<html> <body> 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 (<a href="http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/parkingdistrict/default.htm" eudora="autourl"> www.ci.austin.tx.us/parkingdistrict/default.htm</a>) 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. <h5>Ashland, Oregon</h5>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 (<a href="http://www.vtpi.org/parking_tax.pdf"> www.vtpi.org/parking_tax.pdf</a>), 2006c.   Gabriel Roth, Paying for Parking, Hobart Paper 33 (London), 1965; available at the Victoria Transport Policy Institute website: <a href="http://www.vtpi.org/roth_parking.pdf"> www.vtpi.org/roth_parking.pdf</a>. Donald Shoup, Curb Parking: An Ideal Source of Public Revenue, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (<a href="http://www.lincolninst.edu/">www.lincolninst.edu</a>), 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: <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">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? </blockquote> <x-sigsep></x-sigsep> Sincerely, Todd Alexander Litman Victoria Transport Policy Institute (<a href="http://www.vtpi.org" eudora="autourl">www.vtpi.org</a>) litman@vtpi.org Phone & Fax 250-360-1560 1250 Rudlin Street, Victoria, BC, V8V 3R7, CANADA “Efficiency - Equity - Clarity”   </body> </html>