We often use the notion of choice when
discussing mobility:
“We
should have better transportation choices.”
“We
should be able to choose where we live.”
“I have
no choice but to drive.”
“I would
bike, but cars are dangerous leaving me no choice.”
 |
| Cartoon from New York Times |
A key effect of many parking policies—and some
of this is largely unintended—is to diminish our choices. I use the expression
“diminish” in both senses. Our parking policies sometimes give us fewer choices,
but more often they bias our choices in ways we do not often recognize. One
example is employer-subsidized parking. If I have cheap or free parking at my
place of employment, I am more likely to use my car. While I haven't been
completely denied the choice to use transit or a bike, the fact that I have
free or cheap parking makes the selection of those other modalities more
unlikely than they already are. Another example is street parking that is
dramatically less expensive than nearby garage parking. In this case, while I still
have the choice to use garage parking, the low cost on the street encourages me
to cruise around the block—an average of 3.5 minutes according to parking guru
Don Shoup—to find a cheap spot. Again my choice is strongly biased by a parking
policy. A third example is a policy that permits monthly parking (or better
put, the lack of a policy which forbids the practice). In this case, given a
choice of a discounted monthly parking pass versus paying the full daily rate,
it is easy for me to purchase the monthly pass. What this means, however, is
that during the month, if faced with a choice of, say, carpooling, biking or an
SOV, I would be more likely to choose to drive.
There are individual remedies for each of
these. Regional or municipal governments could mandate a “parking cash-out”, i.e., an
equivalent subsidy to all employees to offset employer-subsidized parking. For
example, having non-driving employees receive an equivalent cash subsidy that
may be used for transit, bike, shoes, gas money toward a carpool, or offsetting internet costs for teleworkers, would
reduce the automaticity of driving for some people. This increases each
employee's choice, and still provides for employer subsidized parking which in
itself is not necessarily a bad thing—as long as it's balanced.
Cruising for street parking can easily be
managed by setting prices so that there is a 15% vacancy rate for parking spots.
This is another Shoup solution and ends the cruising problem, while not needing
to match garage prices (garages have a different role to play than
does street parking, anyway).
Monthly parking is a bit tougher, since it
makes sense to know you have a spot for your vehicle if you are indeed going to
drive into your office each day, or if we are talking about the condo building you
live in. However, it is possible to replace monthly passes with some form of
parking loyalty program or bulk purchase program. Rather than purchase a
parking pass for a calendar month, purchase 200 hours of parking at a bulk rate
and there is no need to spend it all in a particular month. In fact, employees
could be rewarded for making the 200 hours last longer! This would free up some
people to make divergent modal choices, since the value of the parking pass is
not ticking away if they choose not to drive.
There are
numerous ways to make parking policy fairer and more responsible to the
environment and to our cities. As well, tweaks to parking policy, such as I
have described, are not nearly as politically toxic as road-use charging, but
can, if deployed thoughtfully, can lead to similar congestion-reducing
results. Unfortunately, many of
them are not readily apparent.
