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A former top executive at the National Rifle Association, Joshua Powell, has admitted wrongdoing and agreed to pay $100,000 on the eve of a civil corruption trial of the organization’s top executives set to begin on Monday.

The settlement announcement from the New York state attorney general’s office on Friday came the same day that NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, 74, announced his resignation from the organization after more than three decades.

“Joshua Powell’s admission of wrongdoing and Wayne LaPierre’s resignation confirm what we have alleged for years: the NRA and its senior leaders are financially corrupt,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement.

In her civil lawsuit, James has accused top NRA leaders of misusing more than $64 million in cash donated by gun owners.

The suit claims LaPierre and others used the money to pay for private jets, lavish vacations, and to fund no-show jobs for friends and allies. Powell was previously named as one of five defendants; the trial against four remaining defendants is expected to go forward as scheduled.

LaPierre and the NRA have denied any wrongdoing.

Powell was head of operations and chief of staff to NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, but in recent years he broke with the group, emerging as a critic of the pro-gun organization’s fundraising tactics and publishing a tell-all book in 2020.

“The finances of the NRA are in shambles,” Powell wrote, portraying the NRA as part of “the grifter culture of Conservative Inc.”

In a 2020 interview with NPR, Powell said that under LaPierre’s leadership, the NRA tried to radicalize gun owners in order to raise more money.

“The term ‘pour gasoline on the fire’ is from Wayne’s lips to God’s ears … it’s very easy to raise money off of fear,” he said.

The NRA, meanwhile, has portrayed this lawsuit as a political effort by a Democratic state attorney general to weaken the once-powerful gun organization.

Those arguments were rejected during a lengthy appeals court process, which cleared the way for Monday’s trial.

In a statement Friday, the NRA said LaPierre was stepping down for health reasons.

“I will never stop supporting the NRA and its fight to defend Second Amendment freedom,” he said. “My passion for our cause burns as deeply as ever.”

During his time at the helm of the NRA, LaPierre moved the organization to the right, taking a hard-line stance against gun regulation even as mass shootings and gun violence surged in the U.S. Firearms are now a leading cause of death for young Americans.

In a statement on Friday, the head of the Brady gun control advocacy organization, Kris Brown, issued a statement saying the “NRA is on the ropes” because of its legal troubles.

“Wayne LaPierre spent three decades peddling the big lie that more guns make us safer,” she said in a statement.

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Saturday ordered the grounding and immediate inspection of about 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft worldwide after a mid-flight emergency late Friday involving one of the planes operated by Alaska Airlines.

“The FAA is requiring immediate inspections of certain Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes before they can return to flight,” the agency’s administrator Mike Whitaker said in a statement.

The decision comes after an Alaska Airlines flight was forced to abruptly land in Portland, Ore., on Friday night. Along with the FAA, the National Transportation Safety Board is also investigating the incident.

On Friday night, Alaska Airlines grounded and ordered a fleet-wide inspection of its Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft. On Saturday, United Airlines also suspended service on some of its Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft per the FAA’s request. The airline told NPR the grounding will cause about 60 flight cancellations on Saturday.

Southwest Airlines and American Airlines told NPR they do not carry Boeing 737 Max 9s. While they do carry Boeing 737 Max 8s, both airlines said the model does not raise any concerns.

“The MAX -8 aircraft in our existing fleet and the -7 in our future fleet do not have the exit door plug involved in the Friday evening event. Our fleet and operation are unaffected,” a Southwest spokesperson said in a statement.

Meanwhile, India’s aviation regulator ordered the immediate inspections of all Boeing Max 737 aircraft owned by domestic operators, Reuters reported. None of India’s air operators are believed to carry the model that abruptly landed in Portland on Friday.

The incident comes less than four years after Boeing Max aircraft were allowed to fly passengers in the U.S. All Boeing Max planes were grounded worldwide in 2019 after two deadly crashes involving Max 8 jets.

Last week, Boeing urged the FAA to check its 737 Max jets for loose bolts after the discovery of at least two planes with improperly tightened nuts.

In a statement, Boeing spokesperson Jessica Kowal said the company supports the FAA’s call for inspections.

“Safety is our top priority and we deeply regret the impact this event has had on our customers and their passengers,” Kowal said. “In addition, a Boeing technical team is supporting the NTSB’s investigation into last night’s event. We will remain in close contact with our regulator and customers.”

What happened Friday night

Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 took off from Portland, Ore., shortly after 5 p.m. PST Friday, bound for Ontario, Calif. According to social media posts, it appeared that a window and piece of fuselage had broken off midair — leaving a gaping hole on the plane’s left side.

Oxygen masks were deployed as the aircraft quickly returned to Portland International Airport at 5:26 p.m. PST, according to FlightAware.com. The flight had 171 passengers and six crew members on board. No casualties or serious injuries were reported.

KPTV reported that the local fire department arrived on scene and treated minor injuries. At least one person needed further medical attention.

“We are working with Boeing and regulators to understand what occurred tonight, and will share updates as more information is available,” Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci said in a statement.

The airline grounded all of its Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft late Friday until it could inspect each plane. On Saturday, Alaska Airlines said it had completed inspections for more than a quarter of its planes and there were “no concerning findings.”

The company added that it will return planes to service after their inspections are completed “with our full confidence.” The airline expects inspections on all 65 of its Boeing 737 Max 9s to be completed in the next few days.

Boeing 737 Max’s troubled history

The aircraft’s safety problems were under global scrutiny after deadly crashes in Indonesia in 2018 and Ethiopia in 2019 — which killed a total of 346 people. After a worldwide halt in 2019, Boeing 737 Max completed its first U.S. commercial flight in December 2020.

Investigators determined that the company’s newly rolled-out flight control system was partly to blame. In both incidents, the system known as MCAS acted on a faulty sensor and forced both planes to erroneously nosedive even as the pilots attempted to regain control.

But it wasn’t just manufacturing flaws. A report by the Department of Transportation’s inspector general found that the company failed to tell regulators about critical changes it made to its flight control system. The report concluded that Boeing did this in order to expedite the plane’s certification process.

In 2021, Boeing agreed to pay more than $2.5 billion to settle a criminal charge related to the crashes. Under the deal, Boeing was ordered to pay a criminal penalty of $243.6 million while $500 million went toward a fund for the families whose loved ones were killed in the crashes. Much of the rest of the settlement was marked off for airlines that had purchased the troubled 737 Max planes.

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

In most U.S. states, respiratory illness levels are currently considered “high” or “very high,” according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A few respiratory viruses have been driving the upward trend. “The influenza virus is the thing that’s really skyrocketing right now,” says Dr. Steven Stack, public health commissioner for the state of Kentucky and president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “Influenza is sharply escalating and driving more hospitalizations.”

Nationally, levels of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) appear to have plateaued and possibly peaked, while COVID-19 levels are elevated and are expected to climb higher.

“After the holidays, after we’ve traveled and gathered, we are seeing what is pretty typical of this time of year, which is a lot of respiratory viruses,” says Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the CDC. “We’re seeing particularly high circulation in the southeast, but no part of the country is spared.”

Staggered start for viruses this season

The flu is coming in later this season, compared with the 2022-2023 season, when “RSV and flu really took off right at the same time along with COVID,” says Marlene Wolfe, assistant professor of environmental health at Emory University and a program director at WastewaterScan. “All three of those together were pretty nasty. This year, there’s more of an offset.”

That has been good news so far for hospital capacity, which has remained stable this season, meaning that people who are quite ill and need medical care are generally able to get it.

Some hospitals in different parts of the country — from Massachusetts to Illinois to California — are starting to require masks for staff again and in some cases for patients and visitors.

Vaccines can still help

Health officials say that getting the latest flu and COVID-19 vaccines now can still protect people this season. While Stack, with Kentucky’s Department for Public Health, encourages seasonal preventive shots for everyone 6 months and older, he says it’s particularly important for “everybody who is elderly — and not even old elderly — like young elderly, 60 and older,” since they are more likely to get very sick from these viruses.

CDC data shows that fewer than half of U.S. adults have gotten a flu shot this fall and winter. That’s still better than the vaccination rate for this season’s COVID-19 booster, which fewer than 20% of U.S. adults have gotten, even though COVID-19 remains the bigger danger.

“The thing that is putting folks into the hospital and unfortunately taking their lives — the virus that is still the most severe [at the moment] — is the COVID virus,” says the CDC’s Cohen, citing the latest weekly data showing 29,000 new COVID-19 hospitalizations and 1,200 COVID-19 deaths in the United States.

Beyond vaccines, health officials say there’s still a place for masking as a preventive measure.

Early testing can aid treatment

Those who are sick should stay home and watch their symptoms. If they progress beyond a runny nose and a light cough “to body aches, fevers, difficulty moving through your day, a heavier runny nose, a worsening cough … [those more severe symptoms] should trigger you to go get tested,” says Cohen.

Getting tested and diagnosed early, with COVID-19 or the flu, can help those at risk of serious illness get access to prescription pills that can reduce their chances of ending up in the hospital.

Flu and COVID-19 vaccines, tests and treatments should be covered by health insurance.

For those who are uninsured, the government is also offering a program called Test to Treat that offers free tests, free telehealth appointments and free treatments at home.

Cohen says people can protect themselves over the next few weeks by staying aware of what’s happening in the community and their individual circumstances. “You want to know what’s happening in your community,” she says. “Is there a lot of virus circulating? And then, what are the tools that I could layer on to protect myself, depending on who I am, my age, my risk, as well as who I’m around?”

The CDC has maps of COVID-19 hospitalizations down to the county level on its website, and it provides weekly updates on respiratory viruses nationwide. Cohen says there are many tools — including vaccines, masks, rapid tests and treatments — available to help people reduce their risks this season.

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

In 2016, Richard Timmins went to a free informational seminar to learn more about Medicare coverage.

“I listened to the insurance agent, and basically, he really promoted Medicare Advantage,” Timmins says. The agent described less expensive and broader coverage offered by the plans, which are funded largely by the government but administered by private insurance companies.

For Timmins, who is now 76, it made economic sense then to sign up. And his decision was great, for a while.

Then, three years ago, he noticed a lesion on his right earlobe.

“I have a family history of melanoma. And so, I was kind of tuned in to that and thinking about that,” Timmins says of the growth, which doctors later diagnosed as malignant melanoma. “It started to grow and started to become rather painful.”

Timmins, though, discovered that his enrollment in a Premera Blue Cross Medicare Advantage plan would mean a limited network of doctors and the potential need for preapproval, or prior authorization, from the insurer before getting care. The experience, he says, made getting care more difficult, and now he wants to switch back to traditional, government-administered Medicare.

But he can’t. And he’s not alone.

“I have very little control over my actual medical care,” he says, adding that he now advises friends not to sign up for the private plans. “I think that people are not understanding what Medicare Advantage is all about.”

Enrollment in Medicare Advantage plans has grown substantially in the past few decades, enticing more than half of eligible people, primarily those 65 or older, with low premium costs and perks like dental and vision insurance. And as the private plans’ share of the Medicare patient pie has ballooned to 30.8 million people, so too have concerns about the insurers’ aggressive sales tactics and misleading coverage claims.

Enrollees, like Timmins, who sign on when they are healthy can find themselves trapped as they grow older and sicker.

“It’s one of those things that people might like them on the front end because of their low to zero premiums and if they are getting a couple of these extra benefits — the vision, dental, that kind of thing,” says Christine Huberty, a lead benefit specialist supervising attorney for the Greater Wisconsin Agency on Aging Resources.

“But it’s when they actually need to use it for these bigger issues,” Huberty says, “that’s when people realize, ‘Oh no, this isn’t going to help me at all.'”

Medicare pays private insurers a fixed amount per Medicare Advantage enrollee and in many cases also pays out bonuses, which the insurers can use to provide supplemental benefits. Huberty says those extra benefits work as an incentive to “get people to join the plan” but that the plans then “restrict the access to so many services and coverage for the bigger stuff.”

David Meyers, assistant professor of health services, policy and practice at the Brown University School of Public Health, analyzed a decade of Medicare Advantage enrollment and found that about 50% of beneficiaries — rural and urban — left their contract by the end of five years. Most of those enrollees switched to another Medicare Advantage plan rather than traditional Medicare.

In the study, Meyers and his co-authors muse that switching plans could be a positive sign of a free marketplace but that it could also signal “unmeasured discontent” with Medicare Advantage.

“The problem is that once you get into Medicare Advantage, if you have a couple of chronic conditions and you want to leave Medicare Advantage, even if Medicare Advantage isn’t meeting your needs, you might not have any ability to switch back to traditional Medicare,” Meyers says.

Traditional Medicare can be too expensive for beneficiaries switching back from Medicare Advantage, he says. In traditional Medicare, enrollees pay a monthly premium and, after reaching a deductible, in most cases are expected to pay 20% of the cost of each nonhospital service or item they use. And there is no limit on how much an enrollee may have to pay as part of that 20% coinsurance if they end up using a lot of care, Meyers says.

To limit what they spend out-of-pocket, traditional Medicare enrollees typically sign up for supplemental insurance, such as employer coverage, or a private Medigap policy. If they are low income, Medicaid may provide that supplemental coverage.

But, Meyers says, there’s a catch: While beneficiaries who enrolled first in traditional Medicare are guaranteed to qualify for a Medigap policy without pricing based on their medical history, Medigap insurers can deny coverage to beneficiaries transferring from Medicare Advantage plans or can base their prices on medical underwriting.

Only four states — Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts and New York — prohibit insurers from denying a Medigap policy if the enrollee has preexisting conditions such as diabetes or heart disease.

Paul Ginsburg is a former commissioner on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, also known as MedPAC. It’s a legislative branch agency that advises Congress on the Medicare program. He says the inability of enrollees to easily switch between Medicare Advantage and traditional Medicare during open enrollment periods is “a real concern in our system — it shouldn’t be that way.”

The federal government offers specific enrollment periods every year for switching plans. During Medicare’s open enrollment period, from Oct. 15 to Dec. 7, enrollees can switch out of their private plans to traditional, government-administered Medicare.

Medicare Advantage enrollees can also switch plans or transfer to traditional Medicare during another open enrollment period, from Jan. 1 to March 31.

“There are a lot of people that say, ‘Hey, I’d love to come back, but I can’t get Medigap anymore or I’ll have to just pay a lot more,'” says Ginsburg, who is now a professor of health policy at the University of Southern California.

Timmins is one of those people. The retired veterinarian lives in a rural community on Whidbey Island, just north of Seattle. It’s a rugged, idyllic landscape and a popular place for second homes, hiking and the arts. But it’s also a bit remote.

While it’s typically harder to find doctors in rural areas, Timmins says he believes his Premera Blue Cross plan made it more challenging to get care for a variety of reasons, including the difficulty of finding and getting in to see specialists.

Nearly half of Medicare Advantage plan directories contained inaccurate information on what providers were available, according to the most recent federal review. Beginning in 2024, new or expanding Medicare Advantage plans must demonstrate compliance with federal network expectations or their applications could be denied.

Amanda Lansford, a Premera Blue Cross spokesperson, declined to comment on Timmins’ case. She says the plan meets federal network adequacy requirements as well as travel time and distance standards “to ensure members are not experiencing undue burdens when seeking care.”

Traditional Medicare allows beneficiaries to go to nearly any doctor or hospital in the U.S., and in most cases enrollees do not need approval to get services.

Timmins, who recently finished immunotherapy, says he doesn’t think he would be approved for a Medigap policy, “because of my health issue.” And if he were to get into one, Timmins says, it would likely be too expensive.

For now, Timmins said, he is staying with his Medicare Advantage plan.

“I’m getting older. More stuff is going to happen.”

There is also a chance, Timmins says, that his cancer could resurface: “I’m very aware of my mortality.”

KFF Health News, formerly known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.

Copyright 2024 KFF Health News. To see more, visit KFF Health News.

Starting Jan. 1, the more than 65 million Americans who rely on Medicare will have better access to mental health coverage.

Medicare now covers therapy appointments with licensed marriage and family counselors, and licensed professional counselors. These are two types of therapists who make up around 40% of the Master’s level mental health providers in the country, according to the American Counseling Association.

Victoria Kress, a professor at Youngstown State University and a licensed professional counselor, spoke with All Things Considered host Juana Summers about how this new law could affect patients and providers.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

Juana Summers: This seems like a bit of an obvious solution to me, I have to say. There’s a big group of people out there who need access to mental health care — and by that I mean Medicare recipients — and there’s another big group of providers who are able to do so. So why did it take so long do you think for this law to pass?

Victoria Kress: There have been many iterations of licensure and legislation that have been put forward, and many different legislative techniques and strategies that have been applied to try to get us at the table and to get this passed.

I think it was really money. When I would sit with legislators, the first question they would would ask is, “What is this costed out as? How is this going to impact us fiscally?” Obviously, when you have easier access to care and more people providing services, that’s going to increase the cost.

I think with COVID, with the pandemic, it really put a spotlight on mental health needs. And many people started to realize how critically important access to care is around mental health issues. And because of that, I think legislators felt an increasing pressure to provide access to care for those on Medicare.

Summers: We should just be frank here. The need for mental health care in this country is incredibly stark. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 169 million Americans are living in an area with a mental health provider shortage. So how much of a dent could this change make in what seems like massive need?

Kress: It’s profound. Yes, about half of America lives in an area with a severe shortage of providers. And I can tell you, as someone who works in an urban area, even in the urban areas they’re really walking the line and struggling to find enough providers to meet the demand for our services.

So 18% of Americans receive Medicare, and they’re going to overnight have access to so many more providers. So it’s really exciting, particularly when you think about the rural areas, where one in three people receive Medicare services, and there’s such a severe shortage of providers, it’s really going to be helpful to them.

Listen to All Things Considered each day here or on your local member station for more interviews like this.

Something else that we also don’t think a lot about is addictions. Many people in America struggle with addictions. Many older adults and people with chronic disabilities struggle with addictions. About a third of all inpatient hospitalizations for opioid use disorder are paid for by Medicare. And counselors are the primary provider of all addictions counseling services. So it’s been so difficult for people to access addictions care. And now with counselors being able to provide the services that we’re trained to provide, it’s really going to open up opportunities for people to access addiction services as well.

Summers: Medicare reimbursement rates are significantly lower than what many therapists can charge out of pocket. I mean, a single session can cost hundreds of dollars for in demand providers. Are you concerned that even though they’re able to, counselors now might not want to accept Medicare because of the lower payment rates?

Kress: Yeah, absolutely. And also with the legislative change, counselors, marriage and family therapists will be being paid about 75% of what a psychologist would make. And so that’s also a deterrent there.

So it’s going to be an ongoing issue to try to get providers to sign up for Medicare reimbursement. But you know, we also have challenges in terms of continuing to encourage people to go into the mental health helping professions. And educators have a responsibility to continue to pull folks in and to train them to meet the demand that’s out there. Counseling is actually one of the most needed professions right now, there’s a severe shortage all over the country.

Summers: I want to acknowledge here before I ask this question that, of course, senior citizens are not the only Medicare recipients, though they do make up the vast majority of that population. And we know that their mental health care needs are complex and seniors have faced obstacles to receiving mental health care for years. To what degree do you think that Medicare coverage from professional counselors and family therapists could help bridge the gap for that specific population?

Kress: Counselors are uniquely trained to meet the needs of older adults. As counselors, we receive training and counseling for people across the lifespan. But we’ve not been able to work with older adults, despite our training, because of difficulties with Medicare reimbursement. So this is really exciting.

One of the things that makes counselors unique from other mental health professionals is that we have a focus on mental health. And what that means is we focus on people’s strengths, their resources and their capacities within themselves, within their families, within their communities and within society. And we focus on those and we pull those into our treatment plans and how we go about helping them make the changes that they want to make.

So I think our focus on developments, our focus on mental health, our focus on being holistic, our focus on wellness is really unique to the older adult population. I think it really resonates with them. And I think that our presence in this market is going to be really well received.

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

The city council in Austin, Texas recently proposed something that could seem like political Kryptonite: getting rid of parking minimums.

Those are the rules that dictate how much off-street parking developers must provide — as in, a certain number of spaces for every apartment and business.

Around the country, cities are throwing out their own parking requirements – hoping to end up with less parking, more affordable housing, better transit, and walkable neighborhoods.

Some Austinites were against tossing the rules.

“Austin has developed as a low density city without adequate mass transportation system,” said resident Malcolm Yeatts. “Austin citizens cannot give up their cars. Eliminating adequate parking for residents will only increase the flight of the middle class and businesses to the suburbs.”

But much more numerous were voices in support of eliminating the minimums and the impact they’ve had on housing costs, congestion, and walkability.

“I think our country has used its land wastefully, like a drunk lottery winner that’s squandered their newfound wealth,” said resident Tai Hovanky. “We literally paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

The amendment sailed through the council — making Austin the biggest city in the country to eliminate its parking mandates citywide.

Dozens of cities have ditched parking minimums

But it’s not just Austin. More than 50 other cities and towns have thrown out their minimums, from Anchorage, Alaska, and San Jose, Calif., to Gainesville, Fla.

“They’re all just dead weight,” says Tony Jordan, the president of the Parking Reform Network, of parking minimums. One issue is just how arbitrary they can be.

Take bowling alleys. Jordan says the number of required parking spots per bowling lane could vary anywhere from two to five, in cities right next to each other.

“What’s the difference between a bowler in city A and city B? Nothing. It’s just these codes were put in … very arbitrarily back 30 or 40 years ago and they’re very hard to change because anytime the city wants to change them, there’s a whole big hoopla,” he says.

Random as these rules can be, they have major consequences: Parking creates sprawl and makes neighborhoods less walkable. Asphalt traps heat and creates runoff. And parking minimums can add major costs to building new housing: a single space in a parking structure can cost $50,000 or more.

One 2017 study found that including garage parking increased the rent of a housing unit by about 17 percent.

The real problem, says Jordan, is what doesn’t get built: “The housing that could have gone in that space or the housing that wasn’t built because the developer couldn’t put enough parking. … So we just lose housing in exchange for having convenient places to store cars.”

A move to let the market decide

Austin City Council member Zo Qadri was the lead sponsor on the resolution to remove parking mandates there. He emphasizes that getting rid of parking mandates isn’t the same thing as getting rid of parking: “It simply lets the market and individual property owners decide what levels of parking are appropriate or needed.”

Austin removed parking requirements for its downtown area a decade ago, “and the market has still provided plenty of parking in the vast majority of the projects since then,” says Qadri.

A new survey from Pew Charitable Trusts found that 62% of Americans support property owners and builders to make decisions about the number of off-street parking spaces, instead of local governments.

Angela Greco, a 36-year-old musician and copywriter in Austin, is one of them. She drives, but prefers to walk or take transit. She’s not worried that doing away with the old rules will make it too hard to find a place to park.

“I’ve lived in like cities where it’s way more difficult, like New York and L.A.,” Greco says. “Parking just isn’t that difficult in Austin to me to begin with, even in really dense areas.”

She says the question of whether the city invests in transit and walkability, or doubles down on cars, is decisive in whether she’ll live in Austin long-term.

“Like if it doesn’t seem like the public transit’s going to get better, and if it seems like the highway expansion is going to happen, then I’m probably going to start looking for where else I can live. … It’s a major factor in my life and my happiness. Like sometimes I’m driving on the road and I’ll be in traffic or something or even just on the highway, and it’s such an ugly landscape,” Greco says. “And then I’ll think: this isn’t really how I want to spend my adult life.”

Too much parking can hinder effective transit

What about the idea that cities without good transit can’t cut back on parking?

Jonathan Levine, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan who studies transportation policy reform, says cities’ parking minimums can make good transit nearly impossible to develop.

“An area that has a lot of parking is transit-hostile territory,” he says.

He explains why: When people take transit, they complete their journey by walking to their destination. A sea of parking at the destination makes that walk longer, and it makes the physical environment less appealing to those on foot.

“Who wants to walk by a bunch of parking lots to get to your destination?” Levine notes.

And having tons of parking encourages driving. “If you have parking everywhere that you’re going, that parking essentially is calling to the drivers, drive here! Park here! … So if you keep on designing those areas by governmental mandate, you’re creating areas that transit can’t serve effectively,” says Levine.

Many more U.S. cities – including New York City, Milwaukee, and Dallas — are exploring getting rid of their parking minimums too. Duluth, Minn., lifted its parking mandates in December.

Levine says getting rid of these rules is good news for cities.

“It’s a huge drag on housing affordability. And it’s a huge impediment for cities fulfilling their destiny, which is enabling human interaction. Because what parking does is it separates land uses, separates people. It makes cities have a much more sprawling physical profile than they otherwise would have.”

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.