the high cost of free parking
August 7, 2009
generally i don't like to just cut and paste articles or blog posts from other places, but i saw this post on boing boing and thouht it was an interesting piece and worth considering in fresno's parking question
UCLA urban planning teacher Donald Shoup's book The High Cost of Free Parking makes the case that urban parking has a high, hidden cost:
The free parking that Americans love isn't really 'free' at all. A recent parking garage project in New Haven, Conn., for example, cost more than $30 million for almost 1,200 spaces - that's more than $25,000 per space. If you were to finance it using a mortgage, the actual cost would be over $40,000 per space. This breaks down to roughly $135 a month, or $1,600 a year per space - not including externalities like the air pollution and congestion created by increased trips drawn by cheap parking. Even when garages and meters charge for parking, they rarely charge the real value of the parking space. (In Vauban, by contrast, drivers must purchase a parking space in the garages at $40,000 each.) All this amounts to a massive subsidy. Shoup calculates that in 2002 the total subsidy just for off-street parking was between $127 and $374 billion (for comparison, the budget for national defense that year was $349 billion).
Who pays for this? Everyone. The cost of building all that parking is reflected in higher rents, more expensive shopping and dining, and higher costs of home-ownership. Those who don't drive or own cars thus subsidize those who do.
Free parking can become a drain on city coffers. According to a study (PDF) by Bruce Schaller, deputy commissioner of planning and sustainability at the NYC Department of Transportation, the city was losing more than $45 million in parking meter revenue annually as a result of the free parking privileges commonly offered to city employees. But the costs are more than economic: free parking also changes behavior, encouraging us to take more trips and drive alone more often. According to the same study, without that free parking, 19,200 fewer vehicles would enter Manhattan every day, easing congestion.
Disclosures:disclosure - i don't think we need free parking. in fact, i think we need pay parking in more parts of town.
Ed, you missed 4 items in the calculations;
1. California is still car crazy, the unrealistically high gas prices in the last few years have not weaned us from our cars, it has to be a conscious decision to leave your car at home & walk or take a bus/bike down to do your errands
2. business/political interests, each business owner has to fight for their interests which usually are to make the most money per sales. little rinky-dink restaurants/mom&pop stores/carts/taco trucks can not compete against the likes of Sears, Macy's, Wal-Mart, Costco, Starbucks, McDonalds, etc...
3. original land cost/tax base, when Manchester Center was first built that drew away Sears from DT, that area was fields & orchards. costs make moving out of town more cost effective, lets say that when Fresno was first established in 1856 that costs were
*
$10,000 per acre DT & $1,000 out in the fields (in current 2009 dollars)
* so if someone bought an old building in DT Fresno for $100,000 (in current 2009 dollars) in 1960 or a field of 1,000 acres out by Blackstone & Alluvial for $1,000 an acre in 1915 (in current 2009 dollars)
*
those same speculators are waiting for the big payoff, the farmers already got theirs when RiverPark/Villaggio was subdivided probably $1,000,000 per acres (in current 2009 dollars). so thats what they are waiting for to happen DT, for those $1,000,000 payoffs (in current 2009 dollars), so thats why Reza Assemi has no competition, he does not have old property he bought years ago to speculate on, he's recycling, renovating or building from scratch
* parking spaces are allotted by city law per foot of commercial space; they are different for DT which I think is .67 vs. 1.1 for shopping malls like Manchester (that creates the imbalance between DT where they have meters/stalls for rent & big empty lots (that are only full during the Christmas rush). Fashion Fair fixed that by building more shops & eliminating 100's of parking slots, its easier to park on the backside there & walk to your destination like the Cheesecake Factory
* DT can not compete until more people move back into new housing there with 1 less car per family
4. convenience, when people have 2 choices; they usually pick the easiest for them using "personal math" (the calculations we make in our head on whether option A or B is better for us for "personal" reasons, whatever they may be), for anyone to do the "right thing" like mass transit, they will have to be forced to do it
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welcome to the future
north fresno pay parking
yes there needs to be more Pay to Park in North Fresno. It's not like northern Fresno residents can't afford it.
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