Parking

Flashback to Europe, sixty years ago. Only still emerging from the ruin of total war, the continent was in the midst of a nearly unprecedented reconstruction. Over the next decade, however, industry finally was able to turn toward consumer products, from stockings to refrigerators and, of course, the automobile. Italians owned only 342,000 cars in 1950, but ten years later that number had increased to two million, according to historian Tony Judt. In France, the number of cars tripled over the decade.

Streetsblog is pleased to present the third episode in UCLA planning professor Donald Shoup's ongoing inquiry into whether the Cato Institute's free market principles extend to the realm of parking policy. Read Shoup's previous replies to Cato senior fellow Randal O'Toole here and here.

Last week we published a reply from UCLA planning professor Donald Shoup to Cato Institute senior fellow Randal O'Toole, in which Shoup clarified his positions on parking policy and explained several ways in which government regulations favor the provision of free parking. In response, O'Toole ran this post on the Cato@Liberty blog. Streetsblog is pleased to publish Shoup's follow-up, which suggests Cato estimate the price distortions that give incentives for the libertarian think tank's employees to commute by car. By doing so, Cato headquarters could serve as a laboratory for leveling the commute subsidy playing field, an idea embedded in Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer's Green Routes to Work Act.

We're reprinting this reply [PDF] from UCLA professor Donald Shoup, author of the High Cost of Free Parking, to Randal O'Toole, the libertarian Cato Institute senior fellow who refuses to acknowledge the role of massive government intervention in the market for parking, and the effect this has had on America's car dependence. It's an excellent guide to the misdirection, mistakes, logical fallacies, and falsehoods that form the foundation of O'Toole's arguments.

The House has just begun voting on the Senate jobs bill, which includes a $20 billion reprieve for the nation's highway trust fund and an highway expansion of Build America Bonds -- but though the legislation is expected to pass, it won't be headed to the president's desk yet.

If you haven't checked out the ITDP parking report we covered yesterday, it's a highly readable piece of research, walking you through parking policy's checkered past and potentially brighter future.

The high-water mark for American parking policy came in the early 1970s, when cities including New York, Boston, and Portland set limits on off-street parking in their downtowns. They were compelled to do so by lawsuits brought under the Clean Air Act, which used the lever of parking policy to curb traffic and reduce pollution from auto emissions. This level of innovation went unmatched over the ensuing three-and-a-half decades. Only now are U.S. cities implementing effective new parking strategies that cut down on traffic.

Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon is on her way out of office, thanks to a deal with prosecutors pursuing a corruption case against her, but she's leaving something positive in place for local transit riders.