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Tolling Points

Surge Pricing for City Parking Holds a Lesson for Tolling

By: 
Bill Cramer
Category: 
Stories

A growing trend toward time-of-day pricing for city parking is raising some familiar arguments for the tolling community, and demonstrating what motorists stand to gain if transportation providers of all kinds can get their pricing right.

The takeaway argument—and the parallel to tolling—was captured in a Washington Post editorial November 14. “Cheap or free parking feels like a right to most Americans,” the paper argued. “It isn’t, and the sooner cities stop treating it like one, the sooner roads will be less crowded, emissions lower, parking easier to find, and cities generally more liveable.”

It’s always tempting for elected officials to mollify constituents with cheap parking (or with the quaint notion that a highway is paid for once its original capital cost is covered). But the Post noted that below-market pricing “pumps up demand and produces the parking equivalent of gas station lines: people wasting fuel, time, and sanity circling around looking for spaces.”

Technology Makes It Happen

Surge pricing has taken hold on the city streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Indianapolis. And just as electronic tolling systems are the cornerstone that enables managed lanes and congestion pricing, a Post news report points to the technological transformation behind the shift to “smart parking” in Washington, DC.

The $1.5-million pilot project covers about 1,000 parking spots in the District’s Chinatown-Penn Quarter. “Numbered sidewalks have taken over once-open parking zones, where cars crammed into any open space and drivers had to print tickets to display on their dashboards as proof that they had paid for parking,” the paper noted November 7. The new technology “means drivers may soon be able to track open parking spaces in real time via an app, and prices could be adjusted based on data fed by cameras and sensors.”

All of which makes the technology a gateway to a better parking experience. “By using pricing as a level, we are trying to balance the supply and demand,” said Soumya Dey, director of research and technology with the District’s Department of Transportation. Drivers benefit because “they know where the available spaces are. They know how much they need to pay. And the parking search time, the amount of time you spend to find an open parking space, improves.”

Answering the Critics

Smart parking is not without its critics. Anyone who knows toll roads could pretty much script the conversation.

“It favors people who are well-to-do, well-heeled, and who have expense accounts,” AAA Mid-Atlantic spokesperson John B. Townsend II told the Post. He added that “people of certain needs”—the city’s poorest residents, and tourists visiting the nation’s capital—will be forced to stay out of desirable neighborhoods because they can’t afford to park at peak hours.

But the Post editorial noted that as long as there’s a cost to be covered, a user fee is more equitable. “By arguing to keep parking rates low, critics demand that taxpayers subsidize urban parking — and in particular that non-drivers, many of whom are poor, subsidize drivers, many of whom are not poor.” The same thing that happens when a failing Highway Trust Fund is propped up out of general tax revenues, when tolling or road usage charging would deliver a fairer result.

Lessons from the Tolling Experience

While tolling can draw insight and inspiration from the surge parking story, the industry can also give something back. Tolling agencies operating in some of America’s busiest urban corridors are forming innovative partnerships with local rapid transit agencies to maximize peak-hour volumes on managed lanes.

Sometimes, the bus companies receive toll-free access to the lanes. And one innovative study by the Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority and Hillsborough Area Regional Transit went a step further. It showed how both agencies could deliver better mobility through a joint venture in which the transit company made a capital investment in a managed lane project, while the tolling authority covered a larger share of the operating costs.

In the end, the concept is a win for customers, whether they drive or take the bus. If some of the revenue from surge parking could be allocated to support chronically cash-strapped urban transit systems, the parallel would be complete.

For more on this topic, download the summaries of IBTTA’s latest conference reports on transportation and road usage charging, and on all-electronic tolling, managed lanes and interoperability.

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