We have heard that the ‘new black’ in on-street parking is
Performance Parking as espoused by Donald Shoup and we have read about the
up sized version of performance parking that is Adaptive Parking as espoused by
Paul Barter. To some local bodies or
cities, this is akin to me staring at a Lamborghini through a shop window. It requires significant investment in
infrastructure, marketing and organisational time and effort. Although held up as the utopia of on-street
parking, there are probably a few things we can do to step change our way to
Performance and Adaptive Parking or even run that 1960 Ford a little longer before aiming at the Lamborghini.
The general view of parking in the city is one of organic
growth around over-crowded or popular activities, such as malls, entertainment,
CBD, airports and the like. These
areas start to get restricted time parking, which then moves on to metered
parking….. yes I’m generalising. This
creates issues where the city must then decide that it must identify the area,
usually reactively by complaint, that requires attention, scope the area and
then meter the area as required. This
will curb demand or at least control it.
Metering is the obvious first step in getting to a new
paradigm where the prices are estimated and programmed into the machines, and
you watch the changes in behaviours to work out if the behaviours are those
that would help achieve the City’s growth goals.
This may take a while as you work your pricing systems and responses
into the sweet spot of 1 in 8 vacancies on the street. Unfortunately this generally will not happen
as the City executive fear a backlash from the paying public, so parking rates
are usually too low, causing little change to congestion and an outcry of
profiteering because the public see no demonstrative result from the
exercise. It may be best to go straight to a full performance price on street. The public may be upset (as they were before) but they will SEE a demonstrative change.
Performance Parking
requires clever machinery that has the ability to have its parking rates
changed quickly and responsively to the changing, sometimes hourly, demand in
the street. This demand is fed from the
in-space units that read the proximity of a vehicle to determine if a vehicle
is in the bay or not. The more
occupancy, the higher the fees should change to in response to the demand, to get
the 1 in 8 ratio. Simple really. Expensive definitely. So how do you get to a poor man’s version of Performance
Parking without the bells and whistles?
Step 1 - I suggest you start a trial where you test for space
usage in a typical street. Meter-Eye or
CPT as they are now known, have used a large heavy rubber mat with a detector or Meter-Eye
attached to it. You can throw these mats
into typical or strategic spaces and start to collect the data. It will tell you how many cars parked in the
bay and how long they stayed for. Extrapolate
that collective information over the area and you have the first step in
the equation, DEMAND. You also have the
second step in the equation, AVERAGE LENGTH OF STAY or DURATION.
Step 2 - Monitor the traffic over a number of periods, whether they be day time, as this is the time of worst congestion or in the evening for an area adjacent to evening or event demand. This will give you the PEAK USAGE and the peak usage will tell you when your parking rates should be at the maximum to achieve your service levels of 1 in 8 vacant spaces. Be careful here not to miss any double tops or other anomalies in the peak usage. In hospitals for instance, the peaks are generally twice in a day. You may have to survey over a period of months to get a complete picture.
Step 3a - If you already have meters on the street, and they allow you to change the rates without too much trouble, then change your rates manually in the most congested blocks, initially for a block of the days that are most congested, i.e. Wednesday to Friday, then change them back from Saturday to Tuesday. This will introduce Performance Parking on a 'weekly' basis rather than a 'daily' basis. You have to give up the daily changes until you can afford an investment in the technology that will allow you to do that without incurring wage costs that will wipe out any revenue savings.
Step 3b - If you do not have any meters, then you may want to find the technology that will allow you to amend the rates at your will. A lot of machines will not allow you to change your charging rates or the supplier will do the change for you but their service is so slow that, in some cases, it takes 2 to 3 weeks to get a simple rate change completed. These vendors are to be AVOIDED as they prevent Performance Parking. You may have to go to an RFP to seek competent vendors. Ensure you reference Performance Parking in your RFP. This is not the poor mans version but the way to the full blown Performance Parking.
Step 4 - Set the initial rates. Most cities appear to have rates that are well under the ideal rates. They have set rates in the past that still allow circulating in the streets, a clear sign your rates are too cheap. The level of change in the rates to go up and down by will be difficult to work out. SF Park is using 50c at a time, but I tend to think that this is a little light as if you move a rate from $3.00 per hour to $3.50 per hour will not deter circulating or behaviour change swiftly enough.
Step 5 - Monitor and amend until you get the ideal occupancy levels.
To summarise the Poor Man's Performance Parking, find a company that will allow you to use their technology to get a picture of the 'load' on the street over a week (not daily unless you want to go the full blown version), find the demand, Peak, Average Length of Stay, change the charging for parking by the DAY and not the HOUR allowing you to use even cheaper/older/existing equipment, set rates to achieve the required occupancy levels, monitor and adjust.
Kevin Warwood
