Parking Shortages Don’t Encourage Shopping
As I’ve said before, the part of people’s brains that understands things like supply, demand, and shortages seems to turn off when the subject turns to street parking. Here in DC, for example, we turn our parking meters off and have free parking downtown on Saturdays. People like convenient parking spaces. They’re valuable. And when you set the price of a valuable commodity at zero, you get parking shortages. Which is what we have on Saturdays in key retail corridors. Perversely, the stated reason for this policy of guaranteed shortages is that it’s supposed to encourage people to come downtown to shop:
But [David] Catania and outgoing member Carol Schwartz both spoke passionately about free Saturday parking as an incentive to draw suburban residents into DC to shop and eat, and to encourage DC residents to stay in the District on weekends to spend their dollars. It might be a compelling argument, except for one thing: there’s never any available street parking downtown or in busy neighborhood retail districts on weekend afternoons and evenings.
Schwartz introduced and passed a ban on Saturday parking fees in 1997. “We get money when people come into DC to eat or shop, or DC residents stay to eat,” she said. “I asked people, ‘Why do you go to the suburbs?’ They said, ‘They’ve got free parking.’”
That might have been true in 1997, but not today. People go downtown because of the great restaurants, exciting nightlife, and walkable shopping streets. If you just want to drive to a big box store, the suburbs will win out every time. The nice restaurants downtown all run valet services. If free parking really deters so many people, why are these restaurants packed while the valets are charging $10 for parking during dinner?
Unless we want to blanket our city with surface parking lots (a very bad idea!) downtown businesses can never compete with suburban businesses on the basis of pure parking convenience. But downtown locations have other advantages. But be all that as it may, the best parking-related thing you can do for downtown businesses is to park pricing rationally. You don’t want the fee to be so high that nobody’s using the spaces. But you want it to be high enough that people can generally find a space where they’re trying to go. This isn’t about discouraging people from driving or parking, it’s about ensuring that parking is done efficiently. That kind of performance parking will reduce traffic on the streets (fewer people searching for parking spots) and be better for business. But there’s desperate need to educate the business community, because politicians are often being responsive to what business owners are telling them. One possibility would be to earmark a share of the parking fees in any given area to go to the local BID or something else along those lines.
45 Responses to “Parking Shortages Don’t Encourage Shopping”
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December 17th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
an appropriate transfer is necessary: reinstate weekend parking charges, but give Washington DC residents the right (but not the obligation) to stop passing tourists and then force the tourists to pay the resident’s parking meter.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Plenty of parking!
December 17th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Oh man, I remember all the wailing about downtown parking meters and rates back when I served on a midwestern city council. People think it’s all about the money, and while it is true that cities want the parking system self supporting, turn over of parking spaces is critical and will not happen in a popular area if it cost nothing to monopolize a parking space.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
You could “park pricing rationally.” Or perhaps price parking rationally
December 17th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
I think DC Council just decided to charge for parking on inauguration day and charge rush hour metro fares for the full day. Usually parking is free on national holidays, and usually rush hour fares are not in effect. I guess the Council must be reading this blog!
December 17th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Evan,
WMATA and the DC Council are not the same thing.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
My complaint about parking is much different. We’ve introduced this new meter-less parking system and those old parking meters have been taken down. That sucks, because those meters were great for locking up your bicycle. Now, I have to ride around until I can find a place to lock my bike. Damn you, parking gods!
December 17th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
“… give Washington DC residents the right (but not the obligation) to stop passing tourists and then force the tourists to pay the resident’s parking meter.”
Just make the parking meters look like slot machines.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
…the best parking-related thing you can do for downtown businesses is to park pricing rationally.
I would argue that the issue for people coming into DC has less to do with “$3 in the meter vs. free” as much as “risk of $50 ticket vs. no risk.” That risk of a ticket is the big disincentive to parking in DC, not the charge at the meter.
People are willing to pay to park, but parking meters can serve as a sort of “reverse lottery” in which you pay small amounts but risk large fines if your dinner or shopping or event run longer than expected. A lot of people don’t want to play that game (and don’t have to in the suburbs). To price parking rationally, DC should consider a system that charges by the hour, but doesn’t risk the fine.
December 17th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Perhaps the idea is that the suburban shoppers won’t know there’s actually no free parking available until they get there.
December 17th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
boz raises a good point about how the major motivating factor is really fear of a ticket. Add in the following observations:
(1) Most DC meters do not accept bills
(2) Most DC meters do not accept credit cards
(3) Most people do not carry around several dollars in coins at all times
(4) A similar problem arises at highway tollbooths. The solution, electronic pay systems like EZPass, is very popular with drivers and profitable for the governments.
It seems like most people would be quite happy to pay higher parking fees if they could pay with credit cards, and if the meters would automatically take out money for as long as they’re parked. This is how parking garages work, so we have the technology. So why not for street meters?
December 17th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I used to work at a downtown law firm. During the week, I took metro. During the weekend, if I went in early, I grabbed a meter and left my car there all day. It was free!
But I wasn’t shopping.
And if I went after 10 am, I would take the metro because there were no spaces — because people who went in early to work (at business or restaurants or wherever) had grabbed all the free spaces.
December 17th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
re: tom veil:
There do exist technologies to allow people to pay for street parking with cash or credit cards. I have seen two different solutions. They both involved a central pay station that serve a bunch of metered spots.
In one model your space has some sort of alpha numeric numbering, and you go up to the machine and enter your spaces’ code, and how long you want the spot for, then it tells you how much it is and you put in the cash or swipe a credit card.
In the second you go up to the central machine, tell it how long you want to park, then pay w/cash or credit card and it prints out a ticket for you with the date and time when the ticket expires.
I think the first solution is better for cities because it could allow the data on which spots are not paid up to be sent to little pda device that the meter maid carries around, then he/she could go up to the spot and write the ticket. The second solution is better for the parkers, since you have a receipt proving how much you spent on parking if you can get re-reimbursed, or you have that receipt to prove that you paid for parking if you get written a ticket in error.
December 17th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
I’m not sure that Matt’s logic makes a lot of sense with regards to the interests of the business community (as opposed the the other, laudable, goals of congestion pricing/parking fees). Matt wants to charge for parking so that there will be more spaces available for someone when they come downtown. But if that works it’s because are discouraging people from driving downtown unless they really want to go. That’s how we’re getting the extra spaces in the first place; someone was discouraged from driving downtown. Now, perhaps, some of these people will walk or take public transportation and come down anyways. But maybe not. I don’t think it’s crazy for members of the downtown business community to think that their interests are best served by having each and every parking space filled at all times.
December 17th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
One possibility would be to earmark a share of the parking fees in any given area to go to the local BID or something else along those lines.
This is what they did in Pasadena, California, starting in the early 1990s, and it worked VERY well. Within a few years, the downtown area had changed from a smattering of businesses few people visited to a destination shopping district.
This is how parking garages work, so we have the technology. So why not for street meters?
The technology is there for meters, too. I first saw credit card parking in Portland, OR in 2006 but have since since it in nearly every big city I’ve visited. I only explicitly remember the keep-paying-so-no-ticket option in Niagara Falls, NY, but I don’t see why this couldn’t be easily implemented elsewhere.
December 17th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
You wrote “park pricing rationally” when you meant “price parking rationally”.
December 17th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
You know who this system would really hurt: the workers.
Just like how Walmart helps their customers by keeping employee’s wages and benefits low, shifting to a market based parking system would help out the rich customers while forcing the poor workers out of parking.
But hey, that is progress in Lord Yglesias land, more for the rich and his limousine liberal crowd, less for the poor workers.
December 17th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
DC could have muni-meters like NYC does. You pay (via coins or a pre-paid muni-meter card) and get a receipt. The receipt will then flip over in your car that way the traffic cop can ticket you for having a “face down” receipt. And there is nothing you can do to prove your innocence.
So the city gets to collect a meter fee from you and then ticket you all the same!
December 17th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
In all of Matt’s posts on this subject, I haven’t seen him address the very obvious objection Withnail raises.
You know what would really reduce congestion? Randomly-distributed tire tacks on city streets. Why, I bet there would be TONS of parking spaces available!
More seriously, the application of parking fees to the BID is a truly great idea. Small merchants have a notoriously poor sense of parking realities and are also notoriously unwilling to participate in mutually-beneficial improvement plans, but a BID that provides concrete benefits (like sidewalk sweepers, beautification, and advertising) and is paid for by customers seems like something that would overcome both obstacles.
December 17th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Jimbo, I have a hard time imagining that very many poor retail workers in downtown DC actually drive cars to work.
December 17th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
I remember one BIA (Busuiness Improvement Area) council petitioning the citywhere I live to ADD meters on the street. They made the argument that meters generated greater turnover because then people would come in for 1 or 2 hours, do their shopping and then leave.
And, BTW, cities would much rather have a system as described by Jimbo, where you pay at one centralised box and put a ticket on your dash. This means that you can fit more cars on a given street (as parking spaces are designed to fit the largest vehicles) and there is no overlap between customers. Everyone buys a ticket.
Some cities are even experimenting with meters that have a sensor that detects when your car leaves – it then resets so nobody can get those extra 12 minutes you left.
December 17th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Better trolls, please!
December 17th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Hey Jimboslice,
Tell Mixner to hurry up and get back from vacation. I’m tired of the replacement trolls and could really use some time beating down on the real deal. TIA.
PS: Your concern for the workers is so touching, comrade. I can’t wait to hear you extol your self reported environmentalist bona fides!
December 17th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
There’s a method I’ve seen used in a few places, where local retailers have the ability either to refund some or all of your parking fee at the checkout when you buy something, or endorse your ticket so that you can leave an enclosed lot without having to pay. That deals with the “drive in early and take all the spots because the parking’s free” people.
It seems like most people would be quite happy to pay higher parking fees if they could pay with credit cards, and if the meters would automatically take out money for as long as they’re parked.
That’s the deal in parts of London, because meters were being robbed, and because even pound coins don’t cover meter fees over extended periods. The phone-based registration and payment system is rotten, though: having it hooked into a stored-cash small-payment system like the Oyster card (or Hong Kong’s Octopus or the Dutch Chipknip) would make more sense.
(That still raises the issue of a payment process that happens out of sight, which is akin to the fear of being ticketed.)
Of course, dollar coins would help too.
December 17th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Another option would be to actually teach some economics in our schools. I don’t remember anyone ever teaching supply and demand in my high school.
December 18th, 2008 at 2:07 am
Downtowns are inherently hostile to cars (which is why humans have not built a new one anywhere on the earth for decades). The lower-density suburban “edge city” is what you get if you want to accommodate automobiles. Surviving downtowns stay alive by being compelling enough to overcome their inherent inconvenience to motorists.
WRT the supposedly economically illiterate merchants, I recommend to Matt that if he thinks he knows so much more than they, he could try applying his superior understanding to running a downtown retail location. He might discover that it really is better for urban retailers to just fill every parking spot. After all, it’s not like they get any of the meter revenue.
Will we ever move back to the pre-automotive high-density urban model? I’m guessing it would take the end of oil-powered personal transport. Then we wouldn’t need to worry about parking shortages.
December 18th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Alex B. – what exactly was the purpose of pointing out my error? I understand there’s a difference, but how does that change the meaning behind my comment?
December 18th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Actually Withnail’s point isn’t actually true when you think about it. The new spaces wouldn’t be created by less people parking as Withnail assumes. They would actually be created because the people who park wouldn’t stay in the spaces all day as they do now, thus you would end up with a higher volume of cars in those parking spaces over a single day.
December 18th, 2008 at 11:33 am
JimBob you are 100% wrong. Many new downtowns are being created every year. All of those towncenters developments in the suburbs, new downtowns. Cities like Pittsburgh, or DC that are seeing revivals are doing that by rejunivinating existing downtowns and creating downtown like areas where they did not exist before. if you haven’t noticed many places are returning pre-automotive hihg density model.
December 18th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
For free weekend parking in downtown areas, find parking lots on the fringe of downtown that are underutilized during weekends, get a portion of those places allocated as free weekend public parking, and provide free weekend shuttle bus routes connecting those places to downtown shops and restaurants.
Indeed, given that a city has already agreed to throw away the money that people would be putting into meters, use the funds provided by weekend metered parking from people willing to pay for the paid parking spaces to provide the funds required by the free shuttle bus routes.
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