Tag Archives: parking

So Much to Blog About, So Little Time…

Here are some great stories today that I just won’t have time to do justice to:

UVa Board of Visitors lead the way in state political giving
The Daily Progress
Highlight: Current board members at Virginia’s 10 largest public, four-year institutions have shelled out about $9.5 million in state political contributions over the last 20 years. Altogether, UVa board members contributed $729,529 to McDonnell, for his gubernatorial campaign, inaugural committee and related political action committees.
Bottom line: No wonder the UVa administration wants to “professionalize” the BoV. Trouble is, the only thing worse than a politically appointed board is a board accountable to only itself!

There’s a (Parking) Place for Us
D.C. Streets Blog
Alan Durning explores how “performance pricing” strategies for parking are working out in San Francisco, Seattle and  Portland.
Highlight: “Existing programs are piecemeal and rudimentary,” he concludes, but they are getting us closer to the ideal “in which we pay to store our cars on public streets in rough proportion to the market value of that storage. …  The upsides are huge: an end to cruising for parking; better allocation of parking spaces to car-poolers, shoppers, and diners; and the gradual shift of the gargantuan cost of parking from everyone else to the people choosing to use that parking.”
Bottom line: I love it when liberals see the value of market principles. Now, if only we can get so-called conservatives to see the value, too.

New State Residents Statistics, Demographic Data
Governing
Cool new database of U.S. Census Bureau data on who is moving into each of the 50 states. Data is broken down by domestic/foreign migrants, education, income and age.
Highlight: Virginia ranks 13th out of the 50 states for in-migrants as share of the population, 6th for in-migrants’ educational attainment, and 4th for their median income.
Bottom line: We’re not getting massive  numbers but we’re getting the cream of the crop. That’s probably the best of all worlds.

— JAB

Parking Libre!

The people have no parking? Let them ride bikes! (Photo credit: WSJ.)

The people have no parking? Let them ride bikes! (Photo credit: WSJ.)

by James A. Bacon

City planners in the District of Columbia want to waive parking requirements for new buildings near its 40 Metro stations. A change in the city’s zoning code, part of a comprehensive overhaul, would allow developers to determine how much parking, if any, was needed, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Relaxation of the parking mandates in D.C. is but one instance of cities around the country trying to reduce dependence upon automobile-related transportation. Sparing developers the expense of providing structured parking accomplishes two goals. First, reduces the cost of real estate, which percolates down to citizens in the form of lower rents. And second, it allows parking prices to rise, inducing some households to own fewer cars — or none at all.

In the case of Washington, D.C., the district now has a larger percentage of households without cars than any U.S. city besides New York City. In 2011, the number of car-free households was nearly 37% — way up from 25% in 1960. The shift to transit and biking has reduced the need for cars and parking. But the city has been slow to react. In 2008, according to the Journal, the city spent $47 million to build a 1,000-space parking garage under the new DC USA shopping center. At the developer’s request, that was half of what the zoning code would have required. Even so, the 1,000 spaces were far more than needed. As it turned out, many shoppers rode the Metro to the mall.

Other cities to roll back parking mandates in recent years include Denver, Philadelphia and New York City. However, Portland, a leader in the shift to transit and biking, has recently backtracked on its previous minimum parking requirements due to a perceived scarcity of parking spots.

Bacon’s bottom line: I see no justification for parking mandates whatsoever. Developers should be free to build or not build parking structures as market conditions dictate. If a neighborhood experiences a parking shortage, developers will be motivated to add structured parking to their projects. If they don’t respond, parking lot operators will be motivated to build. If parking remains scarce, neighborhood residents will motivated to dispense with their cars.

I well remember living in Baltimore while attending the Homewood campus of the Johns Hopkins University. I lived in a 10th-floor efficiency across the street from campus, but my apartment had no parking. I drove my car around and around looking for a free, on-street place to park. Sometimes, I’d have to settle for a location three or four blocks away. Then I’d forget where I’d left the car! Parking became such a hassle that I sold the darn thing. As it turned out, I discovered that I didn’t need a car anyway. Grocery stores, banks and other basic services were within walking distance. When I had to leave town, I took Trailways.

I see no more justification for mandating or subsidizing parking than I see in mandating or subsidizing automobile ownership, mass transit or any other transportation mode. The market will reach a reasonable equilibrium based upon the relative costs of transportation alternatives and people’s changing preferences, making continual incremental adjustments that never get too far out of whack. (If new dynamic pricing strategies are adapted for on-street parking, the market could become even more efficient.) By contrast, parking requirements embedded in musty old zoning codes are far slower to adapt to changing supply and demand conditions, with the result that far bigger, more disruptive imbalances result.

One last note: The outlawing of parking mandates should not apply only to dense urban areas. Market forces should prevail everywhere, including low-density suburbs. A lot of people accustomed to “free” parking — i.e., parking paid for by someone else — will howl. But the net result will be positive.

Time to Consider New Downtown Parking Models in VA

la_parking

Cost of parking in downtown L.A., 5:21 p.m., July 1, 2013. (Click for larger image.)

In May Richmond City Council voted to increase the hourly rate for street  parking downtown from $.50 to $.75 per hour with the goals of netting an additional $250,000 yearly in revenue and helping downtown businesses by increasing the turnover in parking spaces. By way of market research, according to the Times-Dispatch, city officials had surveyed ten other comparably sized cities and found that Richmond’s hourly rate was lower than any other.

Think about that: City council acted based upon the experience of other cities rather than upon any insight into local supply and demand conditions. Furthermore, by setting a uniform rate for the central business district, Council almost ensured that the rate will be too high in some locations and too low in others.

There’s no excuse for such ill-informed decision making and such one-size-fits-all parking policies anymore. New technologies are making it possible to adjust parking prices based on street-level changes in supply and demand in order to ensure optimal results. If Richmond wants to remain a competitive business location, it needs to explore such “smart cities” technologies more aggressively.

To get a better sense of state-of-the-art thinking in the parking world, I chatted last week with David Cummins, vice president-parking solutions for Xerox Corp. Xerox was the systems integrator behind L.A. Express Park, an $18.5 million overhaul of on-street parking in downtown Los Angeles.

The parking meter was introduced in Oklahoma City in 1935 and parking technology barely changed until the late 2000s, says Cummins. Then all hell broke loose. He counts at least 20 new technologies and innovations that are roiling the world of parking. Indeed, he asserts, “Parking has been the most innovative of all the transportation sectors in the past five years.”

Xerox parking systems can help cities boost ticket collections, if that’s their goal, by installing sensors in parking spaces, notifying meter enforcers and even optimizing their routes. But Xerox also can help cities make parking a more pleasant experience that makes people more comfortable doing business downtown.

Says Cummins: “Parking is a painful process, from the moment you think about where you’re going, to looking for empty parking spaces, understanding the signage, figuring out if you have enough coins in the glove box, going to a restaurant and having anxiety over whether you’ll have a ticket on your car when you get back. Our goal is to take the pain out of parking … to make parking a non-event.”

The key feature of L.A. Express Park is dynamic pricing that varies block by block. The goal is to keep street parking spaces between 75% and 90% full. If occupancy drops below 75%, Xerox’s proprietary algorithm drops hourly rates to encourage more people to park on the street. If occupancy exceeds 90%, the system raises rates. The algorithm recognizes seasonal and time-of-day variations as well as spillover effects from one part of downtown to another.

It is critical, says Cummins, for people always to be able to find an open space. Otherwise, they will cruise around looking for one, contributing significantly to traffic congestion. “Parking is tightly integrated with congestion. If you have parking congestion, you will have street congestion.”

In L.A., apps such as Parker, Parkme and ParkMobile allow drivers to locate empty spaces and compare prices for street, lot and garage parking. New pay-by-phone and other payment systems make it easier than ever to pay for parking, “feed” the parking meter remotely and, if necessary, pay parking fines.

Xerox stores all the parking data in a data warehouse. “As you build your data over time, your algorithms get better,” Cummins says. Xerox mines that data to recommend performance-enhancing tweaks to the system.

While L.A. is a pace setter in smart parking, Cummins predicts the technologies will spread. As citizens see the system at work in L.A., San Francisco, Washington or Indianapolis, they will demand the same convenience in their own cities. Retrofitting an entire downtown can run into the millions of dollars; a federal grant covered most of the cost of L.A’s pilot project. One way other cities may be able to justify the investment based is through improved ticket collections. The City of Los Angeles was hoping in 2012 to boost parking-ticket collections by $8.4 million yearly.

Admittedly, writing more tickets is not calculated to engender warm and fuzzy feelings for your downtown. But Xerox contends that new technologies also can drive down the cost of enforcement and billing. Ideally, in my book, those administrative savings would finance the smart-parking upgrade, giving a municipality what amount to free tools to manage its parking assets more effectively.

In closing, I asked Cummins if he sees “smart parking” as a natural adjunct to “smart growth.” It’s a possibility, he says. “From our perspective we’re making more livable and sustainable communities” by optimizing parking space utilization, reducing parking congestion and, by extension, reducing traffic congestion and pollution. Some people think that anything that makes parking and driving more attractive is counter to smart growth goals such as walkability and mass transit. But Cummins is confident smart parking can advance smart-growth priorities like car sharing and bike sharing.

A conservative philosophy of smart growth, like that espoused by Bacon’s Rebellion, recognizes that automobiles and parking are likely to remain part of the urban fabric for a long time. Smart growth thinkers should jump on parking technologies like those used in L.A. Express Park to advance their vision.

The Smart Parking Revolution Gains Momentum

Fear factor

Fear factor

by James A. Bacon

No one likes paying for parking, but the prospect of parting with a buck or two is nothing compared to the hassle of rummaging through your pockets, in your glove compartment or under the floor mats for stray coins. The only thing worse is worrying about your time expiring, dashing outside and feeding the meter to avoid getting a ticket. It is fair to say that the lack of ubiquitous, hassle-free parking is one of the most serious competitive disadvantages of compact urban development everywhere.

But the times, they are a’changing. Parking, once a lazy backwater of economic innovation — the last “big thing” in parking, meters, dates back to 1935 — has become very hot. A slew of start-up companies like Parkopedia and Parking Panda (profiled here) are making it easier for drivers to find parking spaces, be they located on-street, in parking lots, in garages or in someone’s private driveway. Now another company, Applied Telemetrics, is making it more convenient than ever to pay for parking. No more fumbling for coins. A device on the car can determine exactly which space you’re in and automates the payment to your account.

The implications for smart growth are tremendous. Local governments, and the public they serve, stand to gain in several ways. First, the new tools will reduce traffic congestion caused by people circling around and looking for a place to park. Second, the greater ease of finding a parking space and paying for it will make downtowns and other compact urban areas more hassle-free destinations. Third, the technology will allow local governments to optimize the balance between maximizing commerce and minimizing real estate dedicated to parking, a low value-added activity. And fourth, local governments can generate more revenue from on-street parking  at lower cost, reducing the need to raise other taxes and fees. Big picture bottom line: City fathers now have an awesome ne tool for building vibrant, walkable communities.

To gain more insight into the trend, I re-connected with Bern Grush, a principal with Toronto-based Applied Telemetrics. I had last chatted with him several years ago in his capacity as co-founder of Skymeter, which had developed technologies that could be used to administer Vehicle Mile Traveled (VMT) taxes, one of my pet causes. After several years of frustration, Grush concluded that VMT tax was a political non-starter in Canada as well as the United States. So, he and his partners re-purposed some of their technology to focus on parking. This time around, he’s not preaching to the unconverted. The market for smart parking is exploding.

According to a new report by Navigant research, the installed base of on-street smart parking spaces will surpass 950,000 worldwide by 2020. “The parking industry is going through its biggest evolution since the introduction of the first parking meters in Oklahoma City in 1935,” says Eric Woods, research director with Navigant. “It is being transformed by new technologies that are increasing operational efficiency and customer expectations, and by new perspectives on the role of parking within cities.”

Applied Telemetrics employs GPS and other technologies to determine roughly where a car is (within a yard or two) but adds proprietary algorithms that interprets the car’s motions to place it in a specific parking space or even a private driveway. The payment system functions similarly to EZPass. Customers load funds into a pre-paid account and deduct from that account when they park. “The driver simply parks where it is legal to park and walks away,” says Grush.

He concedes that it will take some time for the market to develop fully. Initially, the company is targeting frequent parkers, typically delivery trucks or service vans that might park in a 6 to 12 different locations daily. The convenience of paying automatically and precisely offers tangible productivity gains and savings. A second value proposition is helping municipalities manage loading zones whose use is limited to commercial vehicles.

Among the advantages of the Applied Telemetrics technology is the ability to generate useful data. For instance, the company can measure the amount of time drivers spend circling — driving around and around while they look for an open parking space. That kind of information can inform cities’ parking policies. If there is a shortage of parking, raise rates — encourage people to turn over their parking spaces more rapidly and raise more money in the bargain! If there is a surplus of empty spaces, lower rates!

Grush also contends that his PayBySky payment system can reduce the administrative overhead associated with enforcing parking, billing and collections, thus making the municipal enterprise more profitable. “On average [conventional] methods cost about 50 cents of every parking dollar to collect. Think of that next time you put $4 in a meter — $2 of it went to securing the $4. How dumb is that?”

Applied Telemetrics has embarked, or soon will, upon five pilot projects with municipalities and private operators in Canada, New Zealand and the U.S. Says Grush: “By making payment fair and easy, we are making it better for drivers and better for the city.”

Stirrings of a Parking Revolution

by James A. Bacon

Parking may be the most under-appreciated factor driving urban economics. Street parking takes up valuable space that could be used for bicycle lanes and sidewalks. Parking lots and garages create walkability dead zones in the urban fabric. And drivers add to congestion in busy urban centers as they drive around and look for parking spaces, spending as much as eight minutes on average, by some estimates.

Fortunately, the advent of the GPS-enabled smart phone is revolutionizing the parking industry. Parking will never be the same. A couple of straws in the wind…

First, consider Parkopedia, which claims to track 25 million parking spots in 6,300 towns in 40 countries in its database (the number increases every few seconds as new parking spaces are added to the database, which you can track in real time on the home page):

Parkopedia combines … two concepts in order to allow people to find the cheapest and most convenient parking available, no matter where they are or where they are going. Our crazy-about-parking (or maybe crazy-about-not-getting-parking-tickets!) users contribute information about street parking, parking meters, garages and even private driveways that are for rent.

We then apply a bit of magic and show you the closest and cheapest available parking in your chosen area on the dates you have selected. We now have over [25] million parking spots listed and the number is growing every day!

Parkopedia generates revenue by selling mobile apps for $1.99 (iPhone version).

Second, Baltimore-based Parking Panda has just raised $4.8 million in private equity funding. That company helps city dwellers make money by renting their garages, driveways or other property in neighborhoods where parking can be hard to find. An English company, ParkatmyHouse.com, and Chicago-based ParkWhiz.com serve the same niche. They make money by capturing a share of each transaction.

The potential exists for new enterprises to convert what had been unrecognized parking capacity (garages, driveways, alleys, front lawns, whatever) into functionally usable parking space. That’s a god-send for big events like concerts and college football games, which generate parking overflow. It’s bad news for parking lot owners who will see a lot more competition for their product. But it’s good news for fans of urban density: Insofar as the technology shrinks demand for acreage-hogging parking lots and ugly parking decks, space dedicated to parking will be convertible to other, more productive uses.

Listen up, local governments! City councils need to pay close attention to this trend. Parking apps represent a sea change in the supply and demand for parking. Municipal parking policies, which have seen minimal change for decades, will need revamping. Savvy cities will exploit this technology to convert unproductive, parking-related land uses to productive, tax-generating land uses while simultaneously making their neighborhoods and business districts more attractive.