Two California cities look to right-priced parking

Redwood City, California, intends to become the first city in the US to use the market-rate pricing system for public parking recommended by UCLA planning professor Donald Shoup. On Feb. 1, downtown Redwood City will introduce pricing ideas that Shoup advocated in his book The High Cost of Free Parking, featured in the April 2005 New Urban News. “We have reset our parking prices so that the most desirable spaces (on-street spaces closest to activity centers) are the most expensive, and the least desirable (off-street parking away from the activity centers) are the least expensive,” said Daniel Zack, downtown development coordinator for the 75,000-population municipality south of San Francisco. “We will then conduct occupancy surveys periodically and will adjust our prices up where occupancy is significantly higher than 85 percent. We’ll lower the prices where occupancy levels are significantly lower than 85 percent until we get it just right,” Zack said. Thirty-minute parking limits will be a thing of the past. Market-based prices should produce an acceptable number of vacant parking spaces, Zack said, so “we are completely eliminating time limits. Price will be what keeps people moving.” He asserted, “Time limits are extremely difficult to enforce, cause major headaches for our visitors, and don’t really work at creating vacant spaces anyway.” The current rate, last revised in 1993, is 25 cents an hour for downtown on-street parking. The initial rates for the new program will range from 25 to 75 cents an hour and will be adjusted from there, based on demand. Prices will vary by block and time of day, to attain the 85 percent average occupancy evenly throughout the downtown. If the strategy works as planned, slightly more than one of every eight spaces will be open at all times in all parts of downtown, ensuring convenience for visitors and cutting down on traffic from people “cruising” for vacant spaces that don’t exist. The system will also allow Redwood City to lower its downtown parking requirements and build more densely, since, according to Shoup’s theory, “spillover” problems are drastically reduced when curb parking is priced appropriately. sending the right incentives Introduction of the new system will coincide with the opening of On Broadway, a retail-cinema complex that is expected to attract thousands of visitors. The market system is expected to prod downtown employees to park in garages or elsewhere rather than in valuable street spaces. In the areas with the highest activity, conventional coin meters will be replaced with computerized meters that accept bills and credit cards as well as coins and that can be accessed from cell phones to add money. Surplus revenue from the parking will be dedicated to downtown improvements, such as street lighting and cleaning. A committee of business and property owners will advise the city on that process. Bruce Liedstrand, Redwood City’s community design director, participated in parking discussions. Liedstrand oversaw the transformation of downtown Mountain View, California, into a lively, pedestrian-oriented center when he served as Mountain View’s city manager. Ventura, a city of 101,000 in Southern California, is considering a similar parking system. Patrick Siegman of Nelson/Nygaard planning and transportation consultants in San Francisco recently urged Ventura to gradually convert free street and garage spaces into paid parking, thereby collecting $2 million to $3.7 million a year that could be used to beautify sidewalks and alleys, add trees, increase street sweeping, and add police patrols. Siegman said the City of Ventura maintains about 2,000 free and unregulated spaces in its downtown core. Offering free parking “is going to become more difficult as you try to create a dense, vibrant, lively downtown,” the Ventura County Star quoted Siegman as telling the City Council. A parking benefit district should be established to enforce the rules and oversee spending of the parking revenue, Siegman suggested. Council ordered the city staff to incorporate Siegman’s recommendations into a downtown specific plan, scheduled to be presented this January. u