Tag: parking policy

Illinois legislature adopts People Over Parking Act to ban parking mandates in transit-served areas

October 31, 2025 / / 0 Comments

This article has been re-published and expanded on Streetsblog Chicago. Please read that version.

At about 4:22 AM this morning the Illinois Senate concurred with the Illinois House on bill SB2111 (PDF), approving a revenues and reform package that will close budget gaps and provide additional funding for the state’s 63 transit agencies. Among the reforms are establishing a new oversight authority that will centralize service planning and fare-setting in Chicagoland and assigning powers to build transit-supportive development, among other major and unique policy changes.

Development around the Naperville Metra station cannot be mandated to provide car parking after SB2111 goes into effect.

Additionally, the bill includes the People Over Parking Act, which was introduced by Rep. Buckner earlier this year and prohibits municipalities from requiring car parking for residential and commercial uses in areas served by transit. The bill, which will go into effect on June 1, 2026 (per House Amendment 4), will also apply in home rule communities. This includes Chicago, which passed its own transit-adjacent parking reform that took effect on September 25, 2025.

Specifically, the ban on parking mandates applies when the following is true:

  • a development project is for new construction or renovation and that is not a hotel, motel, bed and breakfast, or other transient lodging
  • the project is located within one-half mile of a public transportation hub (nodes) or one-eighth mile of a public transportation corridor (street segments)

A public transportation hub is a node that includes rail transit stations, a boat or ferry terminal that is served by a bus stop or a rail transit station, and street intersections where two or more bus routes meet and those bus routes have a combined frequency of 15 minutes or less during the morning and afternoon peak commute periods. This means that new housing will soon be able to be developed, at lower cost, within a half mile of the Highland Park Metra station without any parking.

Metra has 168 stations outside of Chicago, and there are also Metrolink rail stations in Illinois communities east of St. Louis, Missouri. That’s in addition to higher-frequency bus service in Champaign and some communities served by Pace bus.

A public transportation corridor is a street segment that has one or more bus routes that have a combined frequency of 15 minutes or less during the morning and afternoon peak commute periods.

Map showing the commercial and vacant properties within a half mile of the Highland Park Metra station. See full map on Chicago Cityscape.

The fine print

Municipalities are still allowed to enact minimum parking requirements for bicycles; and they can establish maximum parking allowances. The act does not apply to existing approved Planned (Unit) Developments but will apply to any amendments or extensions if the amendment or extension will increase the car parking requirement.

In situations where developments are voluntarily providing car parking, municipalities can impose requirements that reserve space for car share vehicles, that some parking be made available to the public, and that parking must be made available for a charge. Municipalities cannot require that parking be made available for free.

I believe that this new law will override Chicago’s requirement that projects in the Downtown zoning districts and projects in transit-serve areas that are served only by Metra obtain an administrative adjustment to build less parking that otherwise required.

Finally, Illinois has existing code regarding electric vehicle charging and sets a standard for how much of the provided parking must be “EV ready”, “EV capable”, and “EV installed” (read the Illinois Electric Vehicle Charging Act) – those requirements are not impacted by the People Over Parking Act.

Letter to the editor: Illinois cities shouldn’t have the ability to impose parking mandates

February 9, 2024 / / 1 Comment

My letter to the editor was published as guest commentary in The Daily Line

State Rep. Kam Buckner’s bill to stop cities from mandating specific numbers of off-street car parking at homes and businesses in transit-served areas should be celebrated. These mandates increase the cost of housing, take up land that could be used for just about anything else (like, more housing), and, because of how they facilitate more driving and require building more curb cuts than is truly necessary, make it harder to walk, bike, or ride the bus to run errands.

A massive parking garage at the new Malcolm X College on the Near West Side of Chicago.

I rent my home and I like the idea that there are only enough car parking spaces in the building for people who really need to have a car close by and are willing to pay for it. This means that the cost of providing parking for everyone in the building is not added onto my rent. 

Currently, every municipality in Illinois with a zoning code has a different idea of how many car parking spaces are required at bars, restaurants, townhouses, bowling alleys, and cemeteries. City planners don’t have the training or expertise to project the demand for parking. In other words, they don’t know more than home builders and businesses do about how many parking spaces each project needs.

In the place of mandates, cities should let home builders and businesses choose how much parking they believe they need to serve their tenants, employees, and customers.

By prioritizing car ownership and usage, parking mandates perpetuate reliance on fossil fuels and contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. In contrast, removing such requirements can incentivize the use of public transportation, cycling, and walking, consequently reducing traffic congestion and air pollution in our cities.

Without parking mandates near transit service, cities will be freer to allocate land in ways that support sustainable transportation, including making room for more housing to be located near transit and in walking distance to essential shops and services.

I look forward to debating the specifics of Buckner’s bill and getting it passed this year. 

-Steven Vance, Chicago, urban planner

[P.S. Buckner has another bill, HB4795, to prevent Illinois’s eight largest cities from having residential zoning districts that disallow multiple units.]

How many cars are in Rogers Park?

November 10, 2013 / / 4 Comments

There are a gazillion cars in Rogers Park, and there’s no place to park them. That’s the declaration you would gather if you listen to “Lakefront Car Tower” (a parking garage) proponents, including the 49th ward alderman, Joe Moore.

The parking problem is so bad in Rogers Park that a parking garage at Sherwin Avenue and Sheridan Road that would provide less than 100 overnight parking spaces to the public was actually sent from Asphaltia, the god of car parks. It’s so bad that “[m]any car owners find themselves stuck in their home at night” – yes, the alderman really published that on his website – because they find a parking space on Friday night and can’t move the car until Monday morning. The horror of using your feet, pedals, the bus, the train, car sharing, paratransit, or a Segway!

(I’d love to get into parking pricing policy now, but I’ll just leave you with this: of course there is going to be a demand problem when the supply of publicly-owned on-street parking costs $0 per year.)

This post is actually a tutorial on how to use United States Census data to find how many cars are in the neighborhood of Rogers Park, not a laugh about Asphaltia’s teachings.

Let’s begin! Continue reading