Reducing Parking Spaces Helps Cities...

[trigger]

File this under, "well duh!"

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=reducing-parking-cut-auto-emission&page=2

[Captain Zissou]

"On every block there should be one vacant place," said Shoup. "If there's no vacant place, the price is too low."

This is the perfect argument for free parking in Jax.  Since we have tons of open spaces, our rates must be too high.  When Supply exceeds demand, market pressures drive down the price.  Only when we have a higher demand can we raise the price.

[tufsu1]

nice spin, but that is hardly Shoup's argument...read the book "The High Cost of Free Parking"

[ChriswUfGator]

nice spin, but that is hardly Shoup's argument...read the book "The High Cost of Free Parking"

You've actually misinterpreted that book by an exact 180-degrees...

It advocates eliminating parking requirements, the exact reverse of what you're claiming it says.

[tufsu1]

Having heard Mr. Shoup speak and having read the book, I'm quite aware of what it is about

The elimination of parking requirements deals with the amount of parking provided...Shoup, and many others (including me), believe we should set maximum parking standards vs. minimum standards.

In most places today, a prospective developer needs to request a variance for a parking reduction....if this were flipped, they would have to seek a variance to get more.

Now, as to cost, Shoup argues that providing parking for free "costs" too much....so places like STJC should charge for parking and/or provide less than they have today.

[Captain Zissou]

Thanks Stephen and Chris for backing me up.  Tufsu, I know roughly your profession, and I believe you know mine, so we approach the issue from two very different angles.  My interpretation rests in the fact that all of the examples given were very dense urban environments where an open parking space is a rarity.  To compare that to Jacksonville would be like trying to compare Disney World to Adventure Landing, it doesn't work.  We have no dense urban core.  Our parking spaces are an overabundance.  We should pay people to actually park in them.

When the usage of our downtown reaches a level that parking spaces are at a premium, we should start to charge higher prices per hour.  Until that happens in 2020, we should be giving them a way.  Stephen is also right in that the high cost of parking comes from land acquisition, build-out, and opportunity costs of surface lots, not on street parking. 

[ChriswUfGator]

Having heard Mr. Shoup speak and having read the book, I'm quite aware of what it is about

The elimination of parking requirements deals with the amount of parking provided...Shoup, and many others (including me), believe we should set maximum parking standards vs. minimum standards.

In most places today, a prospective developer needs to request a variance for a parking reduction....if this were flipped, they would have to seek a variance to get more.

Now, as to cost, Shoup argues that providing parking for free "costs" too much....so places like STJC should charge for parking and/or provide less than they have today.

Tufsu, you have something of a history in these parking debates of reading or listening to something, and then taking the sole tidbit out of it that supports your pre-existing viewpoint, even when it may be (and often is) completely contradicted when you take the whole enchilada in proper context.

Since I evidently missed that portion, would you please direct me to the page where he says that his argument is directed towards on-street metered parking spaces? Or, just maybe, he wasn't even talking about that at all, and was only discussing the problems inherent in the current spate of parking regulations that force anyone with X amount of building/square footage/visitors to have X amount of parking spaces.

I mean, when you put down the one or two snippets that don't contradict your viewpoint and look at the whole thing in context, you really have managed to completely twist the interpretation around to the opposite of what's really being said. Because, for the record, what we've done in Jacksonville with demolishing 70% of our urban density and replacing it with parking lots and garages that sit empty because there's nowhere for anybody to go, is EXACTLY the type of harm Shoup is warning of.

Our downtown is, quite literally, exactly the type of disaster he refers to by the title of his book. Except we're even worse off, because not only did we wind up suffering the carnage he warns of, but we went a step further with the genius idea of charging people out the ass for parking, private or public, and this virtually guaranteed the worst of both worlds. With the result that the whole thing blew up in our faces exactly as you'd expect.

We suffer the "High Cost of Free Parking" but got double-stuffed without lube because we didn't even get free parking!

Shoup really is making the direct opposite point of what you're claiming, Tufsu. "The High Cost of Free Parking" doesn't claim that we should build a shitload of unnecessary parking and then charge out the ass for it, because the harm is caused by the PARKING itself. What he's saying is that you can't translate suburban-style parking regulations to urban environments, not that the problem is whether you charge a dollar to park or not. Man, I mean, you're almost an exact 180-degrees off from his actual point. I hope you didn't get a hernia twisting this around to suit your viewpoint!