"Studies from across the globe have found that shop owners consistently overestimate the number of shoppers that arrive by car and vastly underestimate the number of people who arrive by other modes."
Perhaps the stats support this, we'll see (but I'm suspicious). What I am certain about is that I'll shop where there's parking for my vehicle—and that's how I go shopping. It would be difficult for me to estimate how many times I've bypassed certain shops/businesses because there's either no parking or the on-street parking is full up.
Their livelihoods don't depend on being right. If it turns out parking doesn't matter for their business, and they're wrong to believe it does, their livelihoods will be fine. They have an existential risk from only one of the options, so their opinion will be grossly biased.
What if street parking was more reflective of the actual costs and drastically limited the amount of time you could park? This could mean the likelihood of a spot being available in front a story very high.
I forgot what city implemented this (may have been San Francisco) but they made street parking triple the price and only for 15-30 minutes. As a result businesses in front of street parking got more customers.
I'm trying to search this on google, it may have been a paper put out by strong towns. I remember an episode of econ talk discussing it here:
That's all very well but until there's decent public transport most people will do what I do (and those who I know do exactly what I do now).
"What if street parking was more reflective of the actual costs and drastically limited the amount of time you could park?"
Where I live now I'd suggest it's the opposite, as the cost of parking is outrageously high. What I didn't mention was that I'll also bypass the shops unless the available parking is close—almost outside the shop I'm going to—because walking time from where I park to the shop adds significantly to the expense (every moment counts)!
Some years ago I was in New York and was staggered that the price of parking there was about one third of where I live. I was so impressed (and outraged) that I took a series of photos (around 34th & 8th) then did the same here at home for comparison to ensure people would actually believe me. To ensure my locals couldn't accuse me of fudging the photos I made sure the Empire State was visible in a number of the photos (the difference in price was so great they otherwise would have through disbelief). Shame I can't post them here.
I'm the first to agree that what I do is far from ideal—clearly, using a 100kW-plus engine to propel me to my destination is inefficient but the naysayers only ever put one side of the story. Hiking parking prices to fit the need/demand is only one lopsided part of a much-needed better solution.
I'm really confused on what you are trying to say. Are you stating that you think parking should be cheaper and allotted for longer periods of time? For example say $5 gets you one hour?
I honestly don't know what you're trying to insinuate outside that you own a car...
You're saying you wish you could park in front of the stores with street parking to do shopping, but lament that there's never spots available so you don't. I don't understand what you're trying to propose here.
New York has reasonably high (and realistic) parking pricing. Where I live it's outrageously high (deliberately so on political grounds—not because of restricted space (there's much more space available where I live).
Introducing political idealism to deliberately hurt people just because one can is counterproductive and in the long term will do more damage than good (for starters, it's extremely alienating and likely to turn people off even a quite noble cause).
Nobody is saying that car use isn't common, just that it commonly overestimated.
I've predominately used means of transit other than cars over the last decade. That means that stores that are located more remotely with less dense parking are less likely to get my business.
In addition, "high parking" stores are very frequently built in areas where pedestrian access simply doesn't exist because of a lack of sidewalks, cross walks, etc.
I think it makes sense to accommodate both use cases by promoting centralized, density preserving parking structures even if it requires car users to walk a little further their final destination.
> It would be difficult for me to estimate how many times I've bypassed certain shops/businesses because there's either no parking or the on-street parking is full up.
If there's no parking available it means that it has not been priced properly. For optimal use of parking space, at any given point it should priced such that only 85% of it is being used (thus always allowing for new arrivals), but not cheap enough so that people spend an "inordinate" amount of time taking up a spot.
See the book The High Cost of Free Parking by Shoup for details and references:
"It incorporates elements of Shoup's Georgist philosophy."
Funny that, some years back I was a member of the local Georgist group (I've even some old newsletters to prove the point—again, it's a same I can't post some front cover images here for you to see). Yes, I understand the argument well.
Again, these matters are never as simple as they first appear. For starters, these plans rarely take into account the different abilities of different citizens to physically access shops and or their actual needs when they do (how often are the forced to go shopping, etc. — say versus window shopping just for an outing).
For example, would the elderly or infirm have privilege or advantage? Would you penalize or add an extra 'flag-fall' to the parking charges of someone who usually does online shopping and has all the facilities to do so—because they could have saved the shopping trip by shopping online? Now take the case of someone who cannot do online shopping (there are many people who cannot for many reasons)—should they be subject to the same parking penalty by default? And if a differential rate were applied to advantage them then how would you police it to stop abuse?
Where I live none of these issues has been thought about let alone implemented.
Afterthought: I should mention the reason I'm not now a member of the local Georgist society is that it was eventually abandoned out of the lack of interest (insufficient membership). The local organizer was upset to the extent that he financed the newsletter at his own expense for some years after the group folded—that's to say he sent non-financial members copies of the newsletter in the hope that he could revive the group but that wasn't to be.
The obvious question that arises is why was Henry George so popular in the 19th Century and these days so very few have even heard of him—except oddballs like me (and obviously Shoup). (Yes, I even a copy of Progress and Poverty and I've actually read it although I've not done so for at least a decade.)
If you read between the lines of my original post then you'll see my comment was pretty cynical (as well as being self-centered). Well, I thought about this at the time the Georgist Society was folding and I came to the conclusion that it's just not possible to implement Georgist ideas in a modern society without a great deal of restructuring—everything from the bottom line of banks (mortgage changes etc.) to the way our governance is done would have to change and that's a too bigger ask. Simply, the economic order would have to change and at present there's far from sufficient disruption to the present order of things for that to happen (and a lot of powerful fat cats would miss out).
Whilst many would agree in principle with Henry George's ideas there's always been something that's been holding people back from actually implementing them. I'd argue that this was true in the latter half of the 19th Century when Progress and Poverty was first published for that's when his ideas were at their most popular. I'd further argue that in the modern economic world people's beliefs about Georgist philosophy are even more antithetical in the sense that in their minds they've further separated the ideal world from the day-to-day pragmatic one. That's to say when it comes to the rights and wrongs of parking, cognitive dissonance is alive and well across large swathes of the population.
Thus, to put parking into perspective, whilst many will support Shoup's notions in theory it will be damn hard to implement them in practice.
It would be interesting to psychoanalyze Shoup. I'll bet he's an idealist.
Perhaps the stats support this, we'll see (but I'm suspicious). What I am certain about is that I'll shop where there's parking for my vehicle—and that's how I go shopping. It would be difficult for me to estimate how many times I've bypassed certain shops/businesses because there's either no parking or the on-street parking is full up.
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