The City of Austin has been making a lot of changes in parking starting with a new "on-street" meter and most recently council approval to extend the hours for which they charge for parking. If you thought this was a liberal, socialist conspiracy . . . think again.
The American Conservative, April 4th: The Cato Institute today launched an excellent symposium on the high costs of free parking. It’s wonky stuff, to be sure, but challenges the Right’s refusal to engage with urban planning issues and blindness to all the subsidies going to our automobile-centric infrastructure. The lead essay by Donald Shoup, a UCLA professor of urban planning, contains some powerful arguments for parking meters with market-based pricing:
"Cities should set the right price for curb parking, because the wrong prices produce bad results. Where curb parking is underpriced and overcrowded, a surprising share of traffic can be cruising in search of a place to park. Sixteen studies conducted between 1927 and 2001 found that, on average, 30 percent of the cars in congested traffic were cruising for parking. For example, when researchers interviewed drivers who were stopped at traffic signals in New York City, they found that 28 percent of the drivers on a street in Manhattan and 45 percent on a street in Brooklyn were cruising for curb parking."
Read on . . .
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