Posts about Meter Rates

Parking management is pro-driver

The parking problem is one of economics (real estate in the city is valuable and scarce) and geometry (cars take up a lot of space). It is not, Tumlin emphasized, a question of ideology. It's not wrong to own a car, not wrong to drive, and it's not wrong to want to park conveniently. But like all good things in life, convenient parking comes at a cost.

What we all want most of all is availability: We want parking to be there exactly where we need it and exactly when we need it.

The best way to get there, he said, is by pricing parking accurately. The "correct" price for parking in any given place is one that keeps a couple of spots per block open. In practice, that means around 85% of the capacity is used—not less, not more. A world with 85% utilization of parking is a world of parking karma for everyone. You can always park where you need to. It's every driver's dream come true—if, that is, you're willing to pay for that spot's true value.

Small pricing differences make a big difference

Does this mean that parking is just a luxury for the rich? Well, no.

One of the most interesting findings of San Francisco's experiments with parking pricing, according to Tumlin, is that demand is extremely sensitive to location. Right on a main drag like Valencia Street, parking might cost $4.50 an hour. Just around the corner on a side street, it might cost $2.50. Just another block away, garage parking might be available for $1.00. As in every other facet of life, you can choose to save money by giving up a little convenience.

Much of DC's policy discussion on parking management focuses on "transit zones" vs. everywhere else. But there are a lot of things that affect demand for parking. The availability of transit nearby is one, but it's just one of many. How dense is the neighborhood? Are there theaters, restaurants, or other attractions? Are there offices nearby? Just as in San Francisco, demand changes dramatically from block to block, and it's hard to say exactly where the demand is without measuring it empirically.

Thus far, data collection on DC's parking pilots has been thin. There has been a very long lag between collecting any data and adjustments to meter rates, and the data DDOT collects is not very fine-grained.

If and when DDOT collects more and more data on driving and parking patterns, we'll start to have a better understanding of the microgeography of parking demand. Hopefully this bring us closer to pricing that reflects observed real-world demand, instead of crude lines drawn on a map by politicians.

Payment mechanisms make a big difference

Much metered parking throughout the country still uses 1947 technology: You pay by feeding quarters into a metal contraption. Out of quarters? You're out of luck.

There's much better technology available today, and in this area DC has been out in front. According to Zimbabwe, 42% of DC parking transactions are paid by phone or using the Parkmobile app.

The friction of having inconvenient payment mechanisms—whether it's machines that only take quarters, or single-block machines that you have to walk five minutes to get to—is more of an issue for people than cost. If you can make payment seamless, then people don't care quite as much about the actual cost, and you have less resistance to increased rates.

My experience with the Parkmobile app has been that it's like magic: You tell the app you're parking, it already knows where you are, and has your credit card and license plate on file, so there's nothing more to do.

Ultimately, license-plate recognition coupled with smartphone apps will eliminate all of the friction of payment. Tumlin suggested you could even agree to have the city just automatically send you a parking bill at the end of each month based on how long you've parked and where.

Decriminalize parking now!

Another fascinating finding from San Francisco's performance parking program is this: When you start charging the right price for parking, meter revenue goes up ... and revenue from parking citations goes down by almost the same amount.

And when you think about it, that's exactly how it should be. Sometimes you don't have enough quarters on you, or you underestimate how long you'll need to park, and can't get back to the meter. That shouldn't make you a lawbreaker. In some neighborhoods, Tumlin pointed out, driving to dinner and movie is a criminal act, because there's no provision at all for out-of-zone parking for more than two hours.

In fact, the whole two-hour exception doesn't make any sense at all. If you're parking for an hour, you should pay for an hour. And if you need to park for three hours or eight hours, you should be allowed to pay for it.

Keep it simple, and don't play favorites

DC currently has a lot of parking programs. There's ordinary metered parking in commercial areas. There's a residential parking permit program and a pilot visitor parking pass program. There are pilot performance parking programs in a handful of neighborhoods.

Recent legislation looked at how to provide for contractor parking. City leaders are working with churches to resolve conflicts over church parking on Sundays. There have been proposals for special teacher parking and firefighter parking.

DDOT recently unveiled a Parking Action Agenda (PDF) that vows to review all of these different programs and propose reforms. We can start by no longer treating all these different categories as exceptional.

As Tumlin forcefully argued, it's not the government's business why you want to park. Are you shopping? Babysitting? Going to church? Commuting to the nearest metro stop? Redoing someone's kitchen? Making a delivery? Visiting a friend? Out on a date? (As Tumlin asked, "And what if your date goes better than expected?")

It shouldn't be the government's job to make value judgments about people's reasons for parking. So let's eliminate complexity and preferential treatment. You don't need a contractor parking program; you don't need a visitor parking program; you don't need a church parking program. You just need accurate pricing so that people can pay a fair price to park wherever they want, for as long as they want.

Where does the money come from? Mayor Gray's budget shifted a lot of jobs from the capital to operating budget, mostly in DDOT and OCTO. Doing this saves money in the long run, since capital spending is paid for by borrowing, and that costs interest. Brown's budget reduces this shift, but would put back $21.567 million for it if future revenue estimates come in higher than current estimates, as everyone expects they will.

Some revenue measures proposed by the Mayor remain, including combined reporting, raising the parking tax from 12 to 18%, and allowing liquor sales until midnight. The sales tax on theater tickets and live entertainment events is gone, but sales taxes on armored car services, private investigators and security services remain.

The biggest tax increase, the income tax bracket on people making over $200,000 (which was very popular with DC residents), is gone as Kwame Brown promised. But he's replaced it with another tax measure, removing the exemption for out-of-state bonds that only DC and Indiana offers.

Bringing DC's tax treatment of bonds in line with 49 50 other states makes a lot of sense. Still, replacing the income tax for this is less progressive; the Fair Budget Coalition says ¾ of the savings goes to people making over $200,000, meaning ¼ of this measure will hit households with lower incomes. The proposed income tax, on the other hand, would have only affected those making more than $200,000 and really only strongly affected those making significantly more.

In the past, many councilmembers have opposed the bond measure. Brown seems to be seeking their support by offering to repeal part of this exemption with potential future revenue estimates. However, any repeal would only apply to bonds purchased before October 1, 2011. Any bonds bought after that are going to be taxed regardless, at least unless the Council passes a separate tax repeal before next year.

There's a long list of priorities for what to buy if there are indeed rosier budget outlooks from the CFO's office in coming months. After the $21.567 million for the capital to operating shift, 50% of any additional money would replenish DC's reserve fund and the other 50% would pay for a number of other items.

The table below lists the items and by how much the revenue outlook has to increase in order for that item to get funded under Brown's formula.

The housing for homeless (#2), bond exemption (#5), and parking meter reduction (#8) only kick in if all the revenue is available to fully fund that particular item; if not, the funding goes to the next priority. That means if the future estimate is $90 million more, as Jack Evans predicted, then the money would go to police, homeless, affordable housing, mental illness, (skipping the bonds since it's not enough), the MLK library, Main Streets, (skipping parking), and then buying books. That would be an irony if Evans' guess is right and it means his priorities, the ones that just lower revenues, all get skipped.

Parking rates would decrease if revenue estimates grow by $91.6 million to $108.1 million (which doesn't fund the bond repeal), or $118.4 million or more (which does). Nobody knows what the revenue estimate will be, but Evans' guess of $90 million was seen as high last week. Kwame Brown guessed $20-60 million, which might not be enough to pay for any of these priorities, or might be enough just to fund police and restore some homeless services and a tiny bit of the affordable housing.

This budget isn't bad, but the Housing Production Trust Fund and other programs deserve to be saved even without such extreme jumps in the revenue outlook. Housing First saves the District money by housing homeless people who would otherwise end up in expensive emergency rooms, and the HPTF builds housing including in parts of the city where there's vacant land that the market can't otherwise fill with units for people who might live there.

Brown could keep the income tax hike or just repay the reserve fund less aggressively. While it's great to build up the reserve, it's also important to invest in programs that help save DC money in the long run and keep our city a diverse place with people of many different income levels.

Updates: A few details to note:

• Indiana has eliminated their exemption for out-of-state bonds, leaving DC as the only "state" with the rule.
  
• As with all non-emergency, non-temporary legislation, the Council has to pass this on two readings. The first will be today, the second June 14.
  
• Weekend and evening parking will not be changed under Brown's proposal.

The petition asks members to:

• Support the Committee on Public Works and Transportation report calling for graduated Residential Parking Permit fees;
  
• Oppose Councilmember Evans' rollback of parking meter rates;
  
• Support Mayor Gray's income tax increase on households earning more than $200,000 a year;
  
• Restore Housing Production Trust Fund money, and;
  
• Provide the needed funds to ensure Metro doesn't have to cut service on weekends.

Depleting parking meter revenues while slashing funds for essential transit and affordable housing programs will hurt all of us. Speak up now to ensure the city budget continues to build a more livable and inclusive city.

Evans, generally the Council's most eager to "comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted," complained that the RPP increase was "nickel and diming," and said that if the Council wants to fund an initiative, "just fund it." But earlier in the session, he presented his own committee report which recommended removing almost every source of revenue for the Council to "just fund" many important programs.

In response, Tommy Wells pointed out that last year Metro rail and bus riders suffered a significant fare increase, one which costs people a lot more than $25 or even $100 per year (the extra amount a 3-car owning household would pay under Wells' proposal.) But, as Evans repeatedly brought up during the meeting, he doesn't take transit, so he isn't sensitive to that.

Mary Cheh repeated some of her comments complaining that the Circulator expansion plan doesn't go to Ward 3 enough, and recommended a line in the Palisades. This is one of the lowest density parts of the city with very few commercial nodes and is rarely a destination for non-residents. In other words, it's one of the least appropriate candidates for a Circulator. Is she worried about getting votes from the Palisades?

The Circulator plan actually does include a future line expansion along Connecticut and Wisconsin, and eventually along Military from Friendship Heights across Rock Creek.

Bowser and Thomas similarly made many arguments complaining about how certain budget proposals don't do more for their own wards. It was very disappointing to have so much debate about policy based on how much investment goes into each ward when growth downtown benefits all. On the other hand, it's true that we should do more to improve transit service for neighborhoods in wards 4 and 5, as well as 7 and 8, plus 1, 2, 3, and 6.

Cheh also repeated some Board of Trade talking points that the parking meter rates might drive away potential customers for businesses. That's not false in the areas where parking is regularly not filling up; I previously endorsed studying parking occupancy and lowering it in areas that aren't filling up. The "Parking Czar" funded partly with the RPP money would hopefully solve these problems. Just dropping the rates sight unseen would make traffic worse and parking harder in many areas.

The most intelligent comment from someone other than Wells—and, honestly, one of the very few intelligent comments from any non-Wells councilmember in the whole parking discussion—came from Michael Brown (at-large). He pointed out that the issue most residents have with parking meters is having to put in large numbers of quarters or return periodically to feed meters.

That's another argument for hiring a good parking manager at DDOT as soon as possible. DDOT actually has upgraded all or almost all of the higher price meters to take credit cards or to use multispace meters, so some councilmembers may be reacting to constituent complaints from years past which have been largely addressed. Still, DDOT's parking strategy and roadmap remains a mystery, if they even have one, and it would go a long way to alleviate fears for them to devise and publicize one.

This parochial argumentation seemed more bizarre in the context of all the cuts that threaten the life or health of some of the least fortunate residents. Asking households with 3 cars to pay $100 more per year is apparently "exorbitant," to use Thomas' term, but having families unable to get basic food and shelter didn't stir up nearly as much outrage.

Nor did saving Metro service. Wells' chief of staff, Charles Allen, tweeted that it's "disappointing to see how many people don't see affordable mass transit as an issue of econcomic justice & access to jobs."

My neighborhood wouldn't benefit from the immediate Circulator expansion, isn't going to get a streetcar, and has few people on TANF. My household may well pay more in taxes under the Mayor's proposal. But I don't want my councilmembers voting against everything that doesn't benefit me personally. We should be looking to make the city better for all, and it quite simply won't make the city worse for all or even much worse for anyone if wealthy households do a little bit more.

For a DC Council that has often been quite progressive on human rights, the environment and more, it's sad to see such resistance to progressive measures on finance and transportation even from several otherwise excellent members.

The tax hike on people making over $200,000 even has strong support from residents in all wards, and even from residents who would be affected, yet so many councilmembers want to delete that proposal from the budget at the expense of the least fortunate.

The Council has still not decided on council-wide priorities for funding and spending. Contact your members and ask them to keep the RPP increase, reject the parking meter decrease, and to fund the council-wide priorities for Metro, affordable housing, and homeless services as the top priorities.

Update: Councilmember Cheh has clarified her position on both parking issues. She wants to tailor meter rates to neighborhoods (as do I) and is willing to let the DDOT "Parking Czar" work out a good approach, and says she is now supportive has always been supportive of the RPP increase. Thanks, Councilmember Cheh!

The legislation to create the performance parking districts requires that DDOT periodically measure occupancy and adjust prices if blocks are too full or too empty. In the past, DDOT has been reluctant to follow through, but in this new round, they will. Some crowded areas are getting parking meter price increases, and some crowded areas will stay the same.

DDOT found that the parking lot underneath the Southeast Freeway on 8th Street SE in Barracks Row only collects about a dollar a day per space, and proposes reducing the price to 75¢ per hour. This is an appropriate change, and should allow people parking in the area a cheaper option than parking on the main commercial street.

DDOT should also consider increasing the time limit for this lot to four hours until 5 pm and unlimited afterward. That would encourage people with longer anticipated stays to use it, thus leaving the more convenient spaces for people with shorter term needs.

Although many areas in the performance parking zone had measured occupancy above 100% (made possible because of illegal parking and smaller than average cars), DDOT does not propose increasing the meter rates in many areas where the occupancy is high.

For some blocks near the ballpark, between M, South Capitol, and 2nd streets and the Southeast Freeway, DDOT proposes increasing the rate. This is a big improvement from the last performance parking report for this zone published in 2009, where DDOT recommended raising prices for blocks having high occupancy, but specific blocks were not identified and the prices were not adjusted.

The report lists this area having maximum occupancy only at 86% during Nationals ball games, but that is actually the figure for all blocks, including resident permit parking. To improve understanding of their recommendation, DDOT chould list in a separate table the metered blocks and their occupancy, and whether they have been included in the proposed price increase.

For some areas with very high parking occupancy, such as 8^th street and Pennsylvania Avenues SE, DDOT is not raising rates. An official responsible for parking policy told me that they wanted to avoid adverse impact on District businesses during the economic downturn and had attempted to use other means such as time limits to manage occupancy rather than adjusting price.

It appears that using time limits is not having the desired effect, because the blocks are all showing excessively high occupancy, and my visits to the area during the busiest times have confirmed that parking is very scarce in the area. DDOT is working on building community support for performance parking so that price adjustments can be implemented.

The local stakeholders are concerned about the effects performance parking is having on local resident permit parking blocks. The DDOT official pointed out the importance of being sensitive to the local community's opinions, and I understand that, but I'll also note that right now the visitors looking for parking on residential blocks are those that don't want to pay for parking combined with those that are willing to pay but cannot find a metered space.

If DDOT increases the prices on crowded blocks, at the very least the people willing to pay can find a space, and the extra money collected can help fund enforcement on local resident blocks. Once pay by cell is implemented more fully in the city, the closest resident permit blocks could be changed to resident permit blocks with visitors also paying by cell or walking to the main street to obtain a pay and display receipt.

In the Columbia Heights performance parking zone, DDOT found that all the multispace meter blocks had occupancy rates above 85%, which should lead to higher meter prices in the zone. DDOT proposes extending the meter hours in the zone to 10 pm, and increasing the prices on some blocks to $2.50 for the first hour, and $3.00 for each subsequent hour, with a two hour limit before 6:30pm and three hour limit after 6:30pm.

This would be the highest street parking rate in DC. In the last performance parking report for this zone, DDOT recommended increasing the parking meter rates and hours, but the recommendation lacked specifics.

At a public meeting in 2009, DDOT's Damon Harvey stated that the adjustment would happen only after the streetscape project was complete, which it now is. The current report calls for making adjustments in April 2011. For the Columbia Heights performance parking zone, DDOT should be commended for now following through on adjusting rates according to occupancy, as the performance parking pilot legislation demands.

The report lists occupancy for each block as a number of spaces, number of cars parked on average and the maximum number of cars. This is a big improvement, which I recommended after the last performance parking report came out. However, to the extent that DDOT can communicate more information about parking, the occupancy should be reported as an average and a 90th percentile occupancy, which eliminates that problem that reporting a maximum might cause if the maximum is an extreme outlier.

Based on high occupancy, DDOT plans on expanding multispace meter installation to the waterfront area on Water Street and Maine Avenue. DDOT will also look into adjusting the rates based on curbside occupancy as it does elsewhere in the zone.

DDOT is getting closer to performing all the actions required by the performance parking legislation. They're measuring occupancy, reporting the data, recommending rate changes, and spending the money locally. However, in many areas with high demand, prices are not increasing as they should.

Compared to the previous performance parking reports, I would say this report is a big improvement. Reporting the data on a block-by-block basis is tedious but important. The money is being spent on local improvements which help the pedestrian and cycling environment, and everybody becomes a pedestrian once they've parked. Unlike the previous report, which called for vague increases in prices, this report specifies what blocks will have changes and what the prices will be.

It should be noted that DDOT is running one of the only parking systems in the US where the occupancy is measured and reported, and the prices are actually being adjusted. The other such program is in San Francisco, and that program is supported by a fairly substantial federal grant.

Here are some recommendations for the next report:

• Reinstate the table showing the revenue collected and how it is being spent
• Separate out the occupancy table between blocks that have multispace meters and those that have other parking controls
• Make a recommendation concerning the price for every multispace meter block
• Obtain community buy-in to follow the variable price policy on very crowded commercial streets like 8^th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.

There should be a live video stream on TBD's site, and hopefully afterward I can get the clip to embed here.

Update: Here's a clip from the segment.

• It could specify that where multispace meter data shows that street spaces are below 80% occupancy, the rates at those spaces should be lowered.

• It could specify that a separate measurement should be done on Saturdays, and Saturday rates either lowered or eliminated if spaces are below 80% occupancy on Saturdays.

• It could require that any meters over $1 an hour provide alternative payment, like credit cards or pay by phone, by a certain date. We probably shouldn't have ever raised those rates until alternative payment was available. But now that we have, if DDOT plans to pick a winning technology from its pilots and install those meters more widely, it'd be silly to lower rates for a few months. The legislation could give a deadline, like one year, to replace those meters, or the rates have to go back down.

• It could require that in areas where meters charge in the evenings, people be able to refill the meter without having to physically be present, such as by cell phone. This is because restaurants have been complaining that people have to leave the restaurant to feed the meter and often skip dessert. If the new technology lets them simply pay another buck or two to stick around longer, that shouldn't be such a problem.

What legislation shouldn't do is continue the one-size-fits-all approach of setting parking policy that we've gotten as a result of budgets driving parking rates. Rates may need to go down in some areas, but not all, just as they could go up in some areas but not all.

It's not ideal for the DC Council to be setting parking rates. Even now, the Budget Support Act each year contains detailed lists of which blocks are in the "premium demand zone" and other rate issues. Parking rates should be set through some sort of administrative process, not legislation.

At the same time, DDOT has sadly not demonstrated effective stewardship of parking issues during the past two years. In response to my criticisms, Gabe Klein said they do now have a parking plan. I hope DDOT is getting close to releasing that plan for public debate, because otherwise there's the real danger that parking policy will get decided for them, and probably more clumsily.

And meanwhile, don't forget to take DDOT's survey to help them pick a technology. I've heard from a few people that the type they have on U Street are extremely confusing, though I haven't tried them myself. Let's make sure DDOT has all the information to make wise choices.

Update: I've added new information from TBD and revised the second paragraph based on it.