‘Parking requirements are closer to sorcery than to science’

by Jonathan Helton, Grassroot Institute

Sometimes it’s difficult to demonstrate exactly how liberalizing a county zoning law can encourage homebuilding, business expansion or the construction of schools, parks and other community amenities--but Maui’s parking regulations provide a perfect example.

Every county in Hawaii requires a certain amount of parking for each new home, business or other structure, with a few exceptions.

But unlike every other county, Maui’s parking mandates incorporate a large degree of flexibility that can make it easier to build new homes, expand business operations or create new parks, schools or other community amenities.

In particular, Maui’s parking reduction waiver can be used to reduce the amount of required parking for a project by up to 50%, if the applicant meets one of 10 criteria listed in the county code.

For example, a waiver could be obtained if the required parking would destroy mature trees or other unique aspects of the property; there is public parking within 2,500 feet of the property in question; or the additional parking cannot be built onsite.

More than 60 parking-reduction waivers have been approved since the year 2000. Affordable rentals, businesses, civic organizations and county departments have all taken advantage of the policy option, helping accommodate their unique financial situations, land limitations and structural features.

For instance, in 2019, the Paia Fish Market annexed an adjacent unit to expand its dining and retail area. This expansion triggered the county’s parking requirements, which mandated that the market now needed five parking spaces instead of its existing four.

But adding a fifth would have meant tearing down a portion of the fish market building itself, which was constructed in 1939.

The market requested a waiver of the fifth parking space in February 2024, and the Maui Planning Department OK’d its request six months later.

The Maui Department of Parks and Recreation’s plan in 2022 to make improvements to the Lihikai School Park in Kahului provides another example. The department would have had to create 56 paved parking spaces in accordance with Maui’s zoning code, which requires 50 spaces per athletic field and six per basketball court.

That would have necessitated cutting down several coconut or banyan trees or paving part of the park itself, so the planning department allowed the parks department to create only 34 paved stalls.

The use of such waivers has saved Maui residents time and money — and helped preserve the island’s natural beauty — but the program isn’t perfect.

Some waiver requests have been denied for not meeting any of the 10 criteria. In other cases, it can take months, even years, for the planning department to approve the application. In addition, many builders probably don’t even know the waiver exists.

And it’s not like the calculations behind parking mandates are even based on any sort of data. Renowned parking scholar Donald Shoup commented that “Planners are not oracles who can divine the demand for parking… Parking requirements are closer to sorcery than to science.”

Ideally, lawmakers at the state and county levels would recognize this and eliminate parking requirements altogether. This would enhance community walkability, preserve the character of historic areas and save costs.

Asphalt isn’t cheap, and neither is the cost of hiring architects or contractors to build the parking lot or garage. A 2020 study pegged the cost of building a single on-grade parking space on Maui at $15,000, and a single stall in a parking garage at almost $60,000.

If total repeal of county parking mandates is too much to ask, maybe local planners could remove parking rules for all non-residential uses or create exemptions for specific areas, such as Honolulu has done for areas within a certain distance of its Skyline rail.

There are many other possible reforms that could be considered, but either way — repeal or reform — it’s time for lawmakers to park these rules someplace where they won’t pave over so much of Hawaii’s potential.