Amid the vital sprinting to find new funding for transit, parking policy is the forgotten child being dragged through pylons of contradictions by an overwrought parent. Don't kid yourself: this child matters.
Not only are most cars used at 25% of their capacity, they also have to be stored for 22 hours a day. That storage space – on-street and off-street – makes up a significant portion of any city's lands (and revenue), so it makes sense to allocate and price it as efficiently as possible.
But look at the roadblocks to getting it right. Reforming parking is part of rationalizing and modernizing road pricing, which might make perfect policy sense but is a tough sell politically.
The high cost of housing is killing the local economy, but outdated parking policies still require developers to bundle unwanted $40,000 underground parking spaces into the price of new units.
The City of Vancouver set up EasyPark in 1948 to build parkades so downtown businesses could compete with suburban shopping malls. Now the city wants to reduce car traffic downtown and has frozen downtown parking capacity at 1997 levels. EasyPark's usage is dropping by 10% a year, and it's selling off parkades, but it is legally required to invest profits in more, better parking.
Demand for paid parking is likely to keep dropping as more people use shared cars and, soon, app-enabled shared rides. Autonomous (self-driving) vehicles are also on the way, which will eliminate the need for a lot of today's parking because those cars will be on the move all the time.
Through all this we cling to the illusion of free parking like a child to a candy. Author Donald Shoup calls it "charity for cars."
As Sustainable Prosperity's Dave Thompson told the Globe and Mail: "Consumers are paying for free parking when they have to pay higher prices in stores. Businesses pay …because they have to build the parking spaces. The most economically efficient way is to have people actually pay for their parking when they park. It ensures we get the right amount of parking – we don't have huge empty parking lots. It's also fair because the people who are actually using it are the ones who pay. Nobody is suggesting we make Coca-Cola and bread free in the stores, so why would we make road use and parking free?"
But even if we all agreed parking's full costs should be paid directly by its users, how do we pin down "a price point that ensures parking is always available to those who need it," a goal spelled out in TransLink's latest plan.
The City of Vancouver has doubled meter revenue in the past decade by expanding meter zones, rates and hours, but it and other city parking operators had to drop parking rates last year to respond to declining demand. When meters are too cheap, one study found that 30% of downtown traffic in some cities is made up of cars cruising around looking for an available on-street parking space.
West End streets are jammed with curbside parking paid for by an annual residential permit that can cost less than a month's parking in an underground lot. The result is many underground lots are almost empty and the streets are jammed.
In residential areas, everyone thinks they're entitled to a "free" curbside space. Sightline Institute's Alan Durning suggests we might try a cap and trade system: allocate parking spaces to households and allow them to trade them or sell them to whoever needs them most.
Getting parking right will require injuring feelings of entitlement to "free parking" and helping car owners face up to the real costs of parking their cars. Only then will scarce, valuable parking spaces be used most efficiently. Who wants to take this one on? •
