Variable-price parking is a new way of valuing urban real estate and incentivizing residents to make different transportation choices, advocates say.<\/p>\n
Finding free or inexpensive curb parking in a crowded, expensive downtown feels like hitting the jackpot. But these parking spots offer drivers too much of a bargain, according to Donald Shoup, an author and distinguished research professor in the University of California, Los Angeles\u2019 urban planning department.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf curb pricing were priced right, people would never be desperate for parking,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the idea behind variable-price parking, a concept Shoup introduced almost two decades ago in his 2005 book \u201cThe High Cost of Free Parking.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>Variable-price parking sets parking fees based on what proportion of a city\u2019s parking spots are already in use. The higher the demand for parking, the higher the cost.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s sort of a no-brainer to set parking prices to reflect demand,\u201d said Henry Grabar, author of the recently published book \u201cPaved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World.\u201d<\/p>\n Join the thousands of fintech leaders who read Banking Dive\u2019s Fintech weekly newsletter to stay on the pulse of the latest industry news and what it means for their company.Get the Free Newsletter<\/a><\/p>\n Variable-price parking, also known as performance-based pricing, demand-responsive pricing and demand-based pricing, is more than planning jargon. It\u2019s a whole new way of valuing urban real estate and incentivizing residents to make different transportation choices. In communities that have tested the strategy, it\u2019s working well, local officials say.<\/p>\n San Francisco was one of the first cities to try demand-responsive parking pricing through a federally funded program in 2011 called\u00a0SFpark<\/em>, according to Grabar\u2019s book.<\/p>\n The city pursued the project to encourage people to make \u201cbetter transportation choices,\u201d said Hank Willson, policy manager for parking and curb management at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a citywide map online that shows the price at every meter at any time of day,\u201d he said, noting that prices could be more than $10 per hour in one part of town and $1.50 a block away. \u201cSomeone might look at [the price] and decide to take the bus to save a $5 parking fee.\u201d In that sense, Willson added, demand-based pricing functions similarly to\u00a0congestion pricing<\/a>, which imposes fees on drivers who enter densely congested areas.\u00a0<\/p>\n SFpark<\/em>\u00a0is now an established program, but in its 2011 pilot phase, the city used sensors on meters to understand parking demand, Willson said. Informed by this data, the city changed rates every six weeks by no more than 25 cents per hour.\u00a0<\/p>\n SFpark<\/em>\u00a0is now an established program, but in its 2011 pilot phase, the city used sensors on meters to understand parking demand, Willson said. Informed by this data, the city changed rates every six weeks by no more than 25 cents per hour.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a very deliberate, slow process because we\u2019re not interested in shocking someone,\u201d Willson said.<\/p>\n Keep up with the story. Subscribe to the Smart Cities Dive free daily newsletterEmail:Sign up<\/p>\n Now, pricing is based on time of day and location, and the agency changes rates quarterly at most. \u201cIf it\u2019s an extremely full block, always crowded, the most it would go up is $1 a year,\u201d Willson said. Saturdays are priced differently from weekdays, and most of the city has free parking on Sundays. San Francisco stopped using the meter-attached sensors in 2018 when it became able to read data directly from the meters.<\/p>\n The program was improved by changes to the city transportation code that allow the transportation agency, rather than City Council, to make parking rate decisions, Willson said. \u201cThe main point was to avoid politics,\u201d he said. \u201cWe wanted to be demand-responsive. In the past, to balance the budget, the city raised parking prices.\u201d<\/p>\n The city aims for 60% to 80% use of meters, he said. If use is above 80%, the price goes up. If use is below 60%, the price goes down. Shoup recommends aiming for 85% occupancy of meters, but Willson has found the lower range to be more realistic.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen any given person drives up, they want to find a spot,\u201d Willson said.<\/p>\n The city also owns 20 garages in San Francisco. The garage parking price varies by time of day, as it does on the street. \u201cIn some cases, we dramatically lowered rates at garages that were not well used,\u201d said Willson, noting that the COVID-19 pandemic put a huge dent in garage use. The lowered rates \u201cgot their usage up considerably.\u201d<\/p>\n Boulder started performance-based pricing in April, setting curb parking rates based on demand. Rates vary only by location, not time of day or day of the week.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n The city manages 1,000 downtown curb spaces as well as five downtown garages with 2,000 spaces total, said Cris Jones, the city\u2019s director of community vitality. The curb spaces are more expensive than the garage spaces to encourage longer-term parking in the garage.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to encourage more folks to park off-street,\u201d Jones said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want the storage of cars [through on-street parking] to detract from the vibrancy of downtown.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Boulder also sets time limits for street parking, Jones said. \u201cThe goal is to drive turnover on the street. If you\u2019re downtown for a long period, you park once in the garage and leave the car there, so on-street parking can be managed short-term.\u201d<\/p>\n Boulder follows Shoup\u2019s guidance to aim for 85% curb parking use by adjusting prices annually, Jones said. The city tracks parking data from each block through meter transactions and by collecting license plate information with cameras on parking enforcement fleet vehicles. The community vitality department gives an annual update to the City Council recommending where parking rates should increase based on which blocks see the most demand.<\/p>\n Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n The post Parking under pressure: Why 3 cities raised prices on the best spots (SmartCitiesDive)<\/a> appeared first on London Reconnections<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Variable-price parking is a new way of valuing urban real estate and incentivizing residents to make different transportation choices, advocates say. Finding free or inexpensive curb parking in a crowded, expensive downtown feels like hitting the jackpot. But these parking spots offer drivers too much of a bargain, according to Donald Shoup, an author and distinguished research professor in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-camcab"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3486"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}San Francisco: A variable-price parking trailblazer<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Boulder, Colorado: Pricing drives street-parking turnover<\/strong><\/h3>\n