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

[Walter Hook]

Todd, 

 

Thanks.  These are good approaches, but it does not appear that any of them
actually reduced the total amount of parking units or the amount of on
street parking, and in fact they would increase the supply of parking by
increasing the rotation rate, inducing private motor vehicle demand.  

 

w

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: sustran-discuss-bounces+whook=itdp.org at list.jca.apc.org
[mailto:sustran-discuss-bounces+whook=itdp.org at list.jca.apc.org] On Behalf
Of Todd Alexander Litman
Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 12:50 PM
To: Asia and the Pacific sustainable transport; 'Asia and the Pacific
sustainable transport'
Subject: [sustran] Re: On vs off street parking or simply reducing on
streetparking.

 


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 (
<http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/parkingdistrict/default.htm>
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 (
www.vtpi.org/parking_tax.pdf <http://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:
www.vtpi.org/roth_parking.pdf. 

Donald Shoup, Curb Parking: An Ideal Source of Public Revenue, Lincoln
Institute of Land Policy (www.lincolninst.edu <http://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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