Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Peformance Prices for Parking

Progress in immobility - How optimization of stationary traffic can improve traffic flow (8 page pdf, Donald Shoup, ITS magazine- The Magazine for Intelligent Traffic Systems I 2/2011, Siemens, July 2011)

The patron saint of parking, Donald Shop, is the focus of today’s review. He points out the many issues caused by free parking and the need to do three things to create more mobility: “Charging performance prices for on-street parking, spending the revenue for local public services, and removing off-street parking requirements”



Key Quotes:

“Statistics reveal that cars and other motorized vehicles are on the move for about an hour a day on average – the other 23 hours are spent as “immobiles” in garages and other parking facilities”

“Paying for parking is like going to a prostitute,..Why should I pay when, if I apply myself, maybe I can get it for free?” (George Costanza, Seinfeld)

“Where curb parking is underpriced and overcrowded, a surprisingly large share of traffic may be cruising in search of a place to park…30 percent of the cars in congested traffic on city streets were cruising for parking”

“the average time to find a curb space on 15 blocks in the Upper West Side of Manhattan was 3.1 minutes and the average cruising distance was 0.6 kilometers.. cruising for underpriced park ing in this small area alone creates about 590,000 excess vehicle kilometers of travel and 295 tons of CO2 per year”

“some cities have begun to adjust their curb parking prices by location and time of day to produce an 85 percent occupancy rate for curb parking, which corresponds to one vacant space on a typical block with eight curb spaces”

“to convince people to charge for on-street parking ..dedicate the resulting revenue to paying for civic improvements in the neighborhood, such as repairing sidewalks, planting street trees, and putting utility wires underground”

“parking requirements force-feed the city with parking spaces, and removing a parking requirement simply stops the force-feeding. Ceasing to require off-street parking gives businesses the freedom to provide as much or as little parking as they like”

“Charging performance prices for on-street parking, spending the revenue for local public services, and removing off-street parking requirements will achieve the goals of almost all interest groups”
Enhanced by Zemanta

No comments:

Post a Comment