More on parking

A bunch of people sent me a link to the article in the New York Times about parking rage in San Francisco, "San Franciscans Hurl Their Rage at Parking Patrol."

On the Urbanists e-list, Dan Zack, a planner on the West Coast, made some excellent points. His post is reprinted here in its entirety:

This link will take you to a youtube documentary made about parking rage in SF.

The article and video really illuminate the importance of effective parking management. One poor guy was even killed over a parking space. Policies in SF, and in many cities, are literally driving people insane. Obviously we don't want to over-park everything, because that hurts the urbanism. On the other hand we don't want to just torture people, because that hurts urban/New Urban areas' ability to compete with CSD. We must provide a good experience, and people don't usually consider a $30 parking ticket-or, worse yet, dealing with a towed car-to be a good experience. So we must effectively manage a tight supply of parking.

In San Francisco there are many factors that are causing people to assault each other. One, obviously is a deficit of parking spaces. Well, it is a dense city, so what are you going to do? Unfortunately, however, the transit isn't perfect and if you want to do certain things in a reasonable amount of time you just have to drive.

Then, once you get there, you are confronted with a tough choice. Do you try to find a space in a garage or on the street? Almost everyone prefers the street because ingress and egress is quicker, it is usually much closer to the destination, your car feels safer because of "eyes on the street," and some people are just creeped out by parking garages. So already you have a major bias toward street parking. Then, on top of that, the street parking (the GOOD stuff) is CHEAPER! Often, the garages (less desirable) are 50% more expensive, and often they are double the price of the curb parking. This gives people a huge incentive to fight over the curb parking and to violate the time limits once they are there.
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This is a hugely important point. Curb parking spaces need to be priced much higher than currently.
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Instead, cities should charge the "market rate" for parking. Street spaces should usually cost much more than garages and lots, and all should be priced high enough to keep about 15% of the stalls open in every area. In suburban downtowns and NU town centers, this might mean $0.75 or $1 per hour on-street parking. In big cities who knows what the market rate might be for curb parking. $5/hour? $10/hour? $20? It sounds crazy, but why not? Why is it okay to charge outrageous prices in the garages, but the streets must be a bargain? Professor Donald Shoup is the master of this philosophy. Click here to read an article by Prof. Shoup.

Here in Redwood City we are now charging market-rate pricing and we have eliminated time limits. You can park all day if you want, but you'll pay for it. Lots and garages are cheaper, luring the bargain hunters there, and we offer employees cheap monthly permits getting them off of the street. This is much friendlier than forcing turnover with strict time limits of 15, 30 or 60 minutes and enforcing it with expensive parking tickets.
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This is also an excellent point, to keep parking on the street available to customers, discourage employees and employers from using those spaces by providing extremely inexpensive alternatives.
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How can you possibly put $10 worth of quarters into a parking meter,you may ask? New multi space meters take bills and credit cards (as well as coins), making higher rates very easy to pay. West Hollywood, CA has good ones, for example and dozens of cities across the nation have added them. Ours go in later this month.

Cities like SF which have parking deficits could use the extra money generated by market prices to either lower parking demand (add a streetcar line or improve bus frequency, for example) or to increase parking supply (build a neighborhood parking garage), whichever makes the most sense. Suburban downtowns or NU town centers which have enough parking could use the revenue to fund extra police, extra sidewalk cleaning, new street trees, special events, or whatever they may need. Professor Shoup's article linked above includes the compelling story of how Old Pasadena used this strategy to help turn itself from a slum into a vibrant urban district. San Diego also used this strategy, and we aredoing it in Redwood City, too.

Parking is destiny, and if we want our cities, suburban downtowns, and NU town centers to compete with the parking simplicity of the 'burbs we must completely re-think parking management. It is not a problem that you can build your way out of.
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San Francisco is launching a new light rail line, which I am not ready to write about, but while looking at some articles in the SF Chronicle, came across a piece about the SF Muni system and its financial troubles, "Muni deficit is projected, but fares will hold steady."

One of the points the article makes, again, about pricing anomalies, is that a residential parking permit costs $60 annually, but a monthly pass to ride transit costs about $545.

Residential parking permits need to be a lot more expensive.

Transit first for the city!

See these blog entries for a discussion of a transit first planning orientation:
-- Comments on Proposed EYA Development at Takoma Metro Station
-- Transit First Mobility Policies and Planning Paradigms
-- An example of housing illustrating a transit first land use policy

Index Keywords: parking; car-culture; transportation