Here's an odd little fact: For every dollar of parking revenue it collects from curbside meters, the Philadelphia Parking Authority collects more than two dollars in parking fines. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, the ratio is reversed. At the end of the SFpark demonstration project in 2013, the pilot areas were collecting four dollars in meter revenue for every dollar of parking fines.
The SFpark Numbers
I ran across the San Francisco numbers on the SFpark website, in a document called SFpark Pilot Project Evaluation. The meter revenue -- $242 per meter per month -- is on page 122 (pdf page 62). The citation revenue -- $61 per meter per month -- is on page 124 (pdf page 63).
During the course of the demonstration project, citation revenue declined and meter revenue increased in the pilot areas. Interestingly, the average price of an hour at a meter declined. SFpark employs variable pricing, also called demand pricing, where the price at the meter varies during the course of the day and the overall price schedule is adjusted at intervals, all with the goal of assuring a target occupancy rate of 60-80 percent. (For more on SFpark, see Parking in San Francisco.)
The SFpark numbers are not exactly comparable to the Philadelphia numbers I discuss below. The ticket revenue in the SFpark study is for meter-related offenses only -- such as not paying the meter or overstaying the meter time limit. Other parking offenses, such as blocking a driveway, are not included. Also the SFpark numbers are only for the areas of the city included in the study. The Philadelphia numbers are for the whole city.
Still, the SFpark data provide a portrait of a well-run parking system that is centered on meter revenue rather than ticket revenue.
About the Philadelphia Numbers
The 2014 annual report of the Philadelphia Parking Authority provides an aggregate number for on-street parking revenue (page 31) and also lists the sources of those funds -- ticket revenue, meter revenue, towing, booting etc. (page iv). The annual report does not, however, provide the revenue numbers for those individual categories.
So I wound up filing a Right-to-Know request, and a few days later I received the information in the mail. I reproduce it below.
As an aside, my interactions with the PPA over the last few months have been productive and, dare I say it, pleasant.
2014 On-Street Parking Revenues in Philadelphia
Tickets - $76,510,245
Meters - $34,633,109
Smart Card - $485,055
Towing - $3,665,909
Storage - $558,432
Booting - $1,818,305
RPP - $1,059,648
Contractor - $1,062,525
Loading Zone - $468,705
Auction - $115,195
Auction Proc Fee - $62,460
Credit Card Proc Fees-Auction - $42,520
Credit Card Convenience Fees - $1,290,722
Proc Fee Registration/Suspend - $17,059
Ticketing Refund - ($324,945)
Miscellaneous - $66,175
Total - $121,531,119
A Few Notes of Explanation
RPP stands for residential parking permit ($35/year). Contractor, I believe, is revenue from contractor parking permits ($150/year).
The Loading Zone category refers to a quaint Philadelphia custom. If you qualify, you can get a loading zone at the curb in front of your business. For each parking space removed there's an installation fee of up to $500, and an annual permit fee of up to $150. Loading zones limit parking to 20 or 30 minutes, and they are available to anyone who wants to park there. The business owner does not control parking in the zones.
The residential permit, the contractor permit, and the loading zone permit are all dramatically underpriced. A standard $2.50 parking spot in Center City can generate revenue up to $8,000 per year.
Searching for a Set of Vital Signs
When you go to the doctor's office, the second thing you do (after you fill out the paperwork) is get your vital signs taken. You know -- temperature, pulse, respiration rate, blood pressure. I've been wondering for a while what a set of vital signs for a parking system might look like.
Clearly, occupancy rates are important. Are you maintaining peak occupancy rates of 85 percent on the street and in the garages? The answer in Philadelphia is no, but it's not an easy answer to get. The Philadelphia City Planning Commission surveys the large garages in Center City, but it only does so once every five years. As for curbside parking, I don't think anybody has good data, but the situation is so bad, and so obvious, that we can easily limp along without precise information, at least for a while.
SFpark evaluated the demonstration project in a large number of ways. Beyond parking availability it looked at things such as the amount of time drivers had to search for a spot, greenhouse gas emissions, daily vehicle miles traveled, double parking, and the number of accidents.
SFpark also looked, as noted above, at parking citations issued per meter. And that's how I got the idea of comparing ticket revenue to meter revenue.
The great advantage of this ratio as a vital sign for a parking system is that it doesn't require a survey. The data will already exist in the parking authority's financial system. You just need to order up a report.
Would You Rather Pay a Fine or Feed a Meter?
And I think our ratio says a lot about us, here in Philadelphia. There is intense resistance to adding new meters, or raising the rates on existing ones. The inevitable result is overcrowding, which leads directly to a large revenue stream from parking tickets.
Along with the overcrowding and the tickets we also produce a lot of anxiety, frustration, and anger. Parking is a very emotional issue in Philadelphia, and few of those emotions are positive.
We don't need this. And we don't have to have it. It's up to us.
(See also Parking: Storage v. Access, Professor Shoup's Parking Book, The Parking Dream.)
Showing posts with label Philadelphia City Planning Commission. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philadelphia City Planning Commission. Show all posts
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Monday, April 6, 2015
Parking: Storage v. Access
At the end of March, my friend Mike Axler and I were walking home from the Kenyatta Johnson-Ori Feibush city council debate. It was actually warm.
I suggested that we were done with our field work. Mike noted that we managed to finish just as the weather was starting to warm up.
Since the previous fall, Mike and I had been trudging around the CCRA village (basically the southwest quadrant of William Penn's original plan for Philadelphia). Working as volunteers for the Center City Residents' Association, we were counting parking spaces -- on-street and off-street, in big garages and little.
There was more we could have done, but we were tired, and what was the point of running up the score. We'd already established that at least 87 percent of households do not park a car on the street. We probably could have gotten the number over 90 percent, but what's the point?
I'll go over the numbers in a minute, but let's look first at what they mean.
The Plumber
Some time in the good weather last year, there was a knock on my door about 7:30 in the morning. It was a plumber, and he needed to replace a connection in the street. There was a car parked where he needed to dig, and he was wondering if I knew who it belonged to. Perhaps we could knock on that person's door, and ask him to move his car?
I was speechless. This very nice man thought the cars parked on the street belonged to the people who lived on the street. Maybe in Mayberry, but not in Center City Philadelphia. When I was parking on the street, I was happy if I found a spot within three blocks of my house.
However, the West family was able to help the plumber. My wife glanced at the rear window of the car, noted that there was no Zone 1 parking sticker, and suggested that the car would probably be leaving shortly after 8 a.m. Which is what happened.
Underlying Assumptions
We all know that curbside parking in the CCRA village is very tight. And people are constantly looking for ways to expand the supply of on-street parking. Can't we add one more spot at the head of the line, up by the corner -- thereby decreasing visibility and dramatically increasing the likelihood of pedestrians getting hit by cars in the intersection.
There are a couple of underlying assumptions here. One is that it is possible to increase the supply of curbside parking in a way that would help to meet the demand for spaces. It's not true.
Another is that most people with cars are parking them on the street, and that the street is the primary and natural resource for parking an automobile.
Well, no. As I noted above, at least 87 percent of households in CCRAville do not park a car on the street. Three-quarters of those who own cars park them off the street.
And half of households don't own cars. Some people seem to have difficulty processing the idea that there are parts of the United States where most people don't own cars. However, in some parts of the CCRA village, the figure is over 60 percent. (See Philadelphia City Planning Commission, Philadelphia 2035: Central District Plan, Existing Conditions, Issues, and Opportunities, May 2012. The relevant chart is entitled Vehicle Availability.)
It's not Mayberry. It's not even South Philly. It's the big city.
The Dream
The Dream will always be there. I should be able to park my car for free at the curb in front of my house whenever I want. Well, no. That's not the way it works here.
But because a lot of people think that wishing makes it so, a lot of things have gone remarkably askew on our streets.
The Zone 1 parking sticker, priced at $35 per year, allows residents to store their cars on the street, which they often do for weeks at a time. This use -- long-term storage -- conflicts directly with another important use of curbside parking -- short-term access.
Short-term access barely exists in the southern parts of CCRAville. However, if you go up to Rittenhouse Square, you can get a glimpse of what it looks like. With the exception of the north side of the square, most spots are loading zones. There's never a problem dropping Aunt Tillie off at the Barclay. And then you put the car in the garage.
The Numbers
Okay, so how about the numbers? Mike and I have previously reported that we found 1,584 Zone 1 spots in the CCRA village. (Total on-street spots, including the regular two-hour spots, the Zone 1 storage spots, and spots for diplomats, the handicapped, registered packaged delivery companies -- let's not forget car share and taxi stands -- were 3,161.)
Off-street facilities with less than 30 spots totaled 1,930.
As to garages and lots with a capacity greater than 30, we knew there were well over 11,000 of those, but we didn't know how many were monthly rentals -- as opposed to short-term visitors.
So Mike, who used to do this kind of work for a living, rolled up his sleeves, made phone calls, met with garage managers -- and very often came away with valuable information. Not everybody was willing to talk, but he found 2,894 monthlies in the big garages.
There are more, and we probably could have verified more, but we had what we needed, and we stopped.
Here it is:
2,894 (over 30) + 1,930 (under 30) = 4,824 parking off the street.
Versus 1,584 storing their cars in Zone 1 spots. So 25 percent of cars are being stored on the street:
4,824 (off) + 1,584 (on) = 6,408 (total).
1,584 (on) / 6,408 (total) = .247 or 25 percent.
But half of households don't own a car. So 12.5 percent -- be generous and make it 13 percent -- of households are parking on the street, and 87 percent are not.
What Do We Do?
The constituency for on-street storage is 13 percent. But, as I've said before, the constituency for access is 100 percent. Everybody wants the plumber to be able to visit.
We need change.
So what do we do? Well, here's a start: On page 696 of his book The High Cost of Free Parking, Professor Donald Shoup recommends destickering some of the spaces on each block in a neighborhood like the CCRA village. The rest of the spots would remain Zone 1 storage spots. The destickered spaces would become standard two-hour access spots during the day, and still be available for overnight parking. It won't solve the whole problem, but it's a start.
(See previous posts in this blog: The Parking Dream, Professor Shoup's Parking Book, Parking in San Francisco.)
I suggested that we were done with our field work. Mike noted that we managed to finish just as the weather was starting to warm up.
Since the previous fall, Mike and I had been trudging around the CCRA village (basically the southwest quadrant of William Penn's original plan for Philadelphia). Working as volunteers for the Center City Residents' Association, we were counting parking spaces -- on-street and off-street, in big garages and little.
There was more we could have done, but we were tired, and what was the point of running up the score. We'd already established that at least 87 percent of households do not park a car on the street. We probably could have gotten the number over 90 percent, but what's the point?
I'll go over the numbers in a minute, but let's look first at what they mean.
The Plumber
Some time in the good weather last year, there was a knock on my door about 7:30 in the morning. It was a plumber, and he needed to replace a connection in the street. There was a car parked where he needed to dig, and he was wondering if I knew who it belonged to. Perhaps we could knock on that person's door, and ask him to move his car?
I was speechless. This very nice man thought the cars parked on the street belonged to the people who lived on the street. Maybe in Mayberry, but not in Center City Philadelphia. When I was parking on the street, I was happy if I found a spot within three blocks of my house.
However, the West family was able to help the plumber. My wife glanced at the rear window of the car, noted that there was no Zone 1 parking sticker, and suggested that the car would probably be leaving shortly after 8 a.m. Which is what happened.
Underlying Assumptions
We all know that curbside parking in the CCRA village is very tight. And people are constantly looking for ways to expand the supply of on-street parking. Can't we add one more spot at the head of the line, up by the corner -- thereby decreasing visibility and dramatically increasing the likelihood of pedestrians getting hit by cars in the intersection.
There are a couple of underlying assumptions here. One is that it is possible to increase the supply of curbside parking in a way that would help to meet the demand for spaces. It's not true.
Another is that most people with cars are parking them on the street, and that the street is the primary and natural resource for parking an automobile.
Well, no. As I noted above, at least 87 percent of households in CCRAville do not park a car on the street. Three-quarters of those who own cars park them off the street.
And half of households don't own cars. Some people seem to have difficulty processing the idea that there are parts of the United States where most people don't own cars. However, in some parts of the CCRA village, the figure is over 60 percent. (See Philadelphia City Planning Commission, Philadelphia 2035: Central District Plan, Existing Conditions, Issues, and Opportunities, May 2012. The relevant chart is entitled Vehicle Availability.)
It's not Mayberry. It's not even South Philly. It's the big city.
The Dream
The Dream will always be there. I should be able to park my car for free at the curb in front of my house whenever I want. Well, no. That's not the way it works here.
But because a lot of people think that wishing makes it so, a lot of things have gone remarkably askew on our streets.
The Zone 1 parking sticker, priced at $35 per year, allows residents to store their cars on the street, which they often do for weeks at a time. This use -- long-term storage -- conflicts directly with another important use of curbside parking -- short-term access.
Short-term access barely exists in the southern parts of CCRAville. However, if you go up to Rittenhouse Square, you can get a glimpse of what it looks like. With the exception of the north side of the square, most spots are loading zones. There's never a problem dropping Aunt Tillie off at the Barclay. And then you put the car in the garage.
The Numbers
Okay, so how about the numbers? Mike and I have previously reported that we found 1,584 Zone 1 spots in the CCRA village. (Total on-street spots, including the regular two-hour spots, the Zone 1 storage spots, and spots for diplomats, the handicapped, registered packaged delivery companies -- let's not forget car share and taxi stands -- were 3,161.)
Off-street facilities with less than 30 spots totaled 1,930.
As to garages and lots with a capacity greater than 30, we knew there were well over 11,000 of those, but we didn't know how many were monthly rentals -- as opposed to short-term visitors.
So Mike, who used to do this kind of work for a living, rolled up his sleeves, made phone calls, met with garage managers -- and very often came away with valuable information. Not everybody was willing to talk, but he found 2,894 monthlies in the big garages.
There are more, and we probably could have verified more, but we had what we needed, and we stopped.
Here it is:
2,894 (over 30) + 1,930 (under 30) = 4,824 parking off the street.
Versus 1,584 storing their cars in Zone 1 spots. So 25 percent of cars are being stored on the street:
4,824 (off) + 1,584 (on) = 6,408 (total).
1,584 (on) / 6,408 (total) = .247 or 25 percent.
But half of households don't own a car. So 12.5 percent -- be generous and make it 13 percent -- of households are parking on the street, and 87 percent are not.
What Do We Do?
The constituency for on-street storage is 13 percent. But, as I've said before, the constituency for access is 100 percent. Everybody wants the plumber to be able to visit.
We need change.
So what do we do? Well, here's a start: On page 696 of his book The High Cost of Free Parking, Professor Donald Shoup recommends destickering some of the spaces on each block in a neighborhood like the CCRA village. The rest of the spots would remain Zone 1 storage spots. The destickered spaces would become standard two-hour access spots during the day, and still be available for overnight parking. It won't solve the whole problem, but it's a start.
(See previous posts in this blog: The Parking Dream, Professor Shoup's Parking Book, Parking in San Francisco.)
Saturday, November 15, 2014
Professor Shoup's Parking Book
An Analysis with Applications to Philadelphia
Professor Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking is 800 pages long, and it will make a nice doorstop when I'm done with it. I'm just not sure I'll ever be done with it.
However, as I was working my way through the appendices, it occurred to me that many people who are never going to read this book would benefit greatly from knowing about the ideas that are in it.
I started off thinking I would do a chapter by chapter synopsis, but as I got into it my approach changed. Call this an analysis of some of the book's salient ideas, with applications to Philadelphia.
A Parking Paradox
Let's have a look at Philly's Central Business District. Let's say mid-morning on a Wednesday You're walking down the street, and the place is jammed. There are no parking spots to be seen. We've got a parking problem. Time to build some more garages.
Actually, there is no shortage of parking spaces. It just looks that way. At their busiest, the garages in Center City are only 74 percent full (Philadelphia City Planning Commission, 2010 Center City Parking Inventory). You could take all the cars parked at meters in Center City and sweep them into the garages, and you'd only get the garages to 85 occupancy.
So why doesn't that happen? Price. An hour at the curb is $2.50. An hour at the William Penn House garage, on 19th below Market, is $16. This is simply too big a gap, and I think both prices have to move.
The Parking Garage Mess
Let's talk about parking garages first. You'd think, with 74 percent peak occupancy, they might be interested in attracting a few more customers. Professor Shoup says the socially optimal occupancy of a garage is 85 percent. Above that level you start having congestion problems, with panicky drivers doing dumb things abruptly. If you've ever been in the Whole Foods garage on South Street, say around lunchtime on a rainy Saturday, you'll know what I'm talking about. But, as Professor Shoup puts it, "Commercial operators aim to maximize profits, not social benefits." (Pp. 301-302.)
To simplify his example, let's say you own a 100-car garage, and you can fill 50 spaces by charging $20 a day. To fill 85 spaces, you will need to lower your price to $10 a day. But filling the 50 spaces earns you $1,000, and filling 85 spaces only earns you $850.
So Center City's garage operators may be quite content with a 74 percent peak occupancy.
In addition to the profit motive, I would like to suggest that garage operators have another motive -- operational convenience.
I mentioned the William Penn House charges $16 to park for one hour. Pretty much all the garages do something like this. I was walking down 13th Street a while ago, and I watched a man in a nice car (perhaps an Audi) head into the garage entrance in the Wanamaker Building. He stopped short and sat in the entrance for a moment. Then he backed up a little. Then he sat some more. And then he went in. Once he got over the shock, he decided he could afford it.
Other people may stay home, or go to a mall in the suburbs. What would John Wanamaker say to the people running his garage?
The Early-Bird Special
Meanwhile, back to the William Penn House. It charges shoppers $16 an hour, and I think that means it doesn't like shoppers and other short-term visitors. Meanwhile, it loves commuters.
There's an early-bird special. In by 8:30 a.m., out after 2 p.m. You can stay up to 12 hours, all for $18, or $1.50 per hour. OK, $1.50 per hour for a commuter, $16 per hour for a shopper.
So garages love commuters, and they hate shoppers. Did you notice that the early-bird price is only 60 percent of the price for parking on the street?
Clearly the garages could make a lot more if they catered to shoppers, but that would lead to a lot of in-and-out hustle and bustle during the day. The garage would have to work harder. The motive here is not profit-maximization. It is operational convenience. In the morning, you suck them in, and in the afternoon, you vomit them out. During the day, you take a nap.
This is in my opinion a mess, and I don't know what to do about it. The city's merchants should be unhappy. If you have an office in Center City, and you ask people to come to meetings, you should be unhappy.
There ought to be a constituency for change. But what's a poor City Council Person to do? How do you make change here? What are the tools?
Price controls have a habit of backfiring. But you could tax empty parking spots in garages. For the first 15 percent, the tax could be zero. Below 85 percent peak occupancy, the tax would be greater than zero. Just a thought.
Prices on the Street
Meanwhile, prices on the street have to go up. They're currently set by City Council. The maximum is $2.50 per hour, and there is a very noisy constituency opposed to raising the price.
But at these prices, pretty much all the spots are taken all the time. So, again, access is denied.
Professor Shoup notes (p. 297) on-street parking works best with 85 percent occupancy at the curb. This is the same figure as with garages, and for the same reasons. Below 85 percent you're wasting space, and above 85 percent you get congestion craziness -- people circling the block, choking traffic as they look for a spot that isn't there.
Cruising Causes Congestion
How much does cruising for parking contribute to traffic congestion in the downtowns of America? A lot. The first study of cruising, in 1927, found that "between 19 percent and 34 percent of the cars traveling in downtown Detroit were cruising for curb parking." Later studies have come up with figures from 8 to 74 percent (pp. 275-291, 358).
In 1984, Professor Shoup and his research assistants at UCLA studied cruising in Westwood Village, a small commercial area that borders the UCLA campus. They found that, on average, 68 percent of the cars on the road were cruising, with a peak of 94 percent between 7 and 8 in the evening. The amount of cruising was directly related to occupancy levels at the curb (pp. 348-370).
Access Is the Key
The solution? Raise prices until you get average curb occupancy down to 85 percent.
So who's against this? Well, merchants traditionally have a horror of charging for parking. They're afraid they'll lose customers to suburban malls or other areas that don't charge for parking.
The counterargument is that customers are more interested in convenient parking than free parking (p. 400). And numerous studies have indicated that higher parking prices will not inevitably reduce employment and trade downtown. People may park a little further away, or go into a garage, or take the bus or trolley or train or subway (pp. 639-640). Or they may bike.
And the higher prices lead to more turnover in an individual parking space, so the merchant will actually see more customers. "Underpricing creates the incentive for solo drivers to 'squat' in scarce curb spaces, reduces turnover, and deters visitors by creating a shortage of convenient short-term parking. Market-priced curb parking will reallocate the curb spaces to visitors who place a higher value on their time. More spaces will also be available to short-term parkers who come for a quick purchase and leave immediately, so the curb parking spaces will generate more customers for local businesses. A low price for curb parking may sound good for business, but it is not." (Pp. 365-366.)
I certainly hope the merchants at the Italian Market hear about that paragraph.
So How Do We Do This?
When it comes to getting curb parking right, Professor Shoup has two basic maxims: Charge market prices for on-street parking; and return the revenue to finance neighborhood public improvements (p. 548 and passim). Market prices will get you 85 percent occupancy at the curb; and returning revenue to the neighborhood will generate political support for the new approach.
So who do you give the revenue to? In the case of Philly's Central Business District, the obvious candidate is the Center City District. In addition to being a Business Improvement District, CCD would become a Parking Benefit District, meaning it would receive revenue from the parking meters and spend it on improving the district, something it already knows how to do. With more money, it could do more.
One of the first Parking Benefit Districts was in Pasadena, California. At the time, the downtown had no parking meters. When the meters went in, the new district got all the funds (pp. 403-418). Later cases have proved more complicated. In San Diego, for instance, the meters were already there, and the city was accustomed to receiving the revenue from them. And hence was born the phenomenon of Parking Increment Finance (pp. 418-427, 528-530, 694-695), whereby the district and the city share the larger pie that comes from raising prices.
One big obstacle remains. You're asking City Council to raise the price on parking meters, which it does not want to do. As Professor Shoup puts it, "councilmembers naturally hesitate to raise the price that voters pay for parking." And he provides the solution: "One way to skirt this conflict is to redefine the goal of parking policy. Instead of voting directly on the price of curb parking, a city council can establish a target occupancy rate -- such as 85 percent -- and instruct the parking authority to set the right prices to achieve this average rate." (Pp. 304-305.)
We can do this in Philadelphia.
Professor Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking is 800 pages long, and it will make a nice doorstop when I'm done with it. I'm just not sure I'll ever be done with it.
However, as I was working my way through the appendices, it occurred to me that many people who are never going to read this book would benefit greatly from knowing about the ideas that are in it.
I started off thinking I would do a chapter by chapter synopsis, but as I got into it my approach changed. Call this an analysis of some of the book's salient ideas, with applications to Philadelphia.
A Parking Paradox
Let's have a look at Philly's Central Business District. Let's say mid-morning on a Wednesday You're walking down the street, and the place is jammed. There are no parking spots to be seen. We've got a parking problem. Time to build some more garages.
Actually, there is no shortage of parking spaces. It just looks that way. At their busiest, the garages in Center City are only 74 percent full (Philadelphia City Planning Commission, 2010 Center City Parking Inventory). You could take all the cars parked at meters in Center City and sweep them into the garages, and you'd only get the garages to 85 occupancy.
So why doesn't that happen? Price. An hour at the curb is $2.50. An hour at the William Penn House garage, on 19th below Market, is $16. This is simply too big a gap, and I think both prices have to move.
The Parking Garage Mess
Let's talk about parking garages first. You'd think, with 74 percent peak occupancy, they might be interested in attracting a few more customers. Professor Shoup says the socially optimal occupancy of a garage is 85 percent. Above that level you start having congestion problems, with panicky drivers doing dumb things abruptly. If you've ever been in the Whole Foods garage on South Street, say around lunchtime on a rainy Saturday, you'll know what I'm talking about. But, as Professor Shoup puts it, "Commercial operators aim to maximize profits, not social benefits." (Pp. 301-302.)
To simplify his example, let's say you own a 100-car garage, and you can fill 50 spaces by charging $20 a day. To fill 85 spaces, you will need to lower your price to $10 a day. But filling the 50 spaces earns you $1,000, and filling 85 spaces only earns you $850.
So Center City's garage operators may be quite content with a 74 percent peak occupancy.
In addition to the profit motive, I would like to suggest that garage operators have another motive -- operational convenience.
I mentioned the William Penn House charges $16 to park for one hour. Pretty much all the garages do something like this. I was walking down 13th Street a while ago, and I watched a man in a nice car (perhaps an Audi) head into the garage entrance in the Wanamaker Building. He stopped short and sat in the entrance for a moment. Then he backed up a little. Then he sat some more. And then he went in. Once he got over the shock, he decided he could afford it.
Other people may stay home, or go to a mall in the suburbs. What would John Wanamaker say to the people running his garage?
The Early-Bird Special
Meanwhile, back to the William Penn House. It charges shoppers $16 an hour, and I think that means it doesn't like shoppers and other short-term visitors. Meanwhile, it loves commuters.
There's an early-bird special. In by 8:30 a.m., out after 2 p.m. You can stay up to 12 hours, all for $18, or $1.50 per hour. OK, $1.50 per hour for a commuter, $16 per hour for a shopper.
So garages love commuters, and they hate shoppers. Did you notice that the early-bird price is only 60 percent of the price for parking on the street?
Clearly the garages could make a lot more if they catered to shoppers, but that would lead to a lot of in-and-out hustle and bustle during the day. The garage would have to work harder. The motive here is not profit-maximization. It is operational convenience. In the morning, you suck them in, and in the afternoon, you vomit them out. During the day, you take a nap.
This is in my opinion a mess, and I don't know what to do about it. The city's merchants should be unhappy. If you have an office in Center City, and you ask people to come to meetings, you should be unhappy.
There ought to be a constituency for change. But what's a poor City Council Person to do? How do you make change here? What are the tools?
Price controls have a habit of backfiring. But you could tax empty parking spots in garages. For the first 15 percent, the tax could be zero. Below 85 percent peak occupancy, the tax would be greater than zero. Just a thought.
Prices on the Street
Meanwhile, prices on the street have to go up. They're currently set by City Council. The maximum is $2.50 per hour, and there is a very noisy constituency opposed to raising the price.
But at these prices, pretty much all the spots are taken all the time. So, again, access is denied.
Professor Shoup notes (p. 297) on-street parking works best with 85 percent occupancy at the curb. This is the same figure as with garages, and for the same reasons. Below 85 percent you're wasting space, and above 85 percent you get congestion craziness -- people circling the block, choking traffic as they look for a spot that isn't there.
Cruising Causes Congestion
How much does cruising for parking contribute to traffic congestion in the downtowns of America? A lot. The first study of cruising, in 1927, found that "between 19 percent and 34 percent of the cars traveling in downtown Detroit were cruising for curb parking." Later studies have come up with figures from 8 to 74 percent (pp. 275-291, 358).
In 1984, Professor Shoup and his research assistants at UCLA studied cruising in Westwood Village, a small commercial area that borders the UCLA campus. They found that, on average, 68 percent of the cars on the road were cruising, with a peak of 94 percent between 7 and 8 in the evening. The amount of cruising was directly related to occupancy levels at the curb (pp. 348-370).
Access Is the Key
The solution? Raise prices until you get average curb occupancy down to 85 percent.
So who's against this? Well, merchants traditionally have a horror of charging for parking. They're afraid they'll lose customers to suburban malls or other areas that don't charge for parking.
The counterargument is that customers are more interested in convenient parking than free parking (p. 400). And numerous studies have indicated that higher parking prices will not inevitably reduce employment and trade downtown. People may park a little further away, or go into a garage, or take the bus or trolley or train or subway (pp. 639-640). Or they may bike.
And the higher prices lead to more turnover in an individual parking space, so the merchant will actually see more customers. "Underpricing creates the incentive for solo drivers to 'squat' in scarce curb spaces, reduces turnover, and deters visitors by creating a shortage of convenient short-term parking. Market-priced curb parking will reallocate the curb spaces to visitors who place a higher value on their time. More spaces will also be available to short-term parkers who come for a quick purchase and leave immediately, so the curb parking spaces will generate more customers for local businesses. A low price for curb parking may sound good for business, but it is not." (Pp. 365-366.)
I certainly hope the merchants at the Italian Market hear about that paragraph.
So How Do We Do This?
When it comes to getting curb parking right, Professor Shoup has two basic maxims: Charge market prices for on-street parking; and return the revenue to finance neighborhood public improvements (p. 548 and passim). Market prices will get you 85 percent occupancy at the curb; and returning revenue to the neighborhood will generate political support for the new approach.
So who do you give the revenue to? In the case of Philly's Central Business District, the obvious candidate is the Center City District. In addition to being a Business Improvement District, CCD would become a Parking Benefit District, meaning it would receive revenue from the parking meters and spend it on improving the district, something it already knows how to do. With more money, it could do more.
One of the first Parking Benefit Districts was in Pasadena, California. At the time, the downtown had no parking meters. When the meters went in, the new district got all the funds (pp. 403-418). Later cases have proved more complicated. In San Diego, for instance, the meters were already there, and the city was accustomed to receiving the revenue from them. And hence was born the phenomenon of Parking Increment Finance (pp. 418-427, 528-530, 694-695), whereby the district and the city share the larger pie that comes from raising prices.
One big obstacle remains. You're asking City Council to raise the price on parking meters, which it does not want to do. As Professor Shoup puts it, "councilmembers naturally hesitate to raise the price that voters pay for parking." And he provides the solution: "One way to skirt this conflict is to redefine the goal of parking policy. Instead of voting directly on the price of curb parking, a city council can establish a target occupancy rate -- such as 85 percent -- and instruct the parking authority to set the right prices to achieve this average rate." (Pp. 304-305.)
We can do this in Philadelphia.
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