RULE 18 | DECOUPLE PARKING

WALKABLE WICHITA: LESSONS FROM JEFF SPECK

BY RAMI STUCKY

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Although parking in Old Town, as a whole, is relatively easy, there are some areas where it becomes difficult. On the weekends, stretches of St. Francis near Bite Me BBQ and Norton's Brewing can see parking occupancy reach or exceed 85 percent. The same occupancy level is observed on Mead, near the Old Town movie theater, and on stretches of Second Street nearby. On weekdays and weekends, several lots are close to full, particularly those on the northwest corners of Douglas and Mead (east of the Great Plains Transportation Museum) and Douglas and Mosley (west of Larkspur).^[1]

To address this issue, the City of Wichita approved a paid parking plan in December 2024. It was initially intended to cover all parts of downtown, including Delano, Government Center, the WaterWalk area, and Old Town. However, due to resistance from residents and business owners, Delano and Old Town are exempt. Instead, the Old Town Association has proposed that the city levy a 2 percent sales tax on all customers, rather than charging drivers for parking.^[2]

Creating a sales tax instead of implementing paid parking would make little sense. For one, it does not alleviate Old Town’s weekend parking congestion. Second, as urban planner Jeff Speck notes in Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places, cities should discourage the ability to park for free. “Any serious attempt to make a city walkable has to include a commitment to eliminate free parking at home and at work, the two places where it has the biggest impact on car ownership and use,” Speck argues.[3]

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National trends support this rule. Around 80 to 95 percent of American workers get free parking at the office. However, when workers are forced to pay for parking themselves, a practice known as decoupling, the share of employees driving to work falls by 25 percent.[4] When the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation relocated to its new headquarters in Seattle, it began charging its employees $12 per day to park. Bike lockers and transit cards were free, however, and employees were incentivized to use them. By 2017, thanks to decoupling, only 34 percent of employees commuted to work via personal automobile.^[5]

Coupling parking with residences and businesses in Old Town is not just bad for a city’s walkability. The alternative sales tax can, in some cases, be more expensive to patrons than paying for parking. Wichita’s parking plan charges $1 per hour. For a single driver who visits a restaurant for an hour and pays a $20 tab, the 2 percent tax would only add 40 cents to their bill as opposed to a dollar. However, if a driver spends more than $50 for each hour parked, it is cheaper to pay for parking. For example, for a family of four who spend $120 total shopping for two hours, two hours of paid parking raises their bill to $122. A two percent sales tax raises it to $122.40.

To improve a district’s walkability, Speck suggests that cities pass laws mandating the decoupling of residential parking. He also suggests that employees create parking cash-out programs that allow workers to trade their “free” parking space for its cash equivalent. At the very least, the city can continue to deny the Old Town Association’s request. About 1,400 people live 2,000 feet away from Old Town (or around an eight-minute walk). Those residents live in census tracts where the median household income is between $33,000 and $46,000. That is well below the median of the entire city. At the very least, a sales tax would negatively impact those neighbors who come to Old Town on foot and shop and dine. In the words of Speck, by coupling parking with commerce, the Old Town Association is asking people who “do not own cars to subsidize the lifestyles of those who do.”^[6]

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[1] “2019 City of Wichita Parking & Multimodal Plan” (City of Wichita, 2019), 63–88, https://www.wichita.gov/DocumentCenter/View/13088/City-of-Wichita-Parking-and-Multimodal-Plan-PDF.

[2] Cale Chapman, “Exempt from Plan for Now, Effort Continues to Keep Parking Free in Old Town,” KWCH, June 26, 2025, https://www.kwch.com/2025/06/27/exempt-plan-now-effort-continues-keep-parking-free-old-town/.

[3] Jeff Speck, Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2018), 42.

[4] Henry Grabar, Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World (New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2023), 83.

[5] Grabar, 84.

[6] Speck, Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places, 42.