Making Performance Parking Politically Appealing
This has nothing to do with Sonia Sotomayor, but parking guru Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking (your must read guide to parking policy), spoke today at a briefing for DC City Council staff. His basic message was, you know, that parking shouldn’t be underpriced and we shouldn’t think of “cheaper” parking as “better” parking.
Listening to him, it occurred to me that it’s weird that this is such a revolutionary concept. When I took economics, we had a little squib in there about price controls. But it was about something nobody would actually think to do these days . . . mandatory cheap bread or something. It was a historical example. At any rate, it’s overwhelming conventional wisdom in the United States that price controls are bad. If I suggested that the city implement price controls on Diet Coke, people would say that it would lead to shortages. And if I proposed dealing with the ensuring shortages by saying that anyone who wants to build a new building needs to also provide millions of dollars worth of Diet Coke to people in the neighborhood, people would look at me as if I were insane. Creating the Diet Coke shortages is not a favor to anyone—neither fans nor haters of Diet Coke benefit—and the regulatory mandate is an absurd subsidy to Diet Coke drinkers with no conceivable policy justification. It’s bizarre. But people have a strong bias toward the status quo, so they tend to assume that status quo policy just must be non-bizarre, no matter how at odds it is with everything else. Which is a long-winded way of saying that economists should probably talk more about these kind of everyday examples of weird market-distortions that nobody ever thinks about.
The other thing is that in some of the ensuing discussion, a twist emerged on how to grease the political wheels for this policy. When you price street parking properly—which is to say a price that’s high enough so that there’s almost always a space or two free on every block, but low enough so that there’s not more than a space or two free on any given block—you’re creating a surplus. That surplus takes the form of more customers for local businesses, less hassle for parkers, less traffic for everyone (almost 30 percent of traffic in crowded urban areas is people circling for parking), etc. But some of it takes the form of higher revenue from parking meters. In principle, that revenue could be used to fund all kinds of things. But politically speaking, the best way to make change appealing is probably to earmark the revenue specifically for use in the area getting the performance parking. That way instead of just having the argument about the correct pricing of space on the street, you can sell it to the neighborhood by saying “performance parking is going to repair the sidewalk, refurbish the bus shelter, spruce up this park, and then provide ongoing revenues necessary to keep everything spic and span going forward.”
44 Responses to “Making Performance Parking Politically Appealing”
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May 29th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
And Mr. Yglesias’ war on the private automobile continues.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
I’m consistently confused by why this assumes more patronage for business. Maybe it’s because I’m a commuter and you’re a District denizen, but lack of street parking doesn’t make me not patronize a store/restaurant I’m planning to go to. I just suck up the extra $$ to park in a garage. But knowing ahead of time that I’m going to have to pay that higher parking rate even if it is on the street might well make me decide to give my custom to a place near my house, where I know I’ll be able to park for free. Given that a significant portion of District retail (and esp. restaurants) is driven by people like me, it’s just a significant incentive not to come downtown at all, and that seems like it should hurt D.C. businesses.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Hopefully the efforts made to increase the cost of parking to what the market would actually bear will also be included in a plan to increase pedestrian, bicycle and transit access as well.
I use my car regularly btw. I just like to have the option to take a train to where I need to go, instead of wasting time looking for a parking space in Boston
May 29th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
… When you price street parking properly—which is to say a price that’s high enough so that there’s almost always a space or two free on every block, but low enough so that there’s not more than a space or two free on any given block …
I doubt it is possible to do this as parking demand is not predictable enough.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Newt jumps a shark in a confederate uniform.
No, really.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
In order for this to work, you have to have transit alternatives, mixed uses to spread parking demand over the day & night, etc. Otherwise it might be fine for residents, but the businesses aren’t going to be too happy. One alternative, after all, is not to go there.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
i’m not clear how its a war on the car by making motorists pay the fair market price. i love how these same people get on their high horse about the need for the free market with other travel modes but go crazy when the free market gets in the way of their motoring. here is a free market answer to the parking supply issue.
that said, i dont think this is an appropriate solution. the best thing is just to accept that we as a society need to subsidize the movement of goods and people to have a prosperious country and thriving economy.
May 29th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
[...] by Eric on May 29, 2009 Matt Yglesias writes up a nice post about performance parking. The basic argument of performance parking is that parking spaces in [...]
May 29th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Cars have too high an importance in mate selection.
Until you convince pretty young women to stop picking their mates based on whether or not they have a car, this is going to continue to be a massively unpopular proposal. Sny ‘fair’ price in most cities will be prohibitive to most of the lower and middle class.
Young men don’t bankrupt themselves buying cars for shits and giggles.
May 29th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Thats what is truly hilarious here.
You guys don’t actually understand at all the emotional underpinnings of the oposition. You can make all the ‘logical’ arguments you want, they simply aren’t ‘rationa’ for most people. If you want to institute something like this, you’ve got to change the culture in a lot of ways and not all of them will be obvious.
When was the last time a guy used his bus-pass to pick up on a girl? When was the last time a normal person though ‘how concentious’ and not ‘what a loser’ when they saw a guy in a bike?
May 29th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Young men don’t bankrupt themselves buying cars for shits and giggles.
I’ve never met a woman who cared about cars as much as young men do. Young men tell themselves that chicks dig hot cars in order to deny that they’re buying the cars to impress other young men.
Spoken, btw, as an ex-young man impressed by hot cars.
May 29th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Cliffy says that pricing on-street parking will keep people away from businesses. But Shoup’s performance-based price is the price that results in 85 percent occupancy. How can you square 85 percent occupancy with “no one will go there anymore”?
James Shearer says parking demand is not predictable enough to price parking appropriately. Then how do public and private parking operators around the country manage this feat with their parking decks? They do it through direct observation of rates versus occupancy, the same method that can be combined with modern parking meters reveal the proper time-of-day price for curb spaces.
May 29th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
But it was about something nobody would actually think to do these days . . . mandatory cheap bread or something. It was a historical example. At any rate, it’s overwhelming conventional wisdom in the United States that price controls are bad.
If it was introduction to economics course and it was the Mankiw book, it was most likely rent control, which still exists. Also, I seem to recall something about the Nixon controls.
May 29th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Matthew, the concept is only revolutionary to people who have worked all their life to remain ignorant of human behavior, which, unfortunately, includes a large percentage of our political class.
May 29th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
i think that the mental block is that most people have a bias towards what I would call (since I know nothing of formal economics) “natural markets”. currently the natural market for parking trades in time and inconvenience. any way that you choose to monetize this seems somewhat artificial to the economically unsophisticated, perhaps. I think the same thing is what you run into with cap and trade for emissions.
May 29th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Wait, wait…
I’m confused. My own personal perspective on why keeping parking cheaper and below fair market price, is because this is public land, not privatized… or in my opinion, shouldn’t be privatized. I say this not because I am a huge proponent of cars, but because I believe there are things that should remain shared public goods (i.e. public land). Saying this about parking sounds even a bit strange to me (i.e. The people united will never be defeated! Free parking for our oil driven cars now!).
This comes from my own personal perspective, that not everything should work according to the market. There are places to keep the market out: national parks, water, public restrooms, beaches… and I would say other universals such as education and health care. Its not about a right to cars and parking, its about a right to shared public goods such as LAND (the streets) not being privatized.
I also know this already contradicts current practices, my question is: where do we want to keep the market out on principle to ensure equality, and where do we think the free market can handle things that are more extraneous best? How do we combine? If everything is privatized, the disparity between rich and poor grows stronger.
May 29th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
“it’s overwhelming conventional wisdom in the United States that price controls are bad.”
The same sort of conventional wisdom that spoke so well of financial innovation. Sometimes good, sometimes not, in the real world. Live in the real world. (I’m okay with parking rate increases for the most part, but there are places and reasons not to have them, they are not a panacea, and this sort of argument reinforces other idiot arguments that limit sustainable development patterns.
“Which is a long-winded way of saying that economists should probably talk more about these kind of everyday examples of weird market-distortions that nobody ever thinks about.”
You’re practically begging for more Freakonomics style crap pop dimwittery.
“the concept is only revolutionary to people who have worked all their life to remain ignorant of human behavior.”
Appeals to human nature, especially when linked to simple-minded economic truths, are a sure sign to pay no attention. (Next thing you know, Nicholas Kristof will write them into your genetic makeup.)
May 29th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Meghan:
You’re confusing charging a use fee with privatization. The two are different. Privatizing parking would mean selling the spots to a private company and letting them pocket the profits. Charging a fee means the public coffers gain revenue. That revenue can pay for public parks, water, beaches, etc.
That’s not to say there aren’t arguments against raising the cost of parking (issues of equal access, for example), but it’s not privatization.
May 29th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Um, I don’t doubt the logic that proper pricing is better, but this argument assumes that there is no substitute for on street parking. This is clearly untrue. I’ve noticed that since DC has raised their parking fees to $2/hour that the pay lots around my office have been much more full. Also, the current problem is that DC prices their meters uniformly. This is clearly ridiculous if the above argument is true. The Farragut/K Street area should be at a premium, while, say, the area of K Street by North Capitol should be relatively cheaper. Lastly, I think you also need to recognize that someplace like DuPont is a mix of residential and pay parking. I don’t live there, but I’ll guess those people that would normally circle around the pay meters are now just circling around the residential parking areas.
Anyway, I don’t disagree that parking is probably underpriced, but I’ll guess that it need to be implemented with care.
May 29th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
My basic philosophy is that anyone who ever pays for parking is seriously lacking in motivation.
May 29th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
True Scott. You’re right.
Let me amend my statement then. I suppose what I am saying, is that the government should not price its services and public goods according to fair market price. Yosemite not being charged at Disney World prices, or charging a use fee at fair market price for public education for an enrolling student.
May 29th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Without getting into the policy merits, which seem sound, the phrase “Performance Parking” needs a little work. It sounds like the most boring artsy stage show imaginable.
How about “Community Friendly Parking” or “Free Market Parking” or “Floating Rate Parking”?
May 29th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Meghan Fraley,
Fees for social goods don’t have to be set by market values (there may not even be a relevant market), nor by profit considerations–the optimal fee for social goods is what maximizes total social welfare, not what maximizes revenues, where total social welfare includes consideration of all notable externalities.
As Matt notes, in this case that would be a “price that’s high enough so that there’s almost always a space or two free on every block, but low enough so that there’s not more than a space or two free on any given block.” That maximizes the use of this scarce good without causing traffic congestion (the traffic congestion being a negative externality).
With something like a public park, if congestion isn’t an issue, the right price given this logic may well be nothing. With public education, where maximizing use is the goal, you definitely want it to be free (if you don’t have enough capacity as a result, you need to add more). And so on.
So, this theory is actually robust enough to handle most people’s intuitions for most social goods.
May 29th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Having lived in Downtown DC for 9 months, I can safely say no one drives here without overwhelming cause. No one. I haven’t driven in many cities, but this can’t be typical.
Traffic lights are configured for maximum gridlock, pedestrians actually slow down to exercise their right of way, almost all lights disallow for right on red, bicycles are allowed in traffic and can hog a lane at 5 MPH, and between tourists or foreign nationals, defensive driving is self preservation.
Did I mention speed cameras? How about traffic signs that are non-existent, misleading or contradictory? And oh yeah, some roads are no lane or all lane depending on the time of day.
Driving in DC is just like the political process… slow, random, frustrating, and arbitrary.
All this why I would rather go across the river to Virginia to buy groceries or general shopping. It’s easier, quicker, and safer.
So BigY, carry on with car wars. Whatever one taxes more of, one gets less of… and for liberals more tax is all that counts. I’m sure Va appreciates my custom.
May 29th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Having lived in Downtown DC for 9 months, I can safely say no one drives here without overwhelming cause
That is precisely the point.
Whatever one taxes more of, one gets less of
That is precisely the point.
I’m not clear why you’d want to go to VA. When I lived in downtown DC, groceries and other goods were sold within walking distance. The only reason to go to VA was if I wanted to visit the Apple Store.
May 29th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Meghan,
There isn’t a free lunch here. Fundamentally, if Yosemite can only hold a thousand people per day, and two thousand want to come, something needs to be done.
We could implement a “first come first serve” policy, like exists in parking. But this prompts a lot of distortionary behavior, like people waking up at 2 am in the morning and camping out at entrance time. This makes everybody worse off.
Instead, we could charge a price, so that around 1000 people come. And we could the use the funds raised to expand facilities to accept more people. Even better, the park has an incentive to expand facilities, since more visitors would be able to pay fees.
Public vs private is irrelevant to the question. Oil is drilled mostly from public lands, but surely it isn’t workable for oil to be free. We get charged for electricity and water, even when produced by public utilities.
We provide education for free because it’s in the public interest, I benefit if the kid across the street gets a job and doesn’t rob me. And so a system where we price education until supply equals demand will lead to too few kids being educated.
But is that true with cars? Are there any positive externalities when the kid takes his car out to the mall? The evidence, if anything, implies the opposite.
May 29th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Meghan Fraley and DTM,
Just to chime in with my $0.02 as I think you are together making an important point. The government should appropriately provide services to the population and charge for those services, but at a fairly substantial discount off of what the market would bear. So government should be charging more for those services which, in a market, would command a higher price and less for those that would command a lower price. However, the government should not be driving the hardest bargain it can, but rather charging a good bit less than it could. Obviously, “fairly substantial discount” and “a good bit less” do not give precise guidance. What exactly the discount should be (and what exactly the market value is) are matters of public debate.
Another point too, is that the government should be doing this with services of value to people throught the populace, not only for a handful of well connected, wealthy individuals.
May 29th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
I doubt it is possible to do this as parking demand is not predictable enough.
Then use dynamic pricing–set the price for each space in real time based on the number of spaces nearby already occupied. This will encourage maximally efficient temporal use of parking space.
May 29th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
12
James Shearer says parking demand is not predictable enough to price parking appropriately. Then how do public and private parking operators around the country manage this feat with their parking decks? They do it through direct observation of rates versus occupancy, the same method that can be combined with modern parking meters reveal the proper time-of-day price for curb spaces
I doubt these operators keep their lots 90-95% full at all times which is what MY’s criteria amounts to. Maybe varying from 50-100% full would be possible.
May 29th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
28
Then use dynamic pricing–set the price for each space in real time based on the number of spaces nearby already occupied. This will encourage maximally efficient temporal use of parking space.
This isn’t practical, you would want to raise the price of already occupied spots but it isn’t acceptable for the price to be unpredictable at the time you leave your car.
Of course you could set the price at $0 for every space until all but one space on a block is occupied at which point the price for that space would change to $1000000/hour. This would keep things almost full but it would obviously be stupid.
May 29th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
James B. Shearer,
It may well be correct that Matt’s fee-setting goal could not be precisely accomplished. Indeed, I would suggest to fully accomplish the purposes of this scheme, you would need a way of communicating information about your likely future pricing to people well in advance of arriving in the area (so they could make informed decisions about whether or not they should try to drive and park). The technology necessary to do all that may well be common in the future, but it isn’t now.
But all that said, you don’t need this to work perfectly in order for it to work better than setting an arbitrary price of $0, or some other low amount, which is frequently causing significant circling. In other words, if all you can do with your pricing scheme is cut down on circling without overshooting too much (meaning no circling anymore, but also a lot of empty slots at what should be your peak times), you can come out ahead.
May 30th, 2009 at 12:09 am
Why not have the parking spaces privately owned and then charge a enforcement fee? That arrangement would ensure that the space was used in the most economical way. In other words why does this have to be a government run business designed to pay for government services. I would note that the same thing is true for mass transit since if buses are so great it isn’t clear why a privately run bus system couldn’t work without government subsidy. Granted their may be a public good in giving transportation options for poorer people and privately run subways wouldn’t work at all. Seems like you could have cash transfers for poor people and have the government focuss on light rail and subways while buses are a private sector thing. You could also have a higher fuel tax to cover the externalities. My concern here is that you may be substituting the small informed decisions by individuals with big less informed decisions by politicians.
May 30th, 2009 at 1:38 am
This isn’t practical, you would want to raise the price of already occupied spots but it isn’t acceptable for the price to be unpredictable at the time you leave your car.
Set the initial price based on the current space occupancy. Then raise the price per unit time over time to discourage hoarding. I think this will be a pretty good approximation.
May 30th, 2009 at 2:52 am
A huge part of the resistance to higher prices in meters is inconvenience. You have to pay for metered parking with change; but even though in 1950 a quarter had the purchasing power of about $2 today, the coinage is the same. If you could pay for a couple of hours of parking with two or three coins, you wouldn’t mind the price; it’s digging around for the change that’s the problem. The easiest way to deal with it would be to reform the coinage; instead, the government dicks around with putting silly pictures on the trash that passes for money in our pockets. In the absence of reasonable reform, city governments are moving towards credit card and cell phone payment schemes for on-street parking. Once these are in place, the charges will move to a market-clearing price, parking will become more available, and you’ll pay for it cheerfully.
Other than the inconvenience of change, the big issue people have with on-street parking is tickets. People hate having to estimate how long they’ll need the space. They hate leaving money on the meter; and they really hate being late and getting a $40 ticket for holding the space for an extra 15 minutes. If someone could figure out a way to charge for extra time, instead of requiring parkers to estimate and hitting them with penalties for being late, a huge amount of the anger over on-street parking would disappear. Maybe with the computerized systems, automated time keeping will become possible.
Oh, and Craig: bus systems are natural monopolies. They can be privatized, but then you have to regulate the hell out of them. Private ownership was tried in DC for decades and it was a horror – the owner used the system as a cash cow, didn’t maintain the buses, and fought continuously with the city over routes, fares, and subsidies. There was no benefit at all to private ownership.
May 30th, 2009 at 2:55 am
33
Set the initial price based on the current space occupancy. Then raise the price per unit time over time to discourage hoarding. I think this will be a pretty good approximation.
This is biased against long term parkers and hence economically inefficient. No doubt some fairly reasonable scheme could be developed but it is not simple and MY’s picture of streets normally having exactly one or two unoccupied spaces per block is not realistic.
May 30th, 2009 at 7:14 am
Why not have the parking spaces privately owned and then charge a enforcement fee? That arrangement would ensure that the space was used in the most economical way.
That would presumably lead to parking spaces being priced in the revenue-maximizing way, but that wouldn’t necessarily be the economically optimal pricing, once externalities are included. In this case, it is quite likely the revenue-maximizing price would lead to underutilization of the parking spaces from the perspective of local businesses.
May 30th, 2009 at 11:21 am
The French manner of selling public parking is to sell you a ticket from a machine that you can then display on your dash–the ticket tells when you have to move(or buy another ticket). This has the advantage of letting you carry your parking with you if you, say, buy a couple hours worth for a trip downtown and then want to move your car as you go from shop to shop. In the US, most places, you lose the unused time on your meter when you move.
For the record, and I don’t know if this matters, I never had any problems finding parking in France, even in Paris.
May 30th, 2009 at 11:55 am
The thing about performance parking is it would actually help those of you who drive. Right now in DC in areas with restaurants it is very very hard to find a meter spaced anywhere near there. What performance parking will do is raise the price, and some of those people who currently are using the spaces would not, thus freeing the space up for you. Yes you would be paying more then you would be for a space now, but that is only if you could find a space now. Most of the time you have to spend 15 or 20 minutes looking for that space, or pay for valet parking which is going to be more then the new meter rate anyway.
May 30th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
“But it was about something nobody would actually think to do these days . . . mandatory cheap bread or something. It was a historical example. At any rate, it’s overwhelming conventional wisdom in the United States that price controls are bad.”
Nothing at all like mandatory cheap corn, right? Like so many other politically-charged issues, we in America succeed in avoiding a real discussion of price controls simply by agreeing to call it something else. And yet, if you look around an average American supermarket you can see price controls everywhere. Massively subsidized corn is only the start. Most of our “real stuff” is cheap, in the sense that government intervention makes it seem that way (or lack of intervention, in the case of our allowing illegal migrant workers to pick our produce, resulting in “cheap” lettuce). There are heavily protected, massively distorted markets all around us in America, with more yet to come.
Without trying to sound too condescending, I feel like the reason we think of price controls as “bad” is because we are ignorant of how most of our commodities are priced. This ignorance is largely willful, as it is not hard to imagine what the true cost of things like food would be without these circumstances which are so apparently favorable to the American consumer. It makes economic sense to believe that this is capitalism and that these are free markets, because we live with such relative abundance. The fact that this abundance is caused by public policy (massively influenced by corporate lobbying) more than the “market forces” we fetishize is an inconvenient fact for the typical American who is loathe to think of him- or herself as a socialist, whatever that term means this week.
May 31st, 2009 at 1:46 am
[...] be priced in such a way to create a few open spaces at all times, but not too many or two little he wrote: In principle, that revenue could be used to fund all kinds of things. But politically speaking, [...]
May 31st, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Paid parking is an interesting issue, and it is one that is ripe with unintended consequences, whether you charge or don’t. For example, in some areas with no parking fees employees of shops and businesses take up most of the convenient parking and then they complain that their customers have no place to park. I used to live in a small town that studied this and found that 70-80% of the parking places were taken up by people working in the places that were complaining about lack of parking for their customers. On the other side of the coin, some areas institute paid parking in the business district, which gradually pushes people to seek free parking further and further out, eventually impacting nearby residential areas that then begin to complain vehemently because they can’t park near where they live and they don’t want to pay for parking either. The question then becomes who has first dibs to street space–residents of the city or businesses that want customers? In some areas court cases have ruled that you can’t have “residents only” parking on public streets, because that is unfair limitation on the use of public spaces. Other places plaster every possible street with resident’s only parking, forcing visitors to pay for parking at hugely inflated rates. I know from personal experience with two kids that using public transit for a visit to say New York City is too expensive, and then paying for a parking space is also too expensive (though still cheaper than taking the train in), so instead we seek out cities and places to visit that have free or low-cost parking options near where we want to go. I think it is the same for many other families.
June 1st, 2009 at 9:59 am
How about also putting market forces into play on Metro fares and that sort of thing? Right now the metro is heavily subsidized by people who don’t even use it.
The answer, of course, will be that the metro is supposedly “good” and cars and parking are “bad.”
June 1st, 2009 at 10:20 am
ogelthorpe mentions my objection, but doesn’t answer it. The point is that when I set out to go downtown for some reason other than work, I figure there’s a good chance I can get street parking, and therefore the cost of my expedition will be X. And, if there isn’t street parking, well, shit, I don’t want to pay the extra dough to park in a garage, but I’ve already schlepped all the way downtown, so I do it. But if I know parking is going to be expensive, rather than have a good reason to think it **might** be cheap, then I just don’t go at all, and I have dinner in Bethesda.
Now, maybe ogelthrope is saying that precisely calibrated performance parking would pick up on that and, so, if it’s the case for many drivers, then the street parking actually wouldn’t be muh more expensive than it already is. That’s maybe a horse of a different color, but it assume a lot of sophistication on the part of District government that is not in evidence.
For example, right this second my car is legally parked on the corner of L and 18th at a cost of $0. That’s nuts.
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:07 pm
The point is that when I set out to go downtown for some reason other than work, I figure there’s a good chance I can get street parking, and therefore the cost of my expedition will be X. And, if there isn’t street parking, well, shit, I don’t want to pay the extra dough to park in a garage, but I’ve already schlepped all the way downtown, so I do it. But if I know parking is going to be expensive, rather than have a good reason to think it **might** be cheap, then I just don’t go at all, and I have dinner in Bethesda.
I think that’s an interesting point.
It’s really behavioral economics: people are basically self-deluding, underestimating and undervaluing the time it will take driving around looking for a free space, and ultimately bait-and-switching themselves into paying for a garage.
But Shoup’s proposal is definitely more in Homo Economicus territory, so it doesn’t really consider this possibility.
This is probably the best objection to performance parking (especially, I think, from business owners). It would definitely be interesting to see some behavioral economics perspective on this, whether total parking occupancy (street and offstreet) might be expected to go up or down.
I think it’s likely that for every person who would decide to stay home because they couldn’t trick themselves into believing there’d be a free spot, there are probably just as many who are staying home NOW because they groan when they think about having to circle around and around the block, but would be very happy to fork over a few bucks for the privilege of always finding an open spot right where they want to be.