The Revitalist

Speaking of making the most of street parking... Today the NY Times ran an op-ed advocating for higher prices for parking meters. Recent traffic studies have revealed that up to 30% of traffic congestion in central business districts can be attributed to people cruising for on-street parking. Donald Shoup of UCLA argues that this is the result of meters being under priced in relation to other parking options and can be remedied by more competitive pricing. He gives Redwood City, CA as an example. They have priced their meters to reach an average 85% occupancy and invested the additional $1M in revenue in streetscape and maintenance improvements in the district. The result is easier parking (usually an open space), less traffic, less pollution, improved public services and happier merchants. Obviously, a system like this only works with programmable meters that take bills and cards.

Since I'm generally a big fan of using economic incentives to drive behavior, it would be interesting to see how a system like this would play out in a bigger city. It looks like Redwood City has garages priced at the same rate as meters. How high would the prices in Boston have to go? The Boston Common garage charges $5/hour, the Post Office Square garage is $5/half hour, and the PI Alley garage is $7/half hour. Now people will park close to their destination regardless of paying a higher rate for the convenience, and there aren't enough meters to put downward price pressure on the garages. The goal is merely to price meters competitively so that some of the meter vultures will just go park in the garage instead of circling the block three times. What you do if the parking meters downtown cost $10-15/hour? Would you just leave your car at home? Even better.