You might be shocked at how much traffic consists of drivers who have already arrived at their destination but find themselves cruising the streets, searching for an open parking spot. In some city neighborhoods, cruising makes up as much as 40 percent of all traffic. All this unnecessary traffic slows down buses, endangers cyclists and pedestrians, delays other motorists, and produces harmful emissions. The key to eliminating it is to get the price of parking right.
So what's the right price for curbside parking? According to UCLA professor Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking, "the right price is the lowest price you can charge and still have one or two spaces available on each block." Depending on the demand for parking at a given location, the right price could be higher or lower than the static prices you see at traditional meters. You need a dynamic system that adjusts the price based on demand.
The city of San Francisco has been putting Shoup's ideas into practice on an unprecedented scale with its SFpark program, which is set to launch later this week. In addition to strategically adjusting curbside meter rates, SFpark sets prices in city garages to make them an attractive alternative to on-street spots, and distributes real-time information about parking availability to help drivers find open spaces. It is the most ambitious project in the United States to cut traffic and improve quality of life by getting the price of parking right.
Streetfilms would like to thank The Fund for the Environment & Urban Life for making this series possible.
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<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman">[music]</font> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Dr. Donald Shoup:</i>
[00.13] All of these cars are parking free on some of the most valuable
land on earth. </font></p>
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<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Jay Primus:</i> [00:19]
Parking is at the heart of so many transportation issues. </font></p>
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<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Dr. Donald Shoup:</i>
[00:22] The right price for kerb parking is the lowest price you can
charge and still have one or two vacant spaces on every block.</font></p>
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<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Matthew Roth:</i>
[00:28] San Francisco with many thousands of parking spaces, both off-street
and on-street, is testing the hypothesis that if you properly manage
the spaces you reduce the total amount of cruising, you reduce traffic,
you improve quality of life. </font></p>
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<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Jay Primus:</i> [00:48]
SFpark is a demonstration of a new approach to managing parking.
The idea is to make it so that your experience as a driver is that there’s
almost always a parking space available on every block. That’s
great for drivers and should make driving more predictable, more convenient.
But it’s good for people even who don’t drive. </font></p>
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<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Speaker:</i> [01:04]
SFpark provides safer and clearer streets for everyone. Here’s
how it works – newly installed parking sensors detect when a parking
space is available. Drivers will be able to check parking availability
and rates online by text message and by smartphone before heading to
their destination.</font></p>
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<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Matthew Roth:</i>
[01:21] The parking managers now with great precision can tell where
a vehicle’s parked, how long it’s parked. They can tell whether
that the driver of that vehicle is paying for it. They can get
a much better sense of where the rate for parking should be. If
you have a scarce resource, parking spaces, and you have a lot of demand
for that resource, the best way to manage that is to price it properly,
cos it’s simple economic principle.</font></p>
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<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Jay Primus:</i> [01:45]
If there’s a block now that is completely full but just two blocks
away that has a few spaces open, we’re going to increase prices just
a little bit on the block that’s full and lower them on the block
that has open spaces. All we need is just one or two people to
park on that block with the open spaces to achieve the availability
target that we’re looking for. </font></p>
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<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman">[music]</font> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Jay Primus:</i> [02:06]
Right now there are garages and lots that it’s more expensive than
it is on the streets so people have every financial incentive to circle
around looking for parking which is exactly what we don’t want to
happen. So we’ll be lowering prices at garages and lots to make
those relatively more attractive. The whole goal is to get people
off the streets and matched up with a parking space as quickly as possible. </font></p>
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<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Matthew Roth:</i>
[02:24] Studies show in some cities like New York City and parts of
San Francisco you can have 15 to 40% of all of the local traffic is
people looking for a spot, cruising for parking, which is incredibly
inefficient.</font></p>
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<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Jay Primus:</i> [02:37]
This is the first time that this approach to parking management has
been done on such a large scale in such a carefully monitored environment.
There is a tremendous emphasis on data collection and evaluation to
really evaluate just how well SFpark delivers the benefits we expect
for drivers, for the environment, for transit and so on. </font></p>
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<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Matthew Roth:</i>
[02:54] If you get the parking right, then you improve the entire neighbourhood. </font></p>
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<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Dr. Donald Shoup:</i>
[02:59] Well when people look back 50 years from now they’ll see that
one of the major benefits of getting the price of parking right was
to reduce the carbon emissions from all of this cruising that’s going
on all over the world. </font> <br> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman">[music]</font></p>
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