I was discussing on street pricing with a friend the other day and noted that I felt that folks should pay to park in front of my house. After all, sez I, they are taking space and they should pay for the maintenance, security, lighting, and etc.
There was an explosion in the room. He said that you shouldn’t have to pay for parking since the streets were paid for by everyone’s taxes and everyone there fore should be able to park there for free.
Whew, where to begin. First of all, if that is your benchmark, then there should be no charging for on street parking, off street public parking, seats in most NFL stadiums, concert halls, many office buildings, boat docks, national parks, campgrounds, and certainly no charges for public universities, hospitals, well the list is endless. The fact that public money goes into something certainly doesn’t make it ‘free’ to all.
I was amazed with this comment because my protagonist was the head of parking for one of the largest universities on the planet. He certainly had many parking spaces and charged for them, and although I haven’t been to his campus, I would bet that a lot of them are on streets and infrastructure that were paid for by public funds (ie, not in parking garages paid for by user fees.)
It seems to me to be sensible that all infrastructure should be paid for by the folks who use it. For instance, in Washington DC 37% of the people don’t own or drive cars. Why should they pay for the parking spaces used by the other 43%? Here in LA, I almost never go downtown, or to Hollywood, or Brentwood or Westwood so why should I be charged for the parking spaces on the streets of these areas of the city.
If the folks who park in front of my house every day ( and including the side street, there are about 10 per day) we charged $25 a week to park there (get a permit, use cell phones, whatever) that’s $13,000 a year. on my block (completely around all four sides) there are about 80 spaces that are used periodically for parking. Now that’s 100 grand a year. If that could be collected and used to repair the streets that haven’t been repaired or paved in over 30 years, fix the curbs that are crumbling, replaced the burned out street lights, paint over the graffiti, well you get the drift…what a wonderful world it would be.
For the greenies out there, maybe my next door neighbor would figure out he didn’t need four vehicles and sell one of them, or the guy down the street who has five broken down cameros…perhaps he would fine that rotating them on and off the street was just too much work and would donate a few to charity.
There is an apartment building "catty corned" across from me and they have underground parking. However I suspect that a number of the folks don’t park under ground because its more convenient to park on street. Perhaps charging would motivate them to use the parking provided. (I think some of it is stack parking and of course, no one wants to have to come down and move their car so another can get out, or perish the though, think about it ahead of time.)
Perhaps if folks had to pay to park their cars at home, they would consider using the bus which stops 300 feet from our front doors and can deliver us to within a few blocks of half the city. Then when the busses were at full ridership the expansion of a light rail would be more economically feasible.
Charging for on street parking begins to nudge us toward solutions to so many urban problems — congestion, pollution, infrastructure costs, rapid transit, and the like.
All for charging for parking in front of my house.
JVH
2 Responses
Why do so many think that parking is some sort of God given right? In order to drive you have to pay fees for licenses, insurance, tags, fuel, disposal of fluids and parts, tolls on bridges and roads, etc, etc. Last time I checked driving was a priviledge, not a “right”. Parking is nothing more than one more facet of driving wherein public property (the on street parking space) is set aside for the exclusive use of a certain few who have paid for the priveledge of driving.
Last year before your medical leave I mailed a concept paper entitled “The City Lease Program”, which does exactly what you are suggesting at only a cost of $3 per 24 hr. day which collectively allows the funding of a Neighborhood Preserviation Trust that funds the street and neighborhood repairs and improvements you suggest. The program also allows the fronting resident the capability of sub-leasing the parking space during the day light working hours, resulting in the resident not having to pay anything for his leased space. By eliminating commuter cruising for a parking space there is a substantial cummulative reduction of CO2.
If you or your office did not receive my paper please email me and I will email a copy again.