Sustainable Public Transit Planners Reject Auto Park Projects

Interview with Anstress Farwell, president of the New Haven Urban Design League, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

Years ago, the State of Connecticut Department of Transportation proposed to build a second parking garage adjacent to the existing one at New Haven’s Union Station, on what’s now a ground-level surface parking lot, as a way to attract single occupancy drivers out of their cars and onto the train. Train service in the region includes Metro-North to New York City, including many stops in New Haven and Fairfield counties in Connecticut; Amtrak, offering service along the Eastern seaboard; Shoreline East and a new commuter line that travels north from New Haven to Hartford and Springfield, Massachusetts. 
But the garage proposal has always faced opposition from city officials and urban advocates who say the 1,000 cars it would take off the highways is a drop in the bucket, while adding 1,000 cars driving to the garage, creating a gigantic bottleneck on city streets.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Anstress Farwell, president of the New Haven Urban Design League, which sponsored a two-day event at the city’s downtown library on Jan. 4, where planning experts and residents had a chance to provide feedback on the project. Farwell maintains that the funds to build the $60 million garage could be put to much better use elsewhere, framing the New Haven proposal in the context of national sustainable public transportation and urban planning goals.
ANSTRESS FARWELL: We wrote a report back in 2016 to the DOT that said this was a very problematic project, in that it wrote an EI evaluation that showed failure in every possible way for this project. So it was essentially a plan for 1,000 cars that would cost $60 million. And they said in order to increase access to Union Station, we needed to maximize the amount of parking we could build there. And I feel very strongly they asked the wrong question. You need to first say, why do you want to increase access to Union Station? And the “Why” is important. Is it because we’re going to become a hub of the Northeast corridor high speed rail, for commuter rail? For all of the pieces that will need to fit together there? Once you answer that, then you say, What do we need to develop in the area to support all those regional and local systems to make rail service work really well for our New Haven residents and the region. So one basic thing is, if this is a $60 million plan that will simply take 1,000 cars a day off the highway? That does very little even for the highway. But you put 1,000 cars on Union Avenue at rush hour, and it’s a disaster for everyone else that uses Union Avenue.

You know, our police department is down there; they are opposed to this because they know it will cause traffic problems. There’s nothing in this plan that would even change the traffic signals in the area; that would be a cost on the city. So there’s all kinds of externalized costs here: air quality, water, public safety – that will all be harmed.But then there’s a big picture thing in this, too, and that is, in any other city, a parcel like this right next to the train station would be what realtors call a “100 percent lot.” It’s one of the most valuable pieces of land in the city. Can you imagine if New York knocked down the Pan Am building to build a parking garage? That’s how we need to think of this.

When the train station was built in 1913, it was in the middle of a dense urban area with a street grid. It was all buildings and houses. And then we destroyed our trolley system and knocked down 60 percent of the buildings down there. So what we need to do is think of a proper thing that takes advantage of being near the train station, like a big mixed use project; it could be a hotel-conference center; it could be a corporate headquarters. So that would provide expansion of our tax base, which we desperately need now. You know we’re facing extreme budget problems at the state and in the city. We shouldn’t have another state use that would only provide minimal PILOT funds, nothing else to the city.

BETWEEN THE LINES: And PILOT stands for Payment in Lieu of Taxes for the city, right?

ANSTRESS FARWELL: Yup. And if you have followed the work of Norman Garrick of the UConn Transportation Institute, one of the things he has shown in his research and work is that as you expand parking, cities’ tax base goes down and also the number of jobs. And if you think about it, if you had, let’s say, even a lab building, the value of that building and its equipment would be far beyond a parking garage – that’s more taxes.

Also, how many people work in a lab building or a hotel or a business center compared to a parking garage that’s mostly automated? So, cities that don’t control the development of parking end up with reduced tax bases and fewer jobs. New Haven and the state can’t keep going in this direction; it’s totally unsustainable. So this isn’t right in terms of building a livable urban environment, but it’s also very backwards and isn’t attending to all of the, best, up-to-date research that’s been available really since 2005 about the impact of parking garages on urban economies. So this is a big step backwards.

BETWEEN THE LINES: And I’m sure New Haven isn’t the only city in the country facing these challenges.

ANSTRESS FARWELL: Well, I think it’s cities all over the country are realizing the development practices of the redevelopment era that were focused on cars were actually destroying the economy and livability of cities. So this is really central to a whole national movement re-evaluating the impact of parking on cities. As many people say, parking is like the dark matter of a city and it has distorted everything about the urban environment and set up habits of mind that actually don’t go with livable cities. So, yes, this is kind of intellectual battle and political battle that cities are facing nationwide.

For more information on the New Haven Urban Design League, visit urbandesignleague.org.

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