Who pays for free parking? Everyone but the motorist.
That’s the thesis of UCLA professor of urban planning, Daniel Shoup’s new book The High Cost of Free Parking. Marginal Revolution blogger Tyler Cowen explains Shoup’s line of thinking in an NYT Op-Ed.
Many suburbanites take free parking for granted, whether it’s in the lot of a big-box store or at home in the driveway. Yet the presence of so many parking spaces is an artifact of regulation and serves as a powerful subsidy to cars and car trips. Legally mandated parking lowers the market price of parking spaces, often to zero. Zoning and development restrictions often require a large number of parking spaces attached to a store or a smaller number of spaces attached to a house or apartment block.
If developers were allowed to face directly the high land costs of providing so much parking, the number of spaces would be a result of a careful economic calculation rather than a matter of satisfying a legal requirement. Parking would be scarcer, and more likely to have a price — or a higher one than it does now — and people would be more careful about when and where they drove.
The subsidies are largely invisible to drivers who park their cars — and thus free or cheap parking spaces feel like natural outcomes of the market, or perhaps even an entitlement. Yet the law is allocating this land rather than letting market prices adjudicate whether we need more parking, and whether that parking should be free. We end up overusing land for cars — and overusing cars too. You don’t have to hate sprawl, or automobiles, to want to stop subsidizing that way of life.
Cowen points to San Francisco’s market-based parking meters as one potential solution for the waste and stealth subsidies of automotive overuse caused by free parking (which Shoup reckons amounts to a staggering $127b annual subsidy). But will market-based parking pricing be any more politically palatable than other green behavior-modification efforts like, say, a gas tax? On the other hand, if municipalities can get rid of speed cameras due to increased parking revenue, perhaps the compromise might be more worth it to motorists. Either way, one gets the feeling that the free parking phenomenon isn’t going to disappear overnight.
if municipalities can get rid of speed cameras due to increased parking revenue
Would be lovely, but the politicos won’t change one form of revenue for other.
Is he taking in consideration the cost of the traffic generated because of the lack of parking spaces?
I LOVE good, free parking — it helps make the difference between patronizing a business or not. Paying for parking (outside of large cities) just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I consider it a part of the businesses’ cost of operations. If you were to mandate paid parking, I can’t imagine the impact it would have on retail traffic, church attendance, sports attendance, etc…especially when parking reaches a material percentage of the overall cost of the trip.
Similarly, not using a credit card (for rewards and free interest) is leaving money on the table, since retailers charge the same price for cash or credit–thus incorporating credit card processing into the total item price.
It’s my job as a savvy consumer to seek out free parking and use my credit card as much as possible.
Reluctantly, I say we should increase the gas tax if you want to influence us more.
Parking is a cost of business and it is not about to change. I have not read the book but I wonder if this guy has ever left his ivory tower and compared shopping centers located downtown to suburban malls.
Unless you have a unique shopping area like Rodeo Drive or Chicago’s Magnificent Mile people will not support a shopping mall without free or low cost parking. There is competition between shopping malls and people are not going to drive downtown just to pay for the right to park their cars.
The same goes for living downtown or in a suburban apartment. If apartments in the suburbs started charging for parking they would have trouble getting tenants even if they lowered their rents to compensate.
The U.S. is not a densely populated country and we live differently than they do in Europe. The market seems to do a good job of accounting for the scarcity of parking in inner cities by the existence of paid parking lots. And the market also provides free parking in suburbs where undeveloped land is easier to find. Even if a developer did not have to provide parking when they build a suburban mall they would still do it. It’s the only way to make that mall a success.
Parking meter revenue goes to the city/town that installed the meters, and usually goes into the general fund to pay for just about anything. Gas tax revenue goes to the state for roadwork and maintenance. Some states share the gas tax revenue with cities and towns, but usually the revenue is also earmarked for roadwork and maintenance. The tax revenue is not interchangeable.
Gas tax would be more direct and logical for consumers to be able to feel like there was a “cause/effect” relationship. I actually instructed a friend while we were in San Diego to not make dinner reservations until after 6pm so we could park outside the restaurant (down on the wharf/docks) for free.
Free (or really cheap) parking is often responsible for the lack of available spaces in many areas. When parking is priced correctly, people will park only as long as they need to, encouraging turnover and freeing up spaces for others. Or they may choose to walk, bike, or take transit for trips where a car isn’t really necessary.
Or, people simply choose NOT TO SHOP where they need to pay for parking.
A gas tax would be better than installing meters, because only those “enlightened” businesses who don’t need traffic can afford to be the first ones to be metered.
The free market does not only dictate parking requirements, but ease of accessing those parking spots.
Many shopping malls in my area suffered when competing malls offered not only more parking, but easier access to and from those parking spaces. At least one developer in my area sued an architect that designed a hideous parking lot. This particular lot is so bad that around christmas time, people routinely get trapped in the parking lot for hours at a time.
Last I checked – developers pay for acreage and pass on those costs in the form of higher rent. Those costs are ultimately borne by the consumer.
My uncle paid a kings ransom to enlarge the parking lot at his restaurant. Why? Customers complained they could not find enough parking.
Consumers demand plentiful and convenient parking. They vote with their wallets when that is not available.
-Ted
” . . . will market-based parking pricing be any more politically palatable than other green behavior-modification efforts . . .”
This is a straw-man argument–Shoup really focuses on the COST of parking as opposed to whether it is “green” or not (driving in circles looking for a spot is not green, and Shoup notes as much, but it is a very tangential point in the book).
I had my first glimpse of the cost of parking at a citizen’s association meeting 20 years ago in Alexandria, Virginia. A business owner who was putting serious money into a building in a “transitional” neighborhood the city was eager to gentrify, had to abandon his project because the required number of off-street parking spaces would reduce the interior size of the building to the point where the business proposition just wouldn’t pencil. Ironically, most of his business base would have been walkers from the neighborhood, but local zoning required X number of parking spaces.
Washington DC is transitioning to parking meters that take credit cards as well as parking kiosks where you buy time and leave a printed receipt on your dashboard. Parking along Constitution Avenue in front of the Smithsonian Museums (the stretch between 14th street to Pennsylvania Ave. then eastward to the East Wing of the Museum of Art) is now reasonable. It used to be we would circle for ages to find a “free” spot there for two hours. Now we just pull into one of the spaces that seem to always be available and pay about $4.00/hour to park there.
Shoup’s main point is analogous to the argument that the correct speed limit is the speed 85% of cars naturally travel. The correct price of street parking is the price at which 15% of spaces are vacant at any given time.
“Who pays for free parking? Everyone but the motorist.”
I’m sure Donald Shoup is a bright guy, but this is a tremendously ingorant statement.
We all pay for free street parking, whether you drive a car or not. It’s called taxes.
We also pay for parking in the cost of goods, unless you think grocery stores, mall stores, strip malls, etc. don’t factor in the lease cost, upkeep costs, etc of the parking facility into rent and/or mortgage payment.
If he said, “Both drivers and non-drivers pay for parking, whether it is free or not”, at least he would be correct.
I agree. Mr. Shoup seems to believe that because a certain number of parking spaces is mandated, that developers and businesses just magically eat those costs and never pass them on to consumers who use those spaces. This is nonsense.
I have no problem with taking a fresh look at zoning requirements, but his argument makes no sense, especially when it comes to residential units – apartments, townhouses and single-family homes. My wife and I have been looking for a new house, and you’d better believe that the price reflects whether reserved off-street parking, a private driveway or even a garage comes with the property.
Anybody who has ever learned anything about economics knows that just like there is no such thing as a free lunch, there is no such thing as free parking, or anything else. Somebody has to pay for it. Should the government dictate how many parking places are required for a new shopping development? Good question. It depends on your goals. Is it to minimize traffic snarls or is it to discourage vehicle traffic at all.
If you eliminate the mandate for free parking, this will not automatically result in motorists paying their way. In many areas that charge for parking, merchants will validate parking tickets in order to encourage shoppers to come to their stores. So the merchants could be paying for the motorists either way. But remember the rule: you want more of something, subsidize it. If you want less of something, tax it. If you want efficiency, leave it alone.
Personally? Eliminate the mandates, and let willing drivers and merchants weigh their unique options and make their own choices. Any time the government mandates some kind of behavior, there is one guarantee: unintended consequences.
Very well said. I agree: leave it alone and let the market decide.
How about “Who pays for sidewalks and bike lanes? Everyone but the pedestrian and cyclist”. We should tax pedestrians by the steps they take and cyclists by the mile otherwise this would be a massive subsidy for bike and leg owners.
“We should tax pedestrians by the steps they take and cyclists by the mile otherwise this would be a massive subsidy for bike and leg owners.”
The leg thing is a little extreme but you make a good point about cyclists. At least as it relates to public parking. Business owners of course pay for parking on their premises.
Quiet. You’ll give Washington ideas. :)
Free-parking subsidization definitely kicks a leg out from those who argue that mass transit should only be allowed/encouraged if it is economically viable.
For the record, I worked in the real estate office of a major grocery chain for six months. We tirelessly worked to get more parking for our stores at all costs, even tearing down “outlot” banks and fast-food restaurants to get spaces. The “law” never had to tell us anything. Only in the wet dreams of socialist urban planners do people want to, or have time to, walk to the grocery store every day to carry home a single bag of food.
People such as Mr. Shoup seem to believe that we all live in areas very close to stores, and we only make trips via car because we are lazy.
Again, this is nonsense. We live in a relatively densely populated area (although not an area that could be classified as inner city). The nearest grocery store is at least three miles away. Does he really believe that people are going to suddenly start walking and biking to the store on a regular basis (especially given the lousy weather here in Pennsylvania from roughly December to March)? That we are going to lug 3-4 bags of grocery on a bike or a bus on a regular basis?
That’s one reason most of us drive these contraptions called “cars;” we want to avoid this type of thing.
Jack, keep it up and you’ll end at a Tea Party. What are the facts to a professor of urban planning? He knows better!
@Geeber: “We live in a relatively densely populated area (although not an area that could be classified as inner city). The nearest grocery store is at least three miles away.” And that’s why you need a car. However such a poor local shopping situation in a “densely” populated area wouldn’t exist without the ubiquity of cars in the first place. Chicken and egg…
Vega,
Not everyone can live near a store…unless we all live in rowhouses or high-rise apartments and shop at corner grocery stores (which typically have limited selections and higher prices).
We don’t want to live in a rowhouse or an apartment. We live in a single-family house with a yard, which is what we want (and what studies consistently show the majority of Americans perfer).
It is simply not feasible to have a large grocery store in every neighborhood. That is why some of us own cars. That has nothing to do with “poor planning,” unless poor planning is synonomous with failing to require everyone to live in a center-city type neighborhood.
We’ve lived in that type of neighborhood and left for a reason.
Another warped vision of capitalism by the Intellectual Left.
Paying fees to local government for access to public space is hardly a “free market”. It is a monopolistic tax grab, piled on top of other tax grabs which include property taxes, gas taxes, eco-taxes, income taxes and other sources of revenue which are supposed to pay for essential public services (like roads and parking spaces) but are instead squandered on pet projects, corporate bailouts and whatever else the politicians can dream up in the name of re-election. Let’s not help them.
I think you misinterpret what’s being proposed here. The author is not proposing that a parking tax be charged for what were previously (nominally) free parking spaces, nor is he proposing that money generated by pay parking necessarily be paid to the government.
Instead, he is advocating that the number of parking spaces available at a given location be determined freely by the owner/developer rather than set by law. The person who owns the spaces can decide how many to have, and how much money (if any) to charge for them.
This is not a call for a “monopolistic tax grab”. It is, in fact, a proposal to limit government influence over the number of parking spaces and turn it over completely to the free market.
Based on your statements above, I’d think you would approve of a plan that removed government control and replaced it instead with supply and demand; even if it is a product of the “Intellectual Left” – with capital letters, no less.
“Monopolistic?” I have never been to a large city in America that didn’t have private pay lots competing with the “monopolistic” metered street parking. I suspect if you lobbied to eliminate meters in these areas the lot owners would call you an anti-free-market socialist.
bikegoesbaa: It is, in fact, a proposal to limit government influence over the number of parking spaces and turn it over completely to the free market.
The problem is that many supporters of Mr. Shoup, if not necessarily Mr. Shoup himself, seem to think that we ONLY have free parking because of governmnent rules and regulations. If we eliminated these rules, then free parking would contract, and everyone would either ride a bike or take the bus.
This may be true in certain urban areas (for example, the comment about a business owner in a gentrifying area of Washington, D.C., being forced to provide a certain number of parking spaces, even though most customers would either walk or bike to the store).
But for most suburban areas, businesses provide free parking because they want to (they know that their customers expect it), not because they have to.
I’ve got no problem letting Walmart decide if it wants to charge for parking on its own property. But the cited San Francisco project is city-run.
Intellectuals can spew free market cliches all they want, but this story has “social engineering” and “tax-grab” written all over it.
BikeGoesBaa, my only argument against what you said is that I doubt removing those requirements will make much difference – Walmart and my local shopping center both need to provide free parking or it will be too expensive to shop. I think the author simply does not understand the point made many times in this discussion – people who have to pay for parking will immediately start shopping elsewhere.
For many years when I lived in Los Angeles, I shopped in the Beverly Center. When they started charging $1 for parking, I stopped shopping there. First, it didn’t seem fair to have to pay. Second, the line that developed to exit the mall was just plain intolerable during peak hours, because of the time each car had to stop to pay.
D
“But for most suburban areas, businesses provide free parking because they want to (they know that their customers expect it), not because they have to.”
Nearly everywhere in the country, the number of parking spaces set aside for commercial properties is determined by zoning regulations, not by the property owners. Have you ever noticed how, at least in suburban environments, the parking lots are almost never full? All of those excess acres of blacktop have a broad range of costs and impacts.
John Horner: Nearly everywhere in the country, the number of parking spaces set aside for commercial properties is determined by zoning regulations, not by the property owners.
Except that the posters who have actually worked for developers or property managers have repeatedly said that the owners wanted the most parking that they could obtain. The only exception was the case of the store in Washington, D.C., where zoning required a certain number of parking spaces for the establishment and most patrons either walked or took the subway.
In suburban environments customers expect free parking.
John Horner: Have you ever noticed how, at least in suburban environments, the parking lots are almost never full?
Yes, because it’s always better to have extra parking spaces, as opposed to too few. I certainly expect that when I visit a shopping center. Unless it’s the weekends right before Christmas, I consider it a major inconvenience to drive through the lot, looking for a parking space at a mall or shopping center.
John Horner: All of those excess acres of blacktop have a broad range of costs and impacts.
Which are born by patrons of the establishment, either directly or indirectly. The idea that drivers are getting some sort of free ride has been effectively refuted on this thread.
“Daniel Shoup’s new book The High Cost of Free Parking” came out in 2005, so is not “new.” Nor have its insights been adopted wholeheartedly by local governments. If you consider the exurban environment of big-box power centers surrounded by a dreary tundras of asphalt parking lot (and connected by jam-packed 12-lane freeways) an improvement on nature, or on higher-density development, by all means do not read the book.
Good catch, I was going to say the same thing, it is a 2005 book not a 2010 or even 2009. And I note TTAC called him Daniel Shoup even though his correct name, Donald Shoup, is on the cover. Sheesh. By the way, I thought it was a fantastic book. One need not agree with every page in it to value it as being (as far as I know) the first text to seriously make explicit the assumptions that have always been implicit about parking.
My biggest beef with parking meters is the change issue – in an increasingly cashless society, we don’t always remember to carry change to feed the meters. In the downtown area of the county seat where I live, most of the parking spaces within an easy walk of the government offices are metered. The only ones that are not are in a private lot belonging to a funeral home or are reserved for government employees. Go figure. I have business at the county offices about once a year; last time I forgot about the meters and had no change. I ended up parking at the back of the funeral home lot. Nobody was around at 0800, and nobody notices a white pickup truck anyway.
Not all that hard to keep a couple quarters in the car just in case. I was just in Portland and they replaced meters with kiosks that dispense a time-limited parking tag you stick in your window. They take credit cards, and your parking space is portable. I had an hour still on the “meter” when I had to go across town, I just found a spot and left the same ticket in the window.
Parking meters which accept credit cards are readily available, but only a few places have deployed them.
Cowen points to San Francisco’s market-based parking meters as one potential solution for the waste and stealth subsidies of automotive overuse caused by free parking (which Shoup reckons amounts to a staggering $127b annual subsidy).
127b annual subsidy?!? When PinHeaD Shoup gets published in a peer reviewed economics journal, I may take him seriously. IMO, urban planning is a circle jerk of leftist academics inflating the ‘market’ price of squished mice to $100K each so their numbers work.
Yet another liberal college professor trying to wedge himself between me and my car. Imagine that. At least Adolf Hitler tried to get citizens INTO cars. Apparently this joker has never had to walk to the grocery for his Kool-Aid in a driving rainstorm.
While educated people tend to be Liberal or Progressive, how do you know this particular author is?
And more important, just how many liberal professors have been trying to get between you and your car and by what means?
Sounds like a good story there.
Well, we went from grunt dismissives of this ‘liberal’ idea (‘SKRREEEE!!!!’) and now we’ve Godwinned the damn thread; just a hare over ninety minutes.
Look, you can organize yourselves anyway you want to. If you need to devote 20’x10′ of prime real-estate for each paying customer (or be zoned into it via city ordinance) that’s between you and your city aldermen. If you want to establish your commerce to make it economically viable for big box stores to thrive because they can be situated on acreage that other business cannot, hey, that’s peachy. If you want to do the same with your residents and doom them to 90 minute commutes, by all means.
But cheese and rice people, when folks point out the obvious (this is a displaced cost that someone is subsidizing for the motorist) this has nothing to do with Hitlers in Ivory Towers or SO-shul-lust urban planners and everything to do with reality.
While educated people tend to be Liberal or Progressive
I believe you meant to say that “teachers” tend to be Liberal. Big difference.
Here we go again…
No. I stated educated people tend to be Liberal, and yes, teachers are educated people.
The so-called blue states (Democratic) have populations that have had at least some college and higher incomes.
This is demographic reality and not up for debate.
cal jn,
I’m guessing that your personal path to educated Liberalism didn’t include any statistics course. Here are some other red/blue state “facts” that are “not up for debate”
* Blue states seem to have a lot more rape, both man on woman and man on man. Guess Democrats love to rape.
* Blue states have lower divorce rates. Guess Democrats really believe in marriage.
* Blue states tend to be near salt water. Perhaps salt corrodes one’s neural pathways.
Think any of that is actually relevant? Hint: no.
Trolling on TTAC is a privilege I reserve for myself. Keep doing it and I will bury your posts under the Internet.
Hey Jack, maybe that is where Jimmy Hoffa is buried!
caljn: as an educated man, I take great offense to your statement that “it’s not up for debate.”
Only liberals are intelligent? Intelligent people only live in blue states? Why do people become more conservative as they age and accumulate wealth then?
Your remarks have nothing to do with “free” parking; I would label you a troll. But that was so much more irritating than anything Z71_Silvy ever posted I felt compelled to respond. Please go troll elsewhere (perhaps amongst your “educated” friends).
“We all pay for free street parking, whether you drive a car or not. It’s called taxes.
We also pay for parking in the cost of goods, unless you think grocery stores, mall stores, strip malls, etc. don’t factor in the lease cost, upkeep costs, etc of the parking facility into rent and/or mortgage payment.
If he said, “Both drivers and non-drivers pay for parking, whether it is free or not”, at least he would be correct.”
Bravo!!!!!!!!!!! To all who mentioned how hidden costs are passed along, even “non-users, non-drivers, non-this and that, etc.
I shudder knowing that the costs of money diverted to endorsements of sports stars are passed along to me in the costs of a HUGE array of goods and services and there is no way for me to ascertain how to avoid not paying those costs.
In fact, there is likely no way to avoid the wealth transfer to the “special class” of wealthy folks since entire product lines, including generic products, likely include those hidden costs.
Welfare of a form. The masses supporting the wealthy few.
What a racket.
The whole point of these screeds seems to be a futile railing against the car vs a complete culture designed around said car. Sort of pointless. It will take centuries to remake our cities into something other than car centric should new forms of transport be invented and embraced like the car has been.
Whining and creative economics don’t really get the point across very well.
AaronH has it right…this professor is an example of why I do not think that those who have actual intellectual credentials (physics, math, engineering, etc) should have a different professional name than this third grade clown who wouldn’t understand elementary math if a quotient hit him on his (very, very little) head.
I live in a small city. I could walk to the end of my street, wait for a bus, drive in circles all over town, eventually arriving at the mall. OR, I could hop in my car, drive 2 miles in 5 minutes and park for free – of course, its only really free if I don’t buy anything. I spend two weeks in San Francisco not long ago, and let me tell you that grocery shopping then bringing all the bags home on the bus sucks.
“Who pays for free parking? Everyone but the motorist”
That statement is so stupid, Shoup must have made it to generate a reaction and get publicity.
Still would like to see a guerrilla film maker follow some of these enlightened car-haters and see how often they drive solo vs bus, walk and bike.
I’ll bet their mileage and consumption would make a Walmart shopper look like monk.
Remember, air miles for eco vacations don’t count.
I know Don Shoup personally. He is a good man and in no way, shape or form a socialist, elitist, etc. Heck, by the standards of the UCLA faculty, he’s downright conservative. Those who reflexively branded him should be ashamed of themselves. Don’s work has directly and creatively influenced policy in several areas.
– Don debunked the idea (suggested in the 1990 Clean Air Act) that employers could force employees to carpool etc at “no cost.” Those of you from Los Angeles may remember Regulation XV and “Employer Trip Reduction.” It was Don’s work that more or less killed it.
– Don’s work on zoning has, in fact, lowered parking mandates in many cities where such mandates resulted in far more parking than was need for commercial development. His work put numbers around a point developers had made for years. If there’s one thing liberals and conservatives should be able to agree on, it’s that zoning stinks.
– Don’s analysis helped change federal tax laws to allow workers to pay for transit, carpooling costs or paid parking (yes, parking) with tax-free dollars. His point was simply that workers have to get to work, and shouldn’t have to pay tax on both the income and the costs of getting there. He wasn’t reflexively against driving. He was reflexively for fairness.
– Outside of transportation, Don created a program, enacted by the State of California, that allows groups of homeowners to come together to finance public improvements while not paying the bill until a sale (which is when you’d get the financial benefits). The program was used to clean up the canals in Venice, CA.
– Don has done a very thoughtful analysis of the impacts of tree planting on residential property values, and suggested various ways that local zoning ordinances inadvertently limit tree planting in some cities.
Now, I don’t agree with all of Don’s policy prescriptions, but this is a man with the right motives.
Pretty much no one todays faux conservatives call an elitist socialist is one.
Its their code word of the moment to dismiss anyone whose ideas make them uncomfortable.
Forgive this reflexive brander, but Don’s so-called “free market” platform appears to be liberally sprinkled with anti-car bias. Nothing is “free” if the outcome is preplanned. Would Don continue to champion free markets even if the result was more cars and more asphalt?
Another difficulty with Don’s platform is that it is linked (by the reviewer) to a project in San Francisco which increases government interference in the lives of private citizens. Does Don support that project?
The problem is not that Mr. Shoup’s ideas make people uncomfortable. It’s that they are based on a flawed premise – that somehow, businesses are not accounting for the costs of free parking when designing a store or planning a residential area.
Parking lots take up real estate, which costs money. Any well-run business is going to take the cost of that real estate into account when determining how much profit it needs to generate in order to survive and thrive. Businesses pass these costs on to customers in way or another. If the businesses choose to eat these costs, that is private decision that the owners have made. It’s no different from a restaurant offering free drink refills to encourage customers to order the more expensive (and profitable) items from the menu.
Residential developments also account for the cost of parking, and buyers or renters pay those costs. As I have said before, we are looking for a house, and you’d better believe that whether there is reserved off-street parking, a private driveway or a garage is reflected in the asking price.
“Free” parking increases productivity.
Dear Advocates for Less Parking and/or Higher Fuel Taxes,
With all due respect, fuck you.
Sincerely,
Unapologetic American Populace
Don’t see what’s so leftist-liberal-eco-weenie about saying market forces should dictate how much space businesses allocate to parking. I kind of agree with the analysis. Yes… more successful businesses in crowded areas need more parking… and thus… they build it… and they subsidize the parking for their customers.
Businesses out in the sticks or in walking communities don’t need huge lots. And they can save a lot on smaller lots. Savings which are passed on.
Simple? Yes. Political? Hardly.
The San Francisco example uses smart meters to control the public’s behaviour and jack up city revenues. This is not “market-driven”. It is a social engineer’s wet dream.
http://sfpark.org/about-the-project/
don, that’s the definition of ‘market driven’. When the cost is related to demand, and people pay what the resource is worth, that’s how market forces are used. Yes, it modifies behavior because it makes people more aware of the cost of the resource they are using. Yes, it achieves social goals through more efficient use of those resources. And yes, it maximizes revenue by using more variability in pricing, such that it will actually have people pay what they feel the resource is worth.
If people stopped using it, the cost would go down. If people continue to use them in excess, the cost goes up .
the internet sales are killing most traditional store and there is no parking needed
The author will no doubt be our next Federal Parking Czar. His ivory-tower idiocy and ignorance of realities makes him perfect for the job.
This discussion reminded me of that Seinfeld episode when George said:
“Paying for parking is like going to a prostitute. Why should I pay for it when if I apply myself, I can get it for free?”
This is a very interesting discussion. I’ll enjoy reading Mr. (Dr?) Shoup’s book. Parking has been a fascination for me after living in Tokyo for more 5 years. There, I had to have my parking space measured before I was allowed to buy a car. I spent a lot of time on public transportation in that city. Shopping in Tokyo was a completely different thing than in the states. You shopped frequently and purchased small amounts of food. Anything heavier than 5 pounds was delivered to your home- you didn’t carry it. The train stations were generally in the middle of shopping centers.
I now live in Dallas, where public transportation just isn’t going to work for anything except commuting to work or attending mass public events like theater,concerts or professional sports. Simply put, Dallas wouldn’t exist if not for the automobile. No one would build a city here. It’s been over 100 degrees (heat index of 113 yesterday) for most of a month now. I’m not going to wait for a bus to go shopping, nor am I going to walk anywhere. My wife’s office is 6 miles from our home. There’s a bus stop at her office and a bus stop less than 1/4 mile from our house. However, it would take her two bus transfers and more than an hour to get to work, and it would cost more for her daily commute via bus than it does for the fuel on her car. (She’d still have to have a car so you can’t include the sunk cost of the car nor insurance).
Another observation is that my hometown (home city?)in the Northeast managed to decisively kill its downtown but banning cars and making a park/ arts area of the main downtown shopping area.
Most urban planners agree:
http://www.mapc.org/resources/parking-toolkit/parking-issues-questions/not-enough-parking
Now for some mischief:
What percentage of the United States is handicapped?
What percentage of parking spaces are solely dedicated to handicapped drivers? What percentage of handicapped parking spaces are generally occupied? I’d be interested in the ratio of handicapped parking spaces to handicapped individuals in a city, and what percentage of handicapped slots are “wasted” by total nonuse on any given day.
You may now flame me at will. I’m ready.
Handicap parking…..
I am reminded of a UAW employee that had a slight limp so he qualified for a handicap spot right in front of our plant. Each day at 2:58 he was waiting at the cattle gate with his badge ready to swipe…..As soon as the clock clicked to 3, he would swipe his badge and RUN to his handicap space parked car to be the first one out of the lot.
Just paid 50 bucks a day for parking in San Francisco hotel on top of everything. Paying for parking is so ridiculous.