Congestion-based pricing
The phrase, as it applies here, is basically about understanding how pricing works to manage parking. If you start by understanding that parking is never “free” and determine what it costs and who pays for it, it turns out that we don’t understand its value as a resource.
A scarce resource that is free will always be overused. To change the way customers use parking, look at the interrelationship between on-street parking and in a central lot. You can price through different mechanisms, including simply designating timed limits for parking.
Once you have established regulations and need to assure compliance, a manual system (parking tickets given out by those monitoring meters) becomes cumbersome and expensive.
Lax compliance makes parking a more scarce resource. If you price on-street parking so that it reflects patterns of use, i.e., prime-time pricing that differs from off-peak pricing, you send signals to people to think differently about how they use those spaces when they are most in demand.
If parking in a lot is something you want as an outcome, you need to provide the right incentives to make that the obvious choice. The revenues from parking (tickets or meters, etc.) should more than pay for maintenance and other administrative costs.
Smart-parking systems
These current technologies that allow any municipality to better manage parking.
Acting on data is better than acting on speculation based on anecdotal inputs, and installing smart-parking meters allows you to do that. In addition to modern, readable parking-payment machines that accept credit/debit cards, the parking spaces themselves have sensors embedded so that a real-time record can be kept.
That data (also available from on-street meters) allows the municipality to use the data to adjust pricing to encourage the parking behavior that reflects desired outcomes. These systems cost something to install as would building a parking garage or any proposed solution. If used properly to charge what parking is worth rather than to artificially subsidize a myth that parking is free, these parking systems pay for themselves often in less than one year.
What does parking in Arlington cost?
I cannot put a price on parking costs in Arlington. I’m not privy to the numbers. My guess is that we don’t have good numbers, because of how we think about parking.
Consider some obvious components. Parking spaces in lots are an easy place to begin to understand the cost. Our lot is on a piece of real estate that can be priced. In understanding the value of land, it is always important to understand it in terms of what it might otherwise be used for. A parcel of land that can hold a tall office building is more valuable than its simple land value.
A parcel right in the center of town in Arlington, where real estate prices are driven by its desirability and proximity to Boston or Cambridge, is very valuable.
One indication that we do not understand its value correctly is that we apparently are not pricing parking in the lot in such a way that it can even pay for its own maintenance! Parking is a very lucrative industry.
How can we possibly end up with a parking lot that can’t afford to maintain the simple infrastructure we currently have? Keeping two parking-ticket distribution machines working seems beyond our capacity. That makes no sense. Other simple improvements like lighting and signage seem beyond our budget. That’s crazy.
Who pays?
So who pays for parking? We all do. We pay for parking through our property taxes.
When we lease reserved parking in the lot at a rate that doesn’t generate revenue to offset the lost revenue from metered parking, we all subsidize the difference. This doesn’t factor such matters as the opportunity cost of not raising revenues that could be used to make other improvements in our community or the impact of poor parking.
Without pricing of on-street parking, there can be no holistic approach to parking. Town lots are underused, but people are going to fight for “free” parking on-street no matter what. We’re clearly providing incentives for that behavior.
Some solutions
One place to look for an answer is Jeff Speck’s Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time. See him talk about his book in his first TED Talk, here >>
Another is The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup. For more, click here >>
On Jan. 9, the fact that the audience was so dominated by business owners is also of concern. From 50 to 75 people were there (a guess), including town staff as well as consultants. The majority of the others in attendance were owners of Arlington Center businesses. I was one of three of four people that I could identify as not being there as representatives of a business.
Determining what the actual cost of parking is in Arlington is the first step toward understanding how much support the town gives to our businesses, which collectively contribute 6 percent to our tax base.
94% subsidize
That clearly means that the other 94 percent are subsidizing parking for those businesses and parking should be understood as one element of a larger view of how things should work to create the kind of environment in Arlington that we all want — not just the business owners.
Some audience members who addressed consultants and town officials took were confrontational. One proposed “mapping.” That involved hiring people with clipboards to ask where each person was parking as well as their destinations
I suggested congestion-based pricing and smart parking. I could see that the consultant was very glad that I referred to the latter that way. It was clear that they were avoiding saying it directly, and it was getting lost in the questions.
As to data collection, I countered that parking has been studied extensively for the past several decades and there’s quite a bit that we already know about it.
One couple on their way out thanked me for my comments, which they thought were spot-on. Phil Goff was there and wrote to thank me for my statements at the meeting.
Unfortunately, mostly it was the same old drivel about too many concessions to buses and taxis and anything but “free parking.”
Some legitimate issues
There were, however, quite a few store owners who were bringing up more legitimate issues, such as the notion that the municipal lot is a mess and the town is unresponsive when people make legitimate complaints about the meter ticket machines not working, etc.
The Russell Common lot looks like it is almost two-thirds reserved parking, which raises lots of questions about pricing, etc.
Complaints about signage were accurate. Many did get the idea that employees and others who shouldn’t be tying up the on-street parking were preferring it to the lot or other options, and that was not good.
Of course, the idea that we price it was still not registering completely. Smart-parking meters with pricing that reflected peak periods, etc., would solve that in a minute.
The notion of a parking garage was raised, and I didn’t dismiss it, because it actually is part of looking at things comprehensively. If we want to provide predictable access to parking in the center and we are going to price on-street to provide incentives to people to park in the lot or a garage, everything has to be understood together as a system.
The need for constant data collection through the meters and sensors is what allows you to learn and adjust pricing based on what you’re learning about parking use. This takes care of the data “mapping.”
I was an outlier and felt pretty lonely in that crowd. None of the business people even acknowledged me, let alone tried to talk to me about anything that I said.
I did get a chance to talk to Ted Fields, the town’s economic-develop coordinator, and he clearly does get it. He was telling me that there used to be parking meters in the center. Ah, history ….
Making the town more attractive to pedestrian traffic isn’t a separate issue; it is linked to parking and sidewalks and bringing color to the drab facades of our buildings and so much more.
If we are serious about solving our “parking” problems, we need to become much smarter about it. Otherwise, all we are doing is nibbling around the edges and rearranging the deck chairs.
This viewpoint was published Thursday, Jan. 30, 2014. Your comments are welcome at the link below.
