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June 11, 2008
Cheap Parking Still Causing Traffic
UCLA Professor Donald Shoup has been saying it for years: "inexpensive parking fosters urban decay, contributes to sprawl and motivates people to drive alone." How? It's that circling around effect, you know, when looking for spaces, avoiding valet. "Low meter rates can further congest city streets as motorists search for cheap parking spaces," the LA Times writes. "Studies in New York indicate that motorists on the hunt represent about 28% of all traffic on Manhattan and 45% in Brooklyn."
Rumor has it that the LA City Council will be raising the cost of parking throughout the city to a one dollar per hour minimum (don't worry, if that happens, parking for a half hour won't require the full dollar). In Westwood, Shoup and students conducted an experiment at 50-cent/hour meters:
In Los Angeles, Shoup and his students studied a 15-block area of Westwood Village, where street parking costs 50 cents an hour except during the evenings and Sundays, when it is free. They determined that searches for cheap curbside parking added about 2,500 vehicle trips a day in the area. The average search took about 3.3 minutes, but in the late afternoon and evening, searches took up to 12 minutes.
Though, it may seem, a bit backwards, placing parking meters in Old Pasadena helped revitalize the business district into what it is today. "Downtown Los Angeles would thrive like Old Pasadena or San Diego if the city priced parking correctly," asserts Shoup.
Photo by nahh via Flickr
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BULLSHIT.
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I wouldn't say it's bullshit by any means -- I believe it because I do it myself. It's not the one answer to the problem, but it is part of the solution.
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I don't see how raising the price by just 50 cents is going to make any difference...
The only think that would maybe change traffic patterns is if street parking were prohibitivly expensive, but then that's not really fair to lower-income residents who also pay taxes.
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Old Town Pasadena has big city lots where you can go, avoiding those meters in the first place. Expensive meters in Westwood would help out valets and private lots. Westwood needs to have another city lot in the east/southeast section.
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Oh, and Old Town Pasadena has Gold Line stops as well.
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It is true that - in general - changes like higher priced parking and congesting pricing force people to adopt alternatives. The problem with these changes in LA is that there aren't any alternatives. Public transportation in LA simply isn't robust enough for people to abandon their cars, regardless of the cost of parking or toll roads. In the end, these moves simply drive up the cost of living and divert funds from other activities or savings.
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Old Town Pasadena sends their meter money directly into the shopping district that generates that revenue.
L.A. takes meter money and puts it into a City Council slush fund.
If local merchants knew that that meter money was going to make sure that their sidewalks were steam cleaned and crack free, that their street plantings would be maintained, that police would be present and helpful, etc. they would be in favor of this.
The City takes and takes from its businesses, but rarely gives back unless it is in the form of a hand-out (in the form of low interest loans to update facades and the like).