A group of San Jose leaders want the city to explore a permitted parking program that would benefit residents living in high growth areas.
The Rules and Open Government Committee voted unanimously Wednesday to inform the San Jose City Council about the impacts of a residential permit parking program in fast-growing sectors designed as urban villages. In a bid to appease housing developers, city officials voted in 2022 to no longer have minimum parking requirements for development proposals and to favor public transportation like BART and VTA. But Councilmembers Domingo Candelas, David Cohen and Peter Ortiz said in a recent memo that high-density developments limit residents’ ability to park in front of their homes.
“The City of San Jose has made significant progress in crafting sustainable development standards to encourage dense, walkable neighborhoods that enable transit and bike use,” they wrote. “It is also important to face the reality that the existing infrastructure and sprawling suburban design of the City leaves most residents dependent on single-occupancy vehicles for daily transportation needs.”
Councilmember Rosemary Kamei said local public transportation hasn’t caught up to the amount of people traveling in San Jose.
“Having a full council discussion would be helpful as well because what happens is that once you have these restricted parking areas … it pushes the need for parking into other areas,” she said at the meeting. “So as things start to develop and we require limited to no parking (from developers), then the problem really exacerbates.”
Kamei said having the city manager’s office return with details about the residential permit parking program’s administrative costs and policy implications will help councilmembers decide whether to move forward with the proposal.
City officials could include funding for a residential permit parking program in the 2025-26 budget cycle.
“We plan to make sure the info memo is fairly robust because we have done some, and observed some unintended consequences with some of our policies around parking,” Dolan Beckel, the city manager’s chief of staff, said at the meeting. “Councilmembers can take the next step, which would be potentially up to a (budget update) on the topic.
The 2022 policy update that eliminated minimum parking requirements for new housing developments described the mandate as an “obstacle to the expansion of housing and the reduction of carbon emissions.”
Depending on the type of parking, city officials said each space can cost developers between $35,000 to $100,000 to build.
Rates for most parking meters in San Jose are $2 per hour, while metered parking in the SAP Arena area and near the McEnery Convention Center varies between courtesy parking for 90 minutes to $25, according to the city website.
Candelas, who co-authored the recent memo, said he’s looking forward to learning more about a potential residential permit parking program.
“I’ve heard numerous times from residents with regards to (having) permitted parking outside of the urban core, and just an exploration and conversation on that would be helpful and beneficial for me and also for residents in my district,” he said.
Contact Vicente Vera at [email protected] or follow @VicenteJVera on X.
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