[sustran] Re: On vs off street parking or simply reducing on street parking.

[Todd Alexander Litman]

I think that a better approach is to use pricing 
to control use of on-street parking and collect 
revenues that can be used to benefit 
neighborhoods. Local residents can be offered a 
discount, for example, a relatively inexpensive 
monthly pass to park on their street. The number 
of passes sold and the price of parking set to 
limit demand to what the community considers 
optimal, so motorists can virtually always find a 
space, and traffic volumes are not excessive. Here are a few examples:

Austin Parking Benefit District 
(www.ci.austin.tx.us/parkingdistrict/default.htm)
Many neighborhood experience parking spillover 
problems, including difficulty finding parking 
for residents and visitors, concerns that public 
service vehicles cannot pass two lanes of parked 
vehicles on the street, or that parking on the 
street reduces neighborhood attractiveness. The 
city of Austin, Texas is addressing these 
problems by allowing neighborhoods to establish 
Parking Benefit Districts (PBDs). A PBD is 
created by metering the on-street parking (either 
with pay stations on the periphery of the 
neighborhood or with the traditional parking 
meters) and dedicating the net revenue (less 
costs for maintenance and enforcement) towards 
neighborhood improvements such as sidewalks, curb 
ramps, and bicycle lanes. The PMD may be used in 
conjunction with a Residential Permit Parking 
program to ensure that parking is available for residents and their visitors.

Downtown Pasadena Redevelopment (Kolozsvari and Shoup, 2003)
During the 1970s Old Pasadena’s downtown had 
become run down, with many derelict and abandoned 
buildings and few customers, in part due to the 
limited parking available to customers. Curb 
parking was restricted to two-hour duration but 
many employees simply parked in the most 
convenient, on-street spaces and moved their 
vehicles several times each day. The city 
proposed pricing on-street parking as a way to 
increase turnover and make parking available to 
customers. Many local merchants originally 
opposed the idea. As a compromise, city officials 
agreed to dedicate all revenues to public 
improvements that make the downtown more 
attractive. A Parking Meter Zone (PMZ) was 
established within which parking was priced and revenues were invested.

This approach of connecting parking revenues 
directly to added public services and keeping it 
under local control helped guarantee the 
program’s success. With this proviso, the 
merchants agreed to the proposal. They began to 
see parking meters in a new way: as a way to fund 
the projects and services that directly benefit 
their customers and businesses. The city formed a 
PMZ advisory board consisting of business and 
property owners, which recommended parking 
policies and set spending priorities for the 
meter revenues. Investments included new street 
furniture and trees, more police patrols, better 
street lighting, more street and sidewalk 
cleaning, pedestrian improvements, and marketing 
(including production of maps showing local 
attractions and parking facilities). To highlight 
these benefits to motorists, each parking meter 
has a small sticker which reads, Your Meter Money 
Will Make A Difference: Signage, Lighting, Benches, Paving.

This created a “virtuous cycle” in which parking 
revenue funded community improvements that 
attracted more visitors which increased the 
parking revenue, allowing further improvements. 
This resulted in extensive redevelopment of 
buildings, new businesses and residential 
development. Parking is no longer a problem for 
customers, who can almost always find a 
convenient space. Local sales tax revenues have 
increased far faster than in other shopping 
districts with lower parking rates, and nearby 
malls that offer free customer parking. This 
indicates that charging market rate parking 
(i.e., prices that result in 85-90% peak-period 
utilization rates) with revenues dedicated to 
local improvements can be an effective ways to support urban redevelopment.



Ashland, Oregon

Ashland is a small but rapidly growing city in 
central Oregon, famous for its Shakespeare 
Festival which attracts tens of thousands of 
visitors each year. The city’s downtown is a 
major destination and activity center, 
particularly during the summer tourist season. 
Downtown business people were concerned that 
existing parking supply was at capacity but 
feared that pricing parking would have a negative 
effect on customer traffic. To address these 
concerns local planners examined the experience 
of five comparable cities that have recently 
implemented priced parking. Their research 
indicated that pricing did not adversely affect 
visitor demand or use, that it increased 
turnover, that it generates net revenue, and that 
newer multi-space meters work well.

Using this feedback and information, the planners 
developed a parking management plan. They divided 
the downtown into three major parking management 
zones, described as “Core,” “Intermediate,” and 
“Periphery.” For each of these zones they 
developed overall guiding principles, parking 
management strategies, and an implementation plan 
with near-, mid- and long-term actions. The plan 
includes pricing of publicly-owned parking 
facilities to increase turn-over, shift employee 
parking to less convenient locations, encourage 
use of alternative modes, and provide funding to 
increase parking supply and support alternative 
modes. The plan describes under what 
circumstances and how parking will be priced.

See:

Todd Litman, Parking Taxes: Evaluating Options 
and Impacts, VTPI 
(<http://www.vtpi.org/parking_tax.pdf>www.vtpi.org/parking_tax.pdf), 2006c.

Gabriel Roth, Paying for Parking, Hobart Paper 33 
(London), 1965; available at the Victoria 
Transport Policy Institute website: 
<http://www.vtpi.org/roth_parking.pdf>www.vtpi.org/roth_parking.pdf.

Donald Shoup, Curb Parking: An Ideal Source of 
Public Revenue, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy 
(<http://www.lincolninst.edu/>www.lincolninst.edu), 
Presented at “Analysis of Land Markets and the 
Impact of Land Market Regulation,” (Code CP02A01), July, 2002


At 08:35 AM 4/26/2006, Walter Hook wrote:
>This discussion has been helpful, as we are just getting into parking issues
>and still need to think them through, and it is interesting that we usual
>suspects are not entirely of one mind.
>
>The point is well taken that the on street versus off street issue is fairly
>context specific.  I am sure the issue plays out differently in different
>situations.  I have enjoyed the new material by Shoup and the material of
>Knoflacher, and am pretty familiar with todd's work.
>
>I have been frustrated with Knoflacher's work in that there are almost no
>real world examples of where anything has been done to implement his general
>approach, so I am wondering about references to political processes that
>have worked in implementing parking regimes that have led to good examples
>of traffic calmed or post traffic calmed streets.  Sometimes the streets are
>visible but often not the process that led to its implementation.  I am sure
>there are good examples in Europe and probably a few in the US, and would be
>curious if people had info.
>
>Transportation Alternatives held this great event in Williamsburg where they
>bought a curbside parking space and occupied with café tables and bike
>parking for a day, and paid the meter fee.  People loved it, as it
>politicized the issue.
>
>I started this discussion with a very specific context in mind.  In my
>neighborhood, (and one always looks out the window first), maybe 1/3 of the
>people own a car, and a lot of us have kids.  There is free curb side
>parking on both sides of the street, you only have to move the cars on the
>days the street cleaners come, so there is some day regulation but otherwise
>it’s free.  Usually you can find something within a block or two of your
>house after cruising around for a while.  I guess this situation is typical
>of residential areas in major cities, not so much in suburbs where a house
>might have three cars per person or something and plenty of curbside space.
>
>In this very specific context, I would think that a purely democratic
>process to reapportion the street space would lead to a reduction of
>on-street parking space in favour of more sidewalk space.
>
>I proposed a concrete suggestion: what if a mechanism were developed where
>people could decide, democratically, within parameters set by the city DOT,
>about the apportionment of the public right of way in front of their houses.
>Obviously a street has a function that is beyond the interests of the people
>living there, but some part of the street serves a throughput function, and
>some part an access function.  It is reasonable to have the City DOT do two
>things: set the speed limit (this was a huge battle in New York to get the
>city the power to reduce the speed limits on residential streets) and
>determine the needed throughput on the street.
>
>Perhaps the municipality could then have a pilot project where they would
>give communities a pot of money on a competitive basis the option to
>redesign the streetscape in a way that conformed to these DOT requirements
>but better conformed to the specific wishes of that community.  There would
>be on many streets a high degree of flexibility.  To get the money, a block
>association would have to be formed and certified, and the city itself might
>have an architect able to take in the basic position of the community, and
>the city would finance the buildout for the best ultimate designs, judged
>by, i don’t know, the planning commission or something.
>
>If such a localized urban design project went forward, I would guess that in
>some communities it would lead to the reduction of on street parking.  Maybe
>in others it would lead to an increase, who knows.  But perhaps the
>mechanism would get some fresh ideas and approaches out there for people to
>think about.
>
>Anybody ever heard of anything like this being tried?  Is it a good idea?


Sincerely,
Todd Alexander Litman
Victoria Transport Policy Institute (www.vtpi.org)
litman at vtpi.org
Phone & Fax 250-360-1560
1250 Rudlin Street, Victoria, BC, V8V 3R7, CANADA
“Efficiency - Equity - Clarity”

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