NY Times contributor and economist Tyler Cowen writes:
Higher charges for parking spaces would limit our trips by car. That would cut emissions, alleviate congestion and, as a side effect, improve land use.
Donald C. Shoup, professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, has made this idea a cause, as presented in his 733-page book, “The High Cost of Free Parking.”
Brilliant. Except where it’s not (which not surprisingly is how I describe my blog). Shoup is a brilliant economist. His life’s work has been on parking it has helped local governments and even the federal government improve parking issues and policy. This is an example:
Shoup theorizes that street level parking should be at about 85% capacity. Any more and you have people filling up streets circling the block waiting for spaces to open. So you want to price that parking on the street so that enough people are deterred away. If you have people circling blocks looking for space that adds congestion, and burns gas.
I think that’s kind of brilliant. If 25 cents an hour encourages too much parking, then up it to 50 and see if that helps. If that’s too much take it down a notch. Or employ this guy at $500/hour to figure out the optimal price.
But this idea that we have too much free parking is ridiculous. I’ll qualify it with two examples.
1: It’s no secret that I live in the DC area. There is a metro station in this area that provides parking in order to allow passengers to ride into DC. Parking costs $5 or so and the metro ride another $9. That’s $14 to get in and out of DC. Or I can drive all the way in and park in the middle of DC for $20 or less. So what’s my response? I don’t go into DC. I specifically sought out living arrangements and working conditions that keep me away from the town. Ideally, I won’t be around the DC area any longer than I need to be. Don’t get me wrong, I like it here, but I don’t love it. The DC transportation systems (highways, roads, and public transport) are in such terrible shape that I hope to take my talent elsewhere. I’m not alone in this. People avoid DC like the plague because of this. Sure there are plenty of folks that love it here, but the system scares away a lot of talented minds from its economy.
2: I’m from the suburban south. Where I’m from the only place you have to pay to park is somewhere downtown. So guess where people don’t go? In my hometown there have been instances where I want to go do something downtown, drive down there, and drive right back because there is no place to park. If I want to park I can go to the parking deck 10 blocks away from everything, or park on that sketchy road that will likely result in the loss of the parts of my car that make it roll. And of course Shoup would just argue that it’s not priced properly. Sure. But if it were priced at all people would just leave it. Keep in mind, these are towns with no sufficient public transport from the burbs unlike DC.
Lest we not forget other parties here. Businesses want parking to be as cheap as possible. It brings in the most customers. Make parking more expensive and they lose customers.
I want to argue the exact opposite of having too much free parking. We don’t have enough of it. Shoup, having lived in a major metro for most of his adult life, and the author (who lives in a DC burb) have been blinded by what they want to see in their own urban areas. But even then the author, Cowen, must not be paying attention to the traffic in the morning commute. Every day traffic in DC is a nightmare, and yet metro prices are already artificially low and heading up. So people still aren’t using them. Do you need everyone to raise the cost of parking? Go ahead and try it, that’s a seesaw that can just never get level. Just watch the mass exodus of jobs from DC, especially in this day in age where telecommuting is getting more and more popular.
This is a classic example of academic economist thinking. “In a perfect world” scenarios are great. But we aren’t in a perfect world. There isn’t enough money to put in mass transit everywhere. Even then, they can’t make it cheap enough to compel enough people to actually use it without bankrupting the project.
Here’s how you fix traffic and parking issues:
Step 1: Stop writing 700 page books about it
Step 2: Stop pretending that charging for parking will fix it until you watch someone get stabbed on a subway
Step 3: Work with local employers and give them an incentive to allow workers flexible hours to avoid rush hour and peak parking
Step 4: Make parking free for the smallest cars and residents of the city, and charge a tax in the city based on vehicle size, time of day, and duration of time spent in the city
You’ll see movement to smaller cars, less peak road stress, and the tax revenue could be used to improve roads, subsidize the public transportation system, and give incentives back to employers. And I haven’t even touched on the cynical notion that jobs should stay in the city and not be moved to rural and suburban areas if city parking was jacked up. Heaven forbid we build a network of employee-towns. But urban planners don’t think that way. They’re retroactive, not proactive.
Photo: Nrbelex
 By The Weakonomist |
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