A great initiative in San Francisco to help price parking spaces more accurately so they’re easier to find. I like the initiatives of adjusting parking prices to be dependent on the level of demand, and I also like how people will be able to check online to see how heavily “parked” the area they’re going to generally is, and also the parking rate they expect to have to pay.
I think we really need to look hard at parking policies here in New Zealand, which generally appear to swing dramatically from one end of the spectrum (there should be millions of “free” parking spaces everywhere) to the other (we should make as much money as we can out of parking fines). It would be interesting to see the results of something like this happening here in Auckland.
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It sounds like a very tactful way to hike parking charges. From what i hear in San Fransisco street parking is much much cheaper parking buildings making it worthwhile for drivers to spent a long time “searching” for parking. A similar situation exists in the Auckland CBD after 6pm (excluding the viaduct now) street parking is free (and much of it filled around 6 people planning to park overnight) while people making comparatively short stops in town are forced to park in private car parks and often pay an all night fee. Naturally this defeats the purpose the parking was provided for. Unfortunately the Auckland council was met with public backlash when they tried to extend the hours. The san fransisco way seems a lot more tactful as they have gone to great lengths to communicate how more expensive parking will benefit the majority. Lets hope the minority doesn’t yell loud enough about it to put them off.
I think it’s a good way to make it clear that charging for parking actually isn’t about making money for the council, it is about rationing the spaces so that some are available. Making that link more accurate, clearer and easier to understand has to be a good thing.
Unlike many other shopping destinations, the CBD is served by public transport from all parts of Auckland. Rationing the scarce resource of parking spaces in favour of the bountiful resource of public transport, and pricing accordingly, is just sound economics. Framing it in terms of user-pays might make it a bit easier for people to swallow, especially if the council were to ring-fence parking income into the public transport fund rather than the general fund.
A change to the district plan so that an apartment building cannot have more than half as many parking spaces as it has apartments would be a good start, too.
SFPark is indeed fascinating and promising. If you want to dig deeper into parking policy debates like this one, you might like to take a look at a new blog devoted entirely to parking policy around the world (Reinventing Parking at http://www.reinventingparking.org/)