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Winooski council adopts new transportation demand management rules, offering parking reductions for projects that reduce car trips
Summary
The City Council approved amendments to Unified Land Use and Development Regulations §4.17 that require larger projects to include measures encouraging alternatives to private vehicle trips and provide parking reductions for qualifying developments.
Winooski City Council on Monday approved changes to the city’s transportation demand management (TDM) rules that require larger housing and commercial projects to include strategies to reduce private-vehicle trips and allow developers to earn reduced parking requirements.
The new language, adopted after a public hearing and staff presentation, applies to developments that meet the project-size threshold described in the amended rules and offers a 20% parking reduction for qualifying projects in the Gateway and downtown C1/C2 districts and 15% for residential districts where developers opt in.
Revi, the city’s director of city planning, walked the council through the revisions, describing the rule changes that convert the previous mixed threshold (“20 dwelling units or 5,000 square feet”) into a single TDM-unit measure (one TDM unit = one dwelling unit or 250 square feet of commercial space). Revi said the change was intended “to clarify that for mixed-use projects, x amount of TDM units would trigger these regulations.”
The amendments also add specific program elements and monitoring requirements: developers must file a TDM plan recorded in the land records; marketing materials must be distributed annually and provided to planning staff and to new tenants or owners; and staff will perform monitoring and evaluation on a two-year cycle. The draft sets amenity point values for certain uses (for example, day care, grocery or hardware stores count more toward compliance), streamlines how Green Mountain Transit (GMT) buy-in credits are scored (tier 1 = 3 points; tier 2 = 4 points; tier 3 = 5 points), and specifies minimum on-site employee amenities (tier 1/2: at least one shower and six clothes lockers; tier 3: double those amounts).
Council members moved and seconded the measure (motion by Charlie; second by Thomas) and approved it by voice vote. Revi noted the ordinance will take effect according to statute (staff said a 21-day effective period applies).
Why it matters: the amendments aim to reduce car dependency in a city that, staff said, already has low car-ownership rates. The rules create a clear menu for developers who want fewer parking spaces by implementing programs that encourage other travel modes and by tying those programs to specific, measurable points and to recorded commitments.
