Save paradise, put up a parking app
Nearly one-third of the traffic in most downtown areas is drivers seeking parking spots, according to an American expert.
“A surprising amount of traffic isn’t caused by people who are on their way somewhere. It is caused by those who have already arrived and are searching for a place to park,” says Donald Shoup, a professor of planning at the University of California, Los Angeles.
As well as frazzling tempers, this circling produces copious pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. What’s to be done? A great deal, according to speakers at the most recent Transport Futures Mobility forum and experts I’ve spoken with since.
It’s no longer enough to provide spots, with arbitrary fees, then leave drivers to hunt them down, they say.
Their ideal is to have 15 per cent of parking spaces vacant at any time. At that rate, most are occupied and generating revenue, but there are enough for new arrivals.
One solution for on-street and surface parking is to set prices to achieve that target. Seattle tried it last year, in an experiment aimed at ensuring one or two free spots per block, says Dennis Burns, a parking design consultant in Phoenix, Ariz.
The researchers measured occupancy rates, block by block, in 22 neighbourhoods. Then, they adjusted and readjusted parking fees until, as Burns puts it, “it had the desired impact.”
Of course the new rates were higher in prime congested areas and lower in less desirable spots. That’s the easy part.
The trick, like getting Goldilock’s porridge the right temperature, was for prices to equalize demand — high enough to persuade some drivers to walk a bit further but not so high that most would head for distant spots.
Further adjustments can control popular parking periods.
“If there are only a couple of problematic times, why raise pric- es all day?” Burns says.
Market forces already determine parking rates, to some extent. That’s why you’ll pay $30 a day to leave your car under a downtown tower but get free space at a North York strip mall.
But Burns’ “preference pricing” is an explicit policy to make finding a parking spot more predictable, at whatever price you’ll pay.
Another tactic is high-tech. Locations of vacant parking spots would be sent by GPS or some other device, so drivers can hone right in on them.
We’re not talking about Toronto’s rudimentary Green P app, which displays parking lots near a specific address. That system generates a map, and clicking on a particular lot brings up a photo of that site.
The maps simply link to Google Street View so they don’t reveal whether actual spots are available. The idea, instead, is to have realtime information. For payment, drivers could use a smart phone at metered spaces or sail right in and out of garages with billing handled by a transponder, like those used for Highway 407. Work is being done on apps to let drivers add “coins” to a meter through their phone, ending desperate dashes to top up before the parking police pounce, or GPS systems that would pay automatically. All of this should reduce fruitless cruising for a spot, and its associated emissions, while increasing parking efficiency and revenues. But forum participants noted that discussion of parking usually goes hand in hand with debate about road tolls and congestion fees. Tolls and fees aim to discourage driving, and raising parking charges can have the same effect. But the new parking systems would make it more convenient to drive. So, they asked, what are we trying to achieve? It’s a fair question, which leads to another: Should we go to great trouble and expense to reduce parking woes when that could simply encourage more cars where they’re unwanted? peter.gorrie@sympatico.ca