Alameda Point: Park it
Alright, so maybe I’m spending a little too much of my spring break time reading wonky articles by wonky authors, but one last one to end the week. Parking is one of the big drivers of auto-use (more specifically ample free parking) and yet it has a large cost in terms of money used to provide it. But there’s a larger cost to the community and environment that comes in the form of wasted space, bad design, and a disconnectedness of people to the others around them.
Donald Shoup is one of the leading researchers in parking (again with the whole academic thing), but like Robert Cervero (mentioned on Monday) he’s done a lot of study of the real-world and found out that his theories work in practice as well.
This article from InTransition called “Putting Parking into Reverse” has a great overview of the issues and of Shoup’s proposals. About recent/current parking policies and the changes that are taking place:
“[Old parking manuals] give you numbers as if Moses wrote them,” said Jose Gomez-Ibanez, professor of planning at Harvard. “Now they give you a range and show you how many studies they came from. It’s all from [Shoup’s] criticism about how arbitrary they are.”
And before you call him an academic divorced from the real-world (you know you were thinking about it):
“His ideas have been tested out in only a few areas, but where they’ve been tested out, they’ve been working quite well,” said Paul Sorenson, operations researcher at the RAND Corp. “Theoretically, they’re quite sound, so the combination of those to me suggests that he’s really on target.” Sorenson recently led a major study on alleviating traffic in Los Angeles and included Shoup-inspired tactics in his recommendations.
The specific plan for Alameda Point that’s going on the ballot proposes parking strategies that are in alignment with Shoup’s ideas, including tackling the idea of parking maximums instead of minimums (and not in the faux way that Alameda Landing did it where they used the same numbers and just changed the words…same effect, but more feel-good I guess?)
Popularity: 6% [?]
dl morrison
April 10th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
As I think many people have said, it’s just too difficult to get a realistic, non-spin discussion of these issues, and I think that’s precisely what turns people against smart growth precepts — that’s what did it to me, anyway.
Every time I read about anti-parking or anti-car strategies, I think of a parent w/ two young kids (let’s say), who has to drop the kids off on the way to work, go grocery shopping, go out in bad weather, into an unsafe area, whatever. What happens w/ someone in this situation? Seriously?
This is what I mean by an “academic” argument — it’s this tendency to treat people like interchangeable faceless drivers who respond to “negative stimulus” like lab rats. Try instead to take any kind of real world situation, then ask what it would mean in a particular circumstance. What about climate for starters, or topography, or age, health, income (=rich can park, poor can’t), any other exigencies.
Or try looking at stores w/ limited parking, like the Sears in Oakland. There’s loads of transit nearby, lots of foot traffic on weekdays, still the place is practically empty. Why?
Just address these genuine concerns — please — any of them. Start by explaining whether drivers obediently take transit when parking is limited, or just drive themselves off to a different locale. (See, eg, businesses failing in downtown Berkeley.) Then explain whether someone faced with paying, say, $10 for the ferry + $5 for parking will obediently fork it over or maybe decide to commute by some other means. (See, eg, Transbay bus fare of $7, lots of parking near stops on side streets.)
And you know, come to think of it, the biggest hole in this reasoning, really, is the inability to distinguish what can be controlled and what can’t.