Introducing the Parking Reform Mayoral Candidate

The basic idea is this: in most neighborhoods, at most times of the day, there’s no parking problem. Many spaces are open, and everybody who wants a parking space can find one.

But then there are a few periods in the day, typically downtown or in neighborhoods with a commercial retail strip, when demand for curb parking peaks, and not everybody who wants a space can find one.

It doesn’t make any sense to charge the same price for curb parking in both of these situations.

Cities usually try to come up with a happy medium – an average price for peaks and troughs – but that ends up overpricing parking most of the time, and underpricing it during the peaks.

New electronic meters allow you to price parking depending on the time of day, or even better, depending on how many curb spaces are open. City Council could vote on a vacancy rate instead of a price for parking – say, 85% occupancy or 1-2 spaces open on each block – and let the meters change the prices so as to always keep a few spaces open.

During the busiest times, people who want to park right in the busiest area would pay a bit more for the convenience, and people who prefer to pay less would park a bit further away and walk a couple blocks to their destination.

This would get the city away from the mistaken idea that parking pricing is about revenue, and move towards the correct idea that parking pricing is about managing demand for parking.