Parking 2.0

Future Tech News notes that you can use Google Street View to, at least sometimes, read the parking restriction signs at your destination. Of course, this requires that your destination be in one of the cities that Google has photographed, and that the street sign be clear enough to decipher from the Google image. Yeah, I know, you probably won’t be doing this more than the one time inspired by this blog post (if that!). Regardless, the Internet continues to improve many aspects of life, including parking.

I’ve previously blogged about the delightful, temporary conversion of parking spaces into parks. PARK(ing) Day 2007 has a call to action - you too can take the “ing” out of parking! I absolutely agree with the organizer’s assertion that:

Around the nation, inexpensive curbside parking results in increased traffic, wasted fuel, and more pollution. It’s time to rethink the way streets are used!

Making a parking space into a park is one way of rethinking. Another is charging the fair market price for parking spaces. Many (most?) cities charge too little for their parking - citizens should be outraged at this wasteful subsidy to automobile drivers. Thus, I join the call to rise up and protest wasteful parking management practices!

Steven Landsburg has a great, short piece in Slate entitled Why parking your car is more environmentally destructive than driving it. He discusses something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently - the various costs to society of poor parking management practices, and the potential benefits to be derived from improving those practices. For instance, what is the difference in terms of revenue generation, job creation, and quality of life improvements between devoting approximately 350 square feet of land to provide one parking space versus devoting that land to retail space, office space, housing space, or park space? I’ve not done the math, but I’m guessing Steve Landsburg will be doing it in his new book, and I’m guessing that the parking use will come out dead last! Have you seen any analysis of this type? If so, please post a link in the comments.

StreetFilms has a great 6.5 minute interview with parking guru Donald Shoup. If you are curious about his management principals, but can’t bring yourself to read his book, I suggest you spend a few minutes with this well-produced video. One highlight - a recent survey in SoHo (in New York) suggested that nearly 30% of the traffic on the road was people looking for parking! Motorists, bicyclists, pedestrians, really everyone should be furious that their politicians have so poorly managed the important public resource of parking as to cause nearly a third of traffic to be essentially unnecessary! In a well-managed parking system, there would always be available spaces, and virtually all of that “parking search traffic” would be taken off the streets. Anyway, go watch the video, then come back here and leave your thoughts in the comments.

In The Parking Fix, the Wall Street Journal details how Don Shoup’s parking management principals, principally pricing parking to 85% occupancy, is being implemented in Redwood City, CA, Portland, OR, and other places.

“But the idea has plenty of detractors, starting with those who say the price increases fall disproportionately on people for whom they are a hardship.

Is this stating the obvious, or am I missing something? The real question is should we be offering a subsidy to drivers, in the form of underpriced parking? Parking was never free, it was just paid for by others - now that those actually using the parking are being asked to pay its fair price (as determined by the marketplace) is this a disproportionate burden?

“Also, many market-based plans eliminate minimum parking requirements for developers, which critics say gives developers a profit boost and creates a parking crunch down the line.”

Eliminating minimum parking requirements may indeed create a parking crunch later, but I think in many cases this delay is actually a positive thing. See my previous blog post on this topic.

The Portland Transport Blog reports that Don Shoup will be giving his quintessential High Cost of Free Parking talk at the Portland State University this Friday, Feb 2, at noon. He is a great speaker and I encourage you to attend if you are in the area.

The Seattle Times writes about another example of a US city considering removing the rules that require certain amounts to parking to be provided by new businesses and buildings. A post on the excellent Portland Transport blog discusses the Seattle article and similar rules in Portland - be sure to scroll down to read the comments on the Portland Transport blog posting, as there is excellent discussion of the pros and cons of this “market-based” approach to parking requirements.

I think much of the debate on this topic centers, fundamentally, around a single factor - our relative willingness to tolerate time-lag, and thus “money-lag”, in addressing parking issues. Let me explain: In the traditional world of parking requirements, we try to solve problems before they occur, but we spend more than is generally required to do so. Parking requirements are “calculated” (I’m being generous with that term) to provide sufficient parking for the related building users at almost all times. This means building more parking that is typically consumed - as noted in the Seattle article, parking requirements for grocery stores were set about 50% higher than the observed usage. In this traditional parking requirements approach, there are rarely problems of insufficient parking (instead, there are more typically problems associated with too much parking) and the parking “problem” caused by the new development is solved before the development opens its doors.

In the new marked-based approach to parking, where requirements are removed and developers or business owners are allowed to decide for themselves how much parking to provide, we face a different time-lag issue. I believe that as market-based approaches proliferate, we’ll see some problems related to insufficient parking. On the Portland Transport blog a commenter notes this has already happened in their neighborhood. Those problems will, inevitably, be solved as time goes by - either parking will be provided by for-profit parking operators, drivers will shift to other modes, or the business that generated the parking demand will depart the area. All of these solutions, however, face a time-lag issue - they can only occur AFTER the parking problem has manifested itself. On the other hand, these solutions have a major “money-lag” benefit - they didn’t require spending on “predicted” solutions before the problem was apparent, and they’ll probably be more efficient uses of capital once the solutions are implemented. Why more efficient? Partially because they simply occur later (a dollar spent 3 years from now will be cheaper than a dollar spent today), and partly because the solutions will be much better matched to the problems (ie the grocery store won’t build 3 spaces when only 2 were needed, they’ll build 2, thus saving that 1 space’s cost).

So, the debate in the parking requirements vs marked-based approach should really be around what level of time-lag, between problem identification and solution implementation, are we willing to tolerate, which is another way of saying what level of wasted investment are we willing to tolerate. So, what level are you willing to tolerate?

Its so exciting to see Shoup in action! A recent article in the News & Observer says the city council in Raleigh, North Carolina, is considering a study of removing parking requirements for new development. Instead, developers would decide how much parking to build, based on their project type and their forecasts of market response. This is exactly the type of market based parking management approach that Don Shoup, and others (including me!) support. What do you think - should developers be allowed to decide how much parking to build, or are their interests so misalligned with the public interest that regulation must force them to build or supply some pre-determined amount of parking?

Boing Boing, one of the most popular blogs on the Internet, recently posted a summary of an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about a trial of Mobile License Plate Recognition for finding parking ticket scofflaws. This technology and application is generally well known to people in the parking industry, but the rest of the world is just becoming aware.

The article quotes the cost of the MLPR hardware and software as $92,000 - as a San Francisco taxpayer, I find this to be a big waste of money, as perfectly capable MLPR systems are available for half that amount!

I have no idea where this picture was taken, but it’s funny! Thanks Engadget

I’m a big fan of the latest parking innovation at airports - small, free parking lots, near the terminal, that are for short-term use by people in their cars coming to pick-up friends and relatives. The rules for these lots typically include a 1/2 - 1 hour maximum stay, and a requirement that the driver remain with the car. When the traveller arrives and gets their bags, they call their “driver” to come pick them up. These lots will eventually significantly reduce the number of cars “circling” the terminal, causing traffic congestion and burning fuel.

Now I read that the Orlando International Airport Offers Wi-Fi For Drivers waiting in the “park and call” lot. Presumably the drivers will use this wireless internet service with their laptops to keep themselves informed (of flight arrival times) and entertained (YouTube?) while they wait. Brilliant! As long as the airport adequately promotes this amenity through new signs, I’m sure the park and call lot at OIA will be very popular.