The Combined Transportation Emergency & Communications Center (CTECC) has unique parking requirements since it is operational 24 hrs / 7 days a week and houses multiple government agencies. It is a mission critical facility providing 9-1-1 emergency call / dispatch service for the City of Austin (Fire, EMS, and Police) and Travis County Sheriff\'s Office. In addition, Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) runs it\'s Automated Traffic Management System and Courtesy Patrol dispatch from the CTECC, and the local mass transit authority, Capital Metro, also has a bus dispatch presence in the building. These agencies all have varying shifts; requiring parking that will accommodate these multiple agencies and their overlapping shifts. This building also contains the new Emergency Operations Center (EOC) . An EOC activation can cause a spike in parking requirements that must be satisfied on site, as there is no alternative parking anywhere near the building. The City of Austin parking requirement for a building of this type is 3 parking spaces per each 1000 square feet, which translates to 195 parking spaces for this building. Given that the peak parking requirement in the case of an emergency and full activation of the Emergency Operation Center is 221, the City of Austin, which is the client/owner of this building has required 211 parking spaces, having taken into account car and van pooling. What kind of documentation (i.e. letter, variance, etc) do we need from the City of Austin which demonstrates the unique minimum parking requirement for this facility in order to achieve this point?
The intent of credit 4 is to "reduce pollution and land development impacts from automobile use". The situation described does not meet that general intent. The more specific goal of credit 4.4 is to reduce available parking as an incentive for people to carpool and vanpool. Reducing the number of parking spaces makes it easier to use vanpools and carpools as fewer available parking spaces makes it more difficult and often more costly to drive alone to work. In this case, except for under the most extreme conditions, there will always be extra parking available to single occupant vehicles, eliminating any incentive for reduction in single occupant vehicle use. Because the program for this project requires it to provide substantially more parking than will typically be needed, the project would need to demonstrate substantial success in implementing ride-share programs to achieve the intent of this credit. Another strategy might be to develop an overflow parking area for emergecy use that is paved in grass-crete or other pervious paving system. Other creative solutions to meet the intent of this credit would be considered if proposed in your application for LEED certification.