Breakfast links: How's my performance?

by Erik Weber • January 11, 2011 8:55 am

Photo by timbrell on Flickr.

Arlington follows some performance parking: Arlington has decided to reduce parking prices where meters aren't full. In some places, the price will drop to 50¢ per hour. Arlington officially approved a performance parking policy goal as part of the master transportation plan, but exact rates are still in the county code. (ARLnow, Michael P.)

Maryland public schools tops in US: Maryland has topped the list for public school quality according to Education Week. The magazine, which ranked states based on education policies, "preparing students for the world," and overall achievement, ranked Virginia as #4, and DC second to last, in front of only Nebraska. (WUSA)

Pepco will now monitor own network: Pepco has devised a scheme to detect power outages through the network side rather than waiting for customer reports, and asserts that outages previously taking up to four hours to resolve could be resolved in under a minute. (WTOP)

Metro puts theft warnings posters in stations: WMATA has posted new warnings about the rise in theft of electronics and smartphones. Meanwhile, MTP officers remain posted at station entrances, swabbing your bag. (TBD)

L'Enfant not so dangerous, Chinatown tops list: According to 2009 statistics (the most recent available!) Chinatown Metro experienced the most assaults as well as the most crimes overall. L'Enfant Plaza, in the news a lot since last week's random assault, doesn't make the top 10 list. (TBD) ... released system-wide YTD crime stats for October 2010, but no station-by-station breakdown. (Unsuck DC Metro)

Talking transportation in Fairfax: Fairfax County Chairman Sharon Bulova said it would be extremely expensive for the county to take over roads from VDOT. She also said its critical for mixed-use at Tysons to be walkable and bikeable. Meanwhile, County Supervisor John "A Bike Is Not A Transportation Device" Cook is skeptical about Tysons' proposed parking maximums. (FABB Blog)

Frederick gets money for trail extension: A $30,000 grant will help Frederick extend its Carroll Creek trail under US-15, furthering progress on the City's 25 mile shared-use path plan that will eventually create a "beltway" around the city. (WTOP)

And...: Despite relative pedestrian friendliness, pedestrian traffic in Friendship Heights and downtown Silver Spring never comes close to vehicle volume, even at midday. (PhilaTransport, Bossi) ... Beset with months of delays already, the Norfolk Tide Light Rail project is being delayed further. (The Virginian-Pilot, Matt') ... The American Farm Bureau Federation will sue EPA over the agency's Chesapeake Bay clean-up plan, saying it will put area farmers out of business. (WAMU)

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18 comments

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Erik Weber has been living car-free in the District since 2009. Hailing from the home of the nation's first Urban Growth Boundary, Erik has been interested in transit since spending summers in Germany as a kid where he rode as many buses, trains and streetcars as he could find. Views expressed here are Erik's alone.

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Thefts, robberies, assaults all up in 2010 (check unsuck today).

Terrorist attacks and explosions...still at 0.

Police the system, not the riders.

by Redline SOS on Jan 11, 2011 8:57 am • link • report

Take that, Cornhuskers!

by Bossi on Jan 11, 2011 9:27 am • link • report

Meanwhile, MTP officers remain posted at station entrances, swabbing your bag.

This is so tiresome.

by jcm on Jan 11, 2011 9:35 am • link • report

@jcm:
I agree. These bag searches are tiresome. Maybe Metro will stop doing them soon.

by Matt Johnson on Jan 11, 2011 9:38 am • link • report

Wait a second! Politicians in Fairfax don't want to deal with roads, and would rather pass the buck and talk about a little imaginary man called Dillion who is the source of their problems....

by charlie on Jan 11, 2011 9:39 am • link • report

With the trend in metro crime through 2009 (albeit still at low rates per passanger levels), that seems like a prime area for metro police to be focusing their resources and attention.

by DCster on Jan 11, 2011 9:45 am • link • report

@ Matt Johnson How many times have you been searched? It must be a bunch, since you're so tired of it. Is it more times than I've read the complaints about it here? Bet not.

by jcm on Jan 11, 2011 9:50 am • link • report

SNARK!

by JessMan on Jan 11, 2011 9:54 am • link • report

I wouldn't say Arlington went full performance parking. They recognized some meters where hardly anyone was parking and decided they didn't need to charge the full authorized amount.

Officially, they have a policy goal, but it's going to be a long time coming.

by Michael Perkins on Jan 11, 2011 10:02 am • link • report

Now I'm opposed to the bag searches as much as the next guy (unless that person is Matt Johnson, and I would probably be slightly less opposed), but have they had any bag searches since late December? If so, I'm not really sure you can say "meanwhile."

by Steven Yates on Jan 11, 2011 10:20 am • link • report

Here's the rub with performance parking: how do you let consumers know about lower prices?

Arlington has series of color coded meter, and I can see maybe having a new color for lower-priced meters. Mutli-space meters?

I'd agree with one Shoupian insight: when you go from free to paid meters, usage changes. After that, though, the idea of using "market" prices to price out meters gets silly.

by charlie on Jan 11, 2011 10:38 am • link • report

@Charlie: we should ditch the use of color codes to denote time limits, because time limits should be unnecessary. Instead, the color codes should be for different prices:

Red: $3.00 per hour
Orange: $2.00 per hour
Yellow: $1.00 per hour
Green: $0.50 per hour

Or something like that.

If we were dealing with an ideal world, expensive meters might have a sign that says "cheaper parking that way" and pointing in the direction where parking is cheaper.

In any case, this doesn't appear to be a problem in Redwood City, which has three tiers of parking pricing geographically. They have a map you can download and the meters (without limits) are marked by price.

by Michael Perkins on Jan 11, 2011 10:52 am • link • report

@Mpkerkins; I think you are slightly changing the subject.

It isn't about the merits of time limits vs. hourly prices, it is about information. As you noted, without a big sign out it is really hard to convey pricing information. And downloading a map to print out and find parking isn' very helpful when you're in a car.

(sure, I know in 5 year our cell phones will do that for us. And tell us when a meter is open. whatever)

And without conveying information, it is very difficult to pretend a market, or an efficient market, exists for pricing meters. What you have is fairly arbitrary pricing, and it is hard to get good data on usage as well.

I did like that ARlington has said, oh yeah, it is easy to change prices, just a few gears to move, while DC says we need million dollar multispace meters to do the same thing.

by charlie on Jan 11, 2011 11:06 am • link • report

"Despite relative pedestrian friendliness, pedestrian traffic in Friendship Heights and downtown Silver Spring never comes close to vehicle volume, even at midday."

Given that Friendship Heights and Silver Spring have an enormous amount of passthrough traffic (heading in and out of DC), this isn't quite a fair comparison.

by AA on Jan 11, 2011 12:09 pm • link • report

@charlie: Right now Arlington uses color to denote time limits, I'm saying we should change to using color to denote price and have the same time limit everywhere.

People may not know the exact price on each block, but they're going to know which street in a commercial area is the "main" one, and they're going to guess which ones are the less traveled ones.

By having the information out there, the most frequent customers are going to become familiar with the cheaper less convenient meters or the convenient more expensive meters and choose accordingly.

I'll agree that it's not perfect, but it's better than everything being the same price, with the main meters being circled for openings, while the meters two blocks away sit empty.

DC is arguing that their existing meter stock is decades old and needs replacing anyway. Multispace meters are what they choose for that replacement.

by Michael Perkins on Jan 11, 2011 12:11 pm • link • report

@Mperkins; off the top of you head, can you name what the Arlington colors mean? I can't. I didn't even know they were done by time -- all I know is one color means Saturday parking -- which means ticket if you ignore. Is green the short term 30 minute parking?

Without information, you are going to have the same problem: meters in a popular area are going to be popular, while ones two blocks away are not used.

That is my second problem with performance parking pricing -- if you adopt the "mythical" 85% figure (and I remember our previous argument about it) certain spots are still always going to be filled. You can keep raising the price, but certain spots -- say the ones right in front of crumbs -- somebody is also going to be willing to pay more for you.

(Demand is elastic when going from zero to any price. Above that, however, it it really is inelastic, mostly because of the information problem)*

In terms of DC meters, if I recall 10 years ago DC spent millions on meter refurb. Throw that all out?

I'd be curious of DDOT or Arlington made a system wide parking map available. I've looked for one on DC to plot some free parking strategies, but never found it. Probably out there somewhere, but not easy to access

*Rather like Comcast not wanting to put out a simple sheet with their pricing. They would rather keep pricing information semi-secret. Car insurance is another example. The primary purpose is not efficiency, it is screwing the customer.

by charlie on Jan 11, 2011 12:35 pm • link • report

@Charlie: I know yellow and silver are short and green and red are long. I think blue is two hour which is what you see most place.

These are in a pretty bad order for memory. That's why I recommended the colors of the rainbow scheme, with red being highest price and green the lowest. None of the colors denote saturday operation.

I like how when arguing about pricing and parking they swing between "parking is infinitely elastic, if you charge just one quarter more, everyone will leave and the businesses will lose all their customers" and "parking is infinitely inelastic, people will pay whatever you charge and no price will cause the blocks to have empty spaces".

How about "parking is a service like many other services, and customers will exhibit a varying degree of price sensitivity and knowledge. The county can help this by publishing information and clear signage, but ultimately there will be some customers that won't even know how much they pay for parking even after they've already paid"

Try this for arlington parking meter color scheme:

http://www.co.arlington.va.us/departments/environmentalservices/dot/traffic/parking/meters.aspx

or this for maps of meters and garages in operation in the R-B corridor: http://www.co.arlington.va.us/Departments/EnvironmentalServices/dot/traffic/parking/RB/RBParking.aspx

by Michael Perkins on Jan 11, 2011 12:55 pm • link • report

It is a good point that without some kind of signage or color scheme, lower prices won't increase demand because people don't know about it.

However, I would wager that SOME people will eventually figure it out, by accident, and then retain that knowledge.

I think it would be best if the parking signs that show hours/day when parking is allowed also have the price added. You can see that while driving, no need to park and squint at the sticker.

Simply,

2 hour parking, Monday-Saturday 7am-7pm, 50 cents/h
2 hour parking, Sunday 9am-4pm, 0 cents/h
No parking Tuesday 4am-6am (Street Cleaning)
Unlimited free parking at all other times

by JJJJJ on Jan 11, 2011 5:31 pm • link • report