Vibrant shopping streets are highly dependent on people being able to get to them and then park
Most cities like Minneapolis operate a parking system, composed of the following elements:
- on-street (metered) parking
- surface lots (metered or attended)
- structured garages
- parking enforcement.
On-street parking, including enforcement, and surface lots generally makes money. Structured garages generally lose money. But the various parts complement each other, and businesses need all the different elements of the parking system to function. For shorter trips, on-street makes the most sense. For longer stays, such as business meetings, parking garages allow patrons to park without the worry of getting a ticket.
The City overall makes money from the parking system, roughly $25-$30 million a year. Profits transfer from the parking enterprise fund to the city’s general fund. These funds can be used to offset property taxes or for anything the City Council wants.
Minneapolis, however, has a problem. A powerful lobbying group, opposed to private automobiles, has convinced the city to remove on-street parking and install bike and bus lanes. Now the City is designing streets as if people no longer need automobiles. Parking is being removed, parking meter revenue is being lost, and mobility is declining. At the same time, transit ridership is down 50% from its peak in 2015, walking has declined 46% since 2020, and bike commuting peaked in 1980. Predictably businesses are struggling because fewer people are coming to them. The City has lost over 15,000 jobs from 2019 to 2024. Hennepin Avenue is dead. Parts of downtown are dead. Every property along East Lake lost value from 2023 to 2024.
Many cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul included, have aggressively removed on-street parking and installed bike and bus lanes. But herein lies a problem. Shoppers and diners, especially in cold weather months, seldom ride bikes or take buses to shop and dine, or commute to work, especially in a city with a winter like Minneapolis. As people age, bikes and buses are even less attractive means of transportation. And for parents with small children, bikes and buses make trips difficult or impossible. Not everyone is a healthy 25-year-old with a $2,000 bike. Many people, including young healthy people, are reluctant to ride public transportation for safety concerns. And walking is only practical if the destination is no more than 15 minutes away, the sidewalks are ice-free and the sun is out, which is difficult when the sun sets at 5 p.m. in the winter. This narrows the possible customer base for the typical neighborhood merchant to an untenable number, not enough to keep the doors open.
What is an on-street parking space worth to a typical block of merchants? In a recent parking study conducted in Fort Collins CO by Kimley-Horn and Associates and Civitas Consultants, a single parking space was estimated as being worth more than $300,000 in annual sales to the block. Loss of even a single on-street parking space can be devastating to a small business. And a single parking meter can generate a few thousand to well over $10,000 dollars a year in fees and fines for a City. In 2025, in total, the parking system generates about $120 per person, money that would otherwise have to come from property taxes.
There is, however, a better approach. We know that neighborhoods adjacent to vibrant shopping streets are more desirable and more vibrant. They tend to command higher tax rates, and can provide higher levels of service, like police protection. Vibrant shopping streets are highly dependent on people being able to get to them and then park. That means parking, especially on-street parking, is critical to the success of a business area. Minneapolis would be better served to design local business streets to accommodate on-street parking than choosing designs that remove parking.
The removal of parking is occurring at a most inopportune time. Neighborhood businesses have been struggling ever since the George Floyd murder and subsequent riots. Shoppers and diners, already changing habits because of COVID, are finding it increasingly difficult to find parking in districts like Uptown, Dinkytown, Lyn-Lake and Eat Street. And they are going elsewhere.
Add to that the high cost of tenant improvements, because both labor and materials have become much more expensive. Add the cost of permits for renovation and food service, and other government regulations. And increases in minimum wage rates have made the cost of doing business in the city less competitive with suburban locations. The StarTribune, in a recent article, detailed the competitive difference between Minneapolis and other places in the Twin Cities. It showed that at the restaurant El Sazon Cocina & Tragos, the birria ramen, with noodles and consommé, meat, toppings and two taquitos at its restaurant in Eagan is $16.50. In Minneapolis, the same dish goes for $18. StarTribune reports that the owners are going to open a third restaurant in Stillwater instead of Minneapolis because of the choices the City is making to make operating a restaurant more difficult and expensive, and part of that it is anti-parking policies.
Restricting access to businesses by taking parking is just making things worse for businesses and urban neighborhoods. The City needs to abandon its anti-car agenda and replace it with an approach that recognizes how vital access is to businesses. It is far too easy for people to simply go to the suburbs rather than patronize Minneapolis businesses and we are seeing the effects. It needs to put back parking where it has been removed and expand it to ensure the best access to businesses possible. It might even consider the approach the City of Pittsburgh has taken, rebating some parking revenues to neighborhood improvements, like signage and wayfinding, beautification, and promotion.
Life in both cities and suburbs, with the exception of a few highly dense urban neighborhoods, demands ownership or access to private vehicles, and therefore to places to park those vehicles. Consider for a moment how things have changed in the past decade: much of the serious shopping that takes place today is done on line. I happen to live in a dense suburban community within walking distance of a shopping center anchored by a supermarket. Yet our streets are filled daily with Amazon, UPS, FedEx, and USPS trucks. My neighbors could walk or bike to the supermarket; but they shop for groceries once a week (or have groceries delivered – all of the supermarkets now deliver.) My townhouse community contains 138 units. I know of none that own bikes.
Who do I know that rides a bike? My older son, a musician who lives in Brooklyn, has a studio about two miles from his home. He was an avid BMX racer and still rides his bike back and forth to the studio. I have a nephew in Minneapolis who has an expensive bike which he rides for leisure and exercise. He also owns an EV which he uses for work, restoring historic homes. A bike would be useless for his job. My son in Brooklyn needs an SUV for hauling musical equipment to gigs, and for hauling his school age kids to lacrosse practice, play rehearsals, and grocery shopping.
I applaud PedalByte for her/his passionate devotion to biking. I have served as a consultant for dozens of main streets and urban districts like Uptown and Dinkytown, and none would survive on walking and biking customers. This is especially true because many of these districts depend on the nighttime economy, and both customers and employees rely on private autos. Public transportation usually quits before the bars and restaurants close; for many reasons, access to an auto is essential. As the previous writers have pointed out, most bike studies are biased or seriously flawed.
Removal of parking, due to an anti-car agenda, shows lack of planning for future individual transportation modes. Whether the future holds commuting by on-demand fleets of autonomous electric vehicles, or by horse & buggy, people will still need parking spots. It would seem logical to balance both public transportation with current autonomous vehicle parking, until future modes of transportation are in place. This aggressive disruption of individual transportation has revealed unintended consequences to the economic health of Minneapolis.
Some people like to cite studies showing that removing parking and cars increases the number of people on the street and results in more shopping. However, they tend to be areas of great density, such as NYC, where nothing is far and there are multiple and frequent modes of transit. Or they are tourist destinations, where people are there to stroll the avenue and see the sights, not to do errands.
For people who are dealing with multiple appointments and responsibilities across a wide swath of the city, often with an elderly parent or a recalcitrant kid in tow, it’s a different story.
Sure, you can walk or roll to a coffee shop or a doctor’s appointment when you have nothing to carry but your own weary self, but it’s a little different when you need to haul home a bag of cement or a clutch of soccer equipment for an entire peewee team.
I say this as a 78 year old duffer who gets by solely by bike all summer, hauling groceries uphill in a basket the size of a foot locker or behind in a Burley. But that’s on a small island with a very concentrated shopping district. And it’s a tourist destination. And it’s summer.
As a parent with two elementary aged children, two dogs, and a half dozen chickens it is absolutely not impossible to replace many if not most of your car daily trips with bicycles and transit. Especially if you live in Minneapolis or St Paul.
So how many people are like you? I assume you live near high frequency transit, something most people cant. You work from home. Your children are small. You have daycare and groceries close by. You are physically able to haul heavy things long distance. You rely on cars, possibly owned by others. But how many people can be like you?
Cars don’t spend money at businesses. People do.
Study after study has shown that making streets safer for people along with providing access to modes of transportation other than just cars makes a place where people want to be and generally improves businesses’ bottom lines.
So how people get to these places in a world where walking is declining (Streetlight), biking has leveled off (Streetlight) and transit ridership is down 50%?
And given very walkable/bikeable/transit supported completely dead places like Uptown, Downtown St Paul and Downtown Minneapolis, how can this be if all your studies are so correct? No one writing stories about the dead walkable places? Confirmation bias? How about we go out next Saturday night on Lake and Hennepin, one of our most walkable places and ask people how they got there?
And in looking at these articles (which someone recently posted on Reddit, it seems that they get it backwards. There is nothing magical about walking and biking. In fact, done wrong, it can kill access and kill businesses. A recent study found that a street parking spot generates $300,000 a year for small businesses. Perhaps place making is about curating fun experiences and not taking away parking?
Parked cars provide a barrier between the street traffic, especially buses and trucks, and the sidewalk. Nothing is less pleasant than walking on the sidewalk and having a vehicle hit a large puddle and splash cold, icy water all over you. No one is saying bus riders or bike riders should not be allowed to access businesses. I’m all for bike racks, heated bus stops, and other accommodations and amenities. But I worked a block from the White House in downtown DC for ten years and never once did I drive to work. I took the metro every day, and there is a bike path that parallels the metro line. No matter how nice the weather, I could count on one hand the number of bike commuters I saw every morning and afternoon. Furthermore, I almost never saw metro passengers with shopping bags or carts. The studies the reader refers to are fine. Make streets safer for other modes of transportation. Just don’t kill retail by removing parking, the lifeblood of those businesses.