Portland Makes Curbside Parking Easier By Taking Away Free Spots

In an apparent epidemic of frailty, the number of handicapped permits in use in downtown Portland almost doubled between 2007 and 2012. In September 2013, handicapped placard users occupied fully 1,000 of the central city’s 8,000 metered on street spaces.

Overnight, the parking landscape in downtown Portland changed. Spaces occupied by placard users dropped 70%. Getting the price right freed up 720 parking spots for other, paying users, expanding the effective supply of parking by nearly 10%.

The change is even more remarkable in the heart of the central business district. I looked at the six most central parking beats in the city -- for those familiar with Portland, an area bounded by Burnside Street on the north, the Willamette River on the east, Jefferson and Market Streets on the south, and 10th and 11th Avenues on the west. (These are beats 1,2,3,4,6 and 11.) This area contains a total of about 1,850 on-street metered parking spaces. A year ago, 450 spaces -- nearly a quarter of them -- were occupied by vehicles with handicapped placards. That’s fallen to 105 placard users -- a reduction of 75 percent from the free-parking era. This is the equivalent of adding about 350 parking spaces to the supply of street parking in the heart of downtown Portland.