The Cost of Free Parking?

      Yesterday I read a very interesting article over at RortyBomb about this book by Donald Shoup "The High Cost of Free Parking."

      http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/a-2x2-grid-to-understanding-some-of-the-ideological-concerns-of-privatization-especially-as-it-pertains-to-parking/#comments

      At this point I already did a double take as I certainly never saw free parking as a problem. To the contrary, here in NY it is very expensive to park in the New York City area-the five boroughs. Shoup however is arguing differently.

       Shoup certainly has a horse in this race as his ideas are being picked up in various locales:

       "This spring the DOT plans to introduce an $18.5 million smart wireless meter system based on Shoup’s theories. Called ExpressPark, the 6,000-meter array will be installed on downtown streets and lots, along with sensors buried in the pavement of every parking spot to detect the presence of cars and price accordingly, from as little as 50 cents an hour to $6. Street parking, like pork bellies, will be open to market forces. As blocks fill, prices will rise; when occupancy drops, so will rates. In an area like downtown, ideal for Shoup’s progressive pricing, people will park based on how much they’re willing to pay versus how far they are willing to walk to a destination."

      It's an idea whose time may have come or is at least being considered. I took a quick browse of his book at Amazon and it certainly is worth a read. While I don't know that I like the premise very much-that free parking must end-it looks at an idea I've had on my mind in a wholly different way and gives me a much better idea of the competing issues.

     I had just recently written about my hope for NY: a governor-I'd be happy to do it if elected (LOL)-should put a moratorium on parking tickets written before 2011 and chop all current outstanding tickets in half. That's my proposal, if you like it maybe you could get me on the ballot here in Ny... 

    For more on this idea which I think would be a major demand side stimulus-the moratorium and 50% cut would also apply to speeding tickets; also there would be a cut to the state sales tax of at least 50%, maybe 100%; the point being to cut back on consumption taxes in general, please see here.

    http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/12/modern-monetary-theory-are-we-overtaxed.html

     Reading Shoup therefore is a moment of some dissonance for me. I am certainly interested. But I'm a skeptic who is willing to be persuaded but again skeptical that I can be.

      Some of what Shoup points to as the cost of free parking seems dependent on locality. Here in NY there's no problem with free parking that I'm aware of. Indeed it appears that this "problem" is much more prevalent in California than in New York.

      "Whereas a skyscraper of a million square feet in New York may be required to have 100 parking spaces, an equal-size structure in L.A., like the U.S. Bank Tower, is compelled by the city to provide closer to 1,300 spaces. The maxim is wrong: L.A. wasn’t built around the car. It was built around the parking lot. "

       So maybe L.A. can use it but what about New York with only 100 spaces? I gotta admit this is a visceral issue for me. As Shoup admits in his own book, people have to park somewhere and they don't want to pay for it. I look at it form the standpoint of a misallocation of resources-what if all the money that we spent on wasted parking tickets went into the economy?

       Still Matt Ygelsias concisely explains Shoup's claim:

       "One of the most-important and least-recognized thinkers of our time is Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking. It's an excellent book, but the ideas are actually extremely simple and there are basically two of them. One is that governments should not force real estate developers, store owners, and other businessmen to build more parking than their own calculation of what the market balance of supply and demand is. The other is that governments shouldn't underprice street parking in a way that leads to Soviet-style shortages of available spaces and elaborate rationing rules about how long you're allowed to stay in a given spot. People ought to be confident that if they drive someplace, there will almost certainly be a street parking spot available and in exchange be asked to pay a perhaps hefty fee to use it at a high-demand time."

      So that appears to be the choice if you believe Shoup and company-in exchange for a hefty fee we can be assured of finding a parking spot, whereas today it is touch and go whether we will or not. In addition there are other benefits according to Shoup-too many parking spots lead to too much driving. Less driving would lead to less congestion and less carbon emissions.

     Got to say that for me this part is the weaker part of the case. I don't necessarily want to pay a lot for parking for the benefit of the environment. I know it's a very important issue but why does tax progressiveness always take the back seat? As Peter Frase puts it,

    "There’s a blind spot that characterizes many proponents of things like the re-pricing of parking, particularly those who we learned to call “left neo-liberals” this summer. It’s captured in the second phrase I bolded in that first passage: “people will park based on how much they’re willing to pay versus how far they are willing to walk to a destination.” In just three words, “willing to pay”, we have swept away the inequality of wealth and power that any attempt to turn market mechanisms toward planned ends must confront. Willingness to pay, of course, is also a function of ability to pay, and a market mechanism implicitly attributes worth to a person’s desires in proportion to the money they have to spend."

      As I've made clear it's a visceral issue though I'm willing to listen. The attempt to set up "Shoupism" has hit its resistance.

      "Parking is an emotionally hot issue. When the City of Ventura began playing around with Shoup’s ideas last summer, Tea Party activists responded by vowing to vote out three city council members before year’s end. Progressives also adore free parking: San Jose, the hub of enlightened capitalism, has more vacant garage space than it can handle. “Everyone believes parking should be free,” says Van Horn. “We want that in the Constitution. But it’s too expensive."

      That's something I'm skeptical about. I mean here in NY and in many places parking itself is very expensive. I'm far from willing to cede that we must accept more tax regressivity even in order to achieve the laudable goal of available parking to all who "are able to pay." Interesting to see there's something I agree with Tea Partiers about. As Frase says, progressive taxation is the lonely last instance that never comes.