Speaking of Shoup — I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that the Anti-Shoupista movement was becoming vocal. I spoke to Don and asked if he would mind sort of debating some of the noisy crowd at our next Park Across America event to be held in early October. He was happy to do so.
So we will have a short presentation by Donald Shoup, PhD and then a presentation from a group led by my buddy Barbara Chance, PhD, and then they will present each other with questions and we will hear the results.
I think that we will see that the two groups are actually much closer in agreement than they think. Most of the anti-arguments I have heard deal with returning the monies collected to the neighborhoods where they were generated in the form of civic improvements (much of the monies are committed to things like education and the like in some larger cities). The other argument comes from those who say that the social fabric of some communities are set in stone and can’t be changed.
And example — In some older neighborhoods there are no garages. Everyone must park on the street and have been doing so, free, for decades. The concept of charging someone to park in front of their own home is anathema, and politically impossible
I happen to disagree. In most of these neighborhoods the parking is impossible (San Francisco call you office). Its a nightmare. Much of the problem is due to people storing cars on the streets, non residents parking in the area, and so forth. If permits were provided to residents (on a sliding scale, perhaps, with the first one being free, and the second one being in expensive etc) much of the political issues could be overcome. Taking money from visitors to the neighborhoods and reinvesting it back into the neighborhoods would help too. In addition, if people who did have available parking on their property were to see that they could rent it out because they wouldn’t be competing with free parking on the street, much of the private parking in the area would become available and some relief to the folks living in the neighborhood would be forthcoming.
Take Hoboken for instance. They didn’t have enough parking in their gentrifying neighborhoods. So they build a garage and sold permits to the neighbors. It was sold out before it opened. Now — had street parking been free, what would be the motivation to pay to park in the new garage?
Private enterprise would also be motivated to build garages in the area if they knew they weren’t competing with free on street parking.
Just my opinion
JVH
