Parking, parking and more parking. West Hartford mandates eight parking spaces per bowling lane, Stamford demands 20 parking spaces for a simple grab and go cafe, and Manchester mandates 273 spaces for a Kohls. Speaking of that Manchester Kohls, think for a moment about the largest, most oversized big box store parking lot near where you live. Now think about how those extra, unused spaces are contributing to runoff pollution and our increasingly devastating flash floods.

Just one inch of rainfall on an acre of impervious surface—like a parking lot, which prevents water from soaking into the ground—generates 27,000 gallons of runoff. As water flows across the pavement it picks up oil, trash, fertilizer, bacteria, tire particles, and road salt before running right into our streams, rivers, and Long Island Sound—bringing those pollutants with it. Officially known as “nonpoint source pollution,” Save the Sound states that "runoff is one of the largest sources of pollution in Long Island Sound,” smothering aquatic life and making beaches unsafe for swimming and fishing. 

Have you ever wondered why our parking lots are so large and so underutilized? The answer is commercial parking mandates, a quiet set of policies that result in excess asphalt across our state. These wasteful requirements are arbitrary and based on pseudo-science, and they lead to a built environment with an excess of pavement—unused spaces that contribute to our flooding and runoff pollution challenges.

Could we live with a little less asphalt? We at CT Parking Reform certainly believe so, and we have the data to back it up. We mapped every parking spot in every town center and major transit stop in Connecticut and found that parking lots make up 29% of Connecticut’s downtowns and transit hubs. Some towns have turned over forty or even fifty percent of their most valuable town center land to parking lots. Shockingly, all of downtown Seymour could fit in the parking lot of many big box stores across the state. In Fairfield, they found that their 10 largest shopping centers contained 5,000 parking spaces…spaces that were only 36% occupied on average. It’s time for a change.

Ending costly commercial parking mandates won’t eliminate parking. Businesses will provide parking if they believe it’s needed to attract customers, and towns will still be able to build public lots. Right-sizing parking with more flexible rules is a proven, common-sense policy that’s happening across the country. Over 100 small towns and cities have chosen parking flexibility over wasteful mandates, and states are joining in. In 2026 North Carolina passed statewide parking reform on a bipartisan basis, an effort spearheaded by the Catawba River Keepers’s efforts to protect their waterways.

Connecticut has already shown pollution reduction works. Long Island Sound is healthier than it’s been in living memory, and we can make it even healthier. Commercial parking flexibility is right for Connecticut, right for our streams, and right for our environment. 

Interested in learning more? Contact us at ctparkingreform@gmail.com!

Thomas Broderick is an educator and Town Councilor in Trumbull and co-founder of CT Parking Reform.