[sustran] Re: parking impact on use versus ownership

Zvi Leve zvi at inro.ca
Fri Apr 28 01:47:36 JST 2006


I think that Walter makes a valid point: it is not so much car ownership 
which is the problem but rather the use of those cars which creates all 
sorts of negative exernalities. Furthermore, why punish an urban dweller 
for owning a small car (for the occassional shopping at IKEA) and reward 
the suburbanite for owning an SUV? In general, the trip from home to 
work often has a reasonable chance of being well-served by transit, even 
for someone living in the suburbs - the problem is that few people make 
such "simple" trips anymore. There are the kids to drop off, the 
groceries to buy, going out to lunch,  etc. In any case, it is no longer 
certain that central-cities are the primary employment "centers" in a 
region anymore. Mass transit can also serve disjoint development 
clusters reasonably well, but as activities become more and more 
dispersed geographically personal transportation options become the only 
viable options. Throw in the vast quanities of free parking at shopping 
malls, and the car looks like a very attractive option indeed.

Parking pricing policy is a rather blunt tool to use when trying to 
internalize the external costs of car usage, but it may be more 
politically palatable than congestion pricing. Italy for example has a 
number of quite simple parking policies which I think go some way 
towards 'rationalizing' car usage while not overly discriminating 
against urban car owners:

Every car registered in Italy receives a little paper hand-clock to 
place on the wind-screen. There are many places where there is free 
parking /for up to one hour/ - the driver is responsible for setting his 
clock properly to indicate when their "time is up" (although it was 
never clear to me if this was the time when we arrived or when we had to 
leave). Get caught overstaying your time and it is a stiff fine 
(something like 100 Euros)!

Other places have advanced-pay parking rates which increase with the 
parking duration: 1st hour=1 euro, 2nd hour=2 euro (ie 1+2=3 euros total 
for two hours parking), 3rd hour=3 euro (ie 3 hours=1+2+3=6 euros), etc. 
This payment method recognizes that there is a need for parking spaces 
while also discouraging long-term parking. Often this type of 
arrangement is combined with resident-only parking - residents can leave 
their cars in the parking area indefinitely without paying anything.

As long as congested urban areas are "competing with" new growth areas 
which have essentially free and unlimited parking, the car will remain 
an attractive option.

Best regards,

Zvi






Walter Hook wrote:

> I am having a hard time jiving your statistics with the statistics 
> presented by Don Shoup.  He sites a study done in westwood village, 
> California, when they increased the parking charges from very low to 
> market rates in the village, the total number of motor vehicle 
> arrivals per hour increased from 829 to 1410.  (p.366)  This generated 
> a lot of new daily traffic, not less daily traffic.   
>
>  
>
> In Eastern Europe, people used to park their old trabants and 
> wartburgs in front of their apartment buildings and they would sit 
> there for months at a time without use.  Shopkeepers would really 
> complain, of course.  Maybe this encouraged continued auto ownership 
> but not auto use.   The shopkeepers were strong supporters of the 
> charge on parking.  This allowed the city to tow a lot of these 
> vehicles.  Now, maybe hundreds of cars could share the space 
> previously occupied by a vehicle generating zero trips.  Maybe this 
> encouraged use but not ownership.  Subsidy or no, use of a motor 
> vehicle and parking of a motor vehicle are different phenomenon.   
>
>  
>
> Imagine a theoretical situation: a city and a suburb.  City residents 
> own one million cars, occupying all the parking spaces, and they are 
> free.  City residents also have a good transit system, so they drive 
> their cars out to the country once a month, and use the transit system 
> to get to work.  Suburban residents have lousy transit service, and 
> would love to drive into the city, but they cant because there is no 
> place to park, so they struggle onto commuter trains, take slow buses, 
> etc.  Then the parking fees are increased sharply.  Half the urban 
> residents sell their cars.  Ownership in the city goes down by half.  
> Half the suburban residents can now drive to work every day.  Suburban 
> auto ownership stays the same, but auto use measured in terms of vmt 
> increases dramatically. 
>
>  
>
> Unquestionably, charging for parking is more efficient, but it seems 
> quite possible that increasing parking charges across the board could 
> induce demand rather than reduce demand, though you may be right that 
> it could depress ownership. 
>
>  
>



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