean something important.
If you want to take the next step, sign up to become a member of Strong Towns and be part of our movement. We will support you and never embarrass you in our words or deeds. That’s how we roll.
And if you want this conversation to happen in your community, let us know. I’d love to come and meet you and your people and have a conversation about building a stronger and more prosperous city.
And if you want to report me to the licensing board, please do. Here’s the link.
Charles Marohn (known as “Chuck” to friends and colleagues) is the founder and president of Strong Towns and the bestselling author of “Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis.” With decades of experience as a land use planner and civil engineer, Marohn is on a mission to help cities and towns become stronger and more prosperous. He spreads the Strong Towns message through in-person presentations, the Strong Towns Podcast, and his books and articles. In recognition of his efforts and impact, Planetizen named him one of the 15 Most Influential Urbanists of all time in 2017 and 2023.