Redwood City's Free-Market Parking Meters
Redwood City's Free-Market Parking Meters
By Laurence Aurbach, 3 Apr 2007
http://pedshed.net/?p=105
At first glance the notion of free-market parking meters seems impossibly arcane. But as Donald Shoup pointed out in a recent NY Times editorial, "cruising for curb parking generates about 30 percent of the traffic in central business districts." Shoup studied Westwood Village, next to the UCLA campus, and found that drivers searching for curb parking created 950,000 excess vehicle miles of travel per year. That's equivalent to 38 trips around the earth, taking place in just one retail district in L.A.
Shoup calls the impacts of parking space cruising "astonishing," and he's right. The unnecessary traffic congestion hurts downtown businesses and activities. The extra miles traveled waste gasoline and generate pollution. If curb parking could somehow be freed up so that it was always easy to find a space, then that extra waste and pollution could be eliminated.
One solution is free-market parking. Set parking meter prices so that 85% of spaces are occupied and 15% are open at any given moment. This idea has been getting more attention lately, and Redwood City, CA is the locality that has put the most advanced implementation into action.
Continued at http://pedshed.net/?p=105
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