Not everyone listening to Professor Donald Shoup’s talk on “The High Cost of Parking” were so naive as to be beguiled by the professor’s siren song against free parking. His contention is that parking should not be free but that it should be rented out at market rates is an old contention that developers have been trying to sell for at least the past 40 years.
To understand where Professor Shoup is coming from is that although he was the chairman of the Urban Planning Department at UCLA, he got his Ph.D in Economics, not urban planning, so he sees parking as dollar signs and not from a qualify of life standpoint which is what zoning is all about. To illustrate his view, he believes that every parking space no matter where it is located should be rented to anyone using it including parking in front of peoples homes. This regardless that in most cases the homeowner’s property line extends to the middle of the street and that the costs of constructing the streets and sidewalks were included in the price of the home when it was first sold. Also the costs of maintaining the streets and sidewalks is paid for out of gas and property taxes the homeowner pays. Despite this the professor wants the homeowner to pay rent for any parking space the homeowner uses in front of his or her own home.
So when the professor talked about establishing parking benefit districts and using the revenue generated in the District to maintain the streets and sidewalks, he wasn’t just talking just about commercial properties, he was also including parking spaces in front of our homes.
In order to sell his ideas to the Palisades, he made a trip to Swarthmore at 5 p.m. before his talk and he concluded that because he saw many unused parking spaces that therefore there is an abundance of available parking in the Village From that he postulated that what was being done in one portion of downtown San Francisco would work in the Palisades. But as some of his listeners saw through that because what he saw on Swarthmore was an illusion because not only are half the stores vacant, 5 p.m. was too early for the restaurant traffic to pick up. Because Swarthmore had available parking spaces, he made the erroneous conclusion that people did not have to cruise around the block looking for parking spaces in the Village, which unfortunately is not true as cruising is very common in the Village.
By seeing parking spaces only as revenue generating spaces, he ignored the original reasons that off-street parking spaces are required of commercial and mufti-family residential buildings. In the days before the car, businesses had hitching rails in front of their buildings for the customers to hitch their horses. The owners and employees hitched their horses and wagons in the back. But when the car came along, cars were parked in the street. However, the real problem was in the bigger cities where there were big buildings that did not have enough parking for either customers or employers. Also parking was usually diagonal so that more cars could be parked while at the same time there were street cars using the center of the street which left little room for traffic.
In order to make more room for traffic, planners attempted to eliminate street parking but stiff opposition from both businesses and shoppers usually thwarted such efforts. The best they could do was create parallel parking but that reduced the amount of available street parking spaces. Consequently, many employees and customers began parking in the surrounding residential neighborhoods which caused complaints from the homeowners.
Thus, to kill two birds with one stone, cities required all businesses and residences to have off-street parking available. For example, single family homes were required to provide a one car garage. That worked pretty well until the late ‘50s when the post-WII economic boom took place and most families had at least two cars. It got worse when both husbands and wives were working. Compounding the problem was that parking requirements were belatedly increased and so many buildings do not meet the current requirements. The result has been a spillover of parking into the adjacent neighborhoods, particularly along commercial strips such as along Wilshire and around small commercial areas such as our Village.
Making the problem worse is that a significant amount of the available off-street parking is not used. That is because landlords are not forced to make free parking available to lessees. While customers and clients may get validated parking at the expense of the lessees, many employees must pay rather steep prices to park in the buildings they work in. Consequently, they park anywhere they can find free parking. The professor’s cure is to eliminate all free parking but at the expense of the homeowners. The real cure is to make lessees pay for both employee and customer parking. That may mean lessees must charge more for goods and services but it can cause landlords to lower what they charge lessees for parking.
The professor also advocates setting parking meter rates at market price. However, parking meters were never intended to generate revenue. Their purpose was in part to prevent employees from hogging the parking spaces in front of businesses and in part to create a turnover of customers. Setting meter rates in the Village much higher than they are now would be devastating to the merchants because it would drive many customers away.
Parking should not looked at as a revenue source but principally as improving the quality of life for both residents, merchants, customers, and employees. To the professor, quality of life doesn’t earn dollars so he ignores it. But for merchants, it means more business and more business means more sales tax and more business means higher rents so in the end, free parking pays for itself not only economically but in improved quality of life.
Jack Allen
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