Dr. Shoup, author of "The High Cost of Free Parking", one of my favorite books, linked "Parking Public" (video embedded below) on Facebook. I think it's worth a look. Lots of great 1940's and 1950's footage of the downtown urban environment, as well as discussion on the origin of modern parking regulations.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Video courtesy "The Temporary Travel Office", with a hat tip to Don Shoup.
I didn’t see this announced anywhere else, but over on the WMATA youtube channel there’s a video starring Metro’s Chief Financial Officer, Carol Kissal, and Ed Moy, the Director of the US Mint announcing that Metro fare vending machines will be accepting $1 coins as well as giving them as change. So instead of getting 12 quarters back as change from a $7 purchase on a $10 bill, you’ll get three coins. I thought WMATA had been accepting $1 coins for a long time, but giving them out is new as of December.
WMATA and the Mint tout the convenience for riders as well as the savings to the Government. According to the video, the $1 coins last for decades and are 100% recyclable. Mr. Moy put the savings from using $1 coins as “billions” of dollars. He also said that Boston and New York were giving $1 coins as change in their transit systems.
I’ve always been a fan of dollar coins. I get them at the bank and use them for parking meters and vending machines. Now I’ll have another source for them (though I don’t do many cash transactions at fare machines).
So what’s next for American currency? Go completely Euro-style, get a $2 coin, and eliminate the $1 bill entirely? Retain both the bill and the coin for years longer? Eliminate the penny?
I’m starting a new parking survey of the 500-700 blocks of M Street SE, right near where I work. My goal for the survey is to find out when the peak of parking demand is for these spaces. My guess (in science class you might call this a “hypothesis”) is that the peak of demand is between 11:00 am and 12:00 noon, based on some TCRP reports I’ve read. I plan to take data once per day for a while. It only takes 10 minutes to walk out to that block and write down how many cars are parked on the 5 block faces in the area. I’ve already gotten some data confirming that there is not significant parking before 10am or after 3pm (unless the data is really, really weird and doesn’t follow a bell curve). Based on 7-8 data points taken so far, it’s starting to look like a bell curve, though the holidays usually have low demand and therefore I will be taking much more data than I would otherwise need.
This block has seen a lot of change, parking-wise, since it was used for my previous study about who parks in the Navy Yard area. The blocks used to be completely full of parkers from out of state that parked all day for free. Now, after DDOT installed and started enforcing rush hour restrictions, and turned on the multispace meters, the blocks are nearly always empty (or significantly below 50% capacity), and I see the same commuter out-of-state cars parking elsewhere in the area (still for free). I briefly chatted with one parker that was using a multispace meter, he stated that he was visiting the area for a meeting and would be parked about two hours.
Setting the meter prices right doesn’t always mean to raise the price. Sometimes, when demand is low enough, it means reducing or eliminating parking charges. Once I figure out when the peak of demand is, I’ll concentrate on getting data for that time period to make the case that the price is much too high. I expect that the answer is that there is no time of day where there is a need to charge for parking at all. I was able to look a couple of times when the rush hour restrictions were in place but the meters were not yet running, and the occupancy was around 50%, still lower than the targeted range of 80-90%.
The parking restrictions on these blocks are a 3-hour limit, no parking during morning and evening rush hours, and a charge of $1.00 for the first hour, and $1.50 each additional hour. The combination of these restrictions and nearby free parking probably reduce the market value of this on-street parking to near zero, something I will try to confirm through obtaining more data.
Of course I will keep you posted with what I find out, as well as attempt to discuss the results with the DC parking manager.
According to this article, Gilbert, AZ is considering seeking federal stimulus funding for a parking garage. The Gilbert, AZ garage is projected to cost $7.5M for 350 spaces (not sure if that's total or marginal) but that's $21,400 per space. Article states that their downtown "needs more parking". Here’s an aerial view of the site mentioned in the article.
I think before we use federal funding to buy a garage for this low-density site, we should probably figure out how much parking is worth to the people driving, by pricing or managing the parking they have already. I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m willing to bet that the parking is not going to be worth more than the $200 per month you’d need to build such a parking garage (based on amortized construction costs and operating costs). If the small downtown shopping area is popular enough, people should be willing to chip in a couple of bucks to park there in exchange for knowing there will be a space available when they arrive.
Update: Commenter Mark points out that the town is over 200,000 people, so I've edited the title which used to refer to Gilbert as a "small town". It's still officially a town, and from the look of the aerial view, still low density.
Three years after the launch of Google Transit, which gives directions using transit on Google Maps, and after constant requests by riders and bloggers, WMATA's Director of Customer Service, Brett Tyler, announced their decision that participating in Google Transit is "not in our best interest from a business perspective." That's a very shortsighted decision.
Like many people in this area, I have been looking forward to having the ability to "get there by transit" using Google Transit. The feature, a free service by Google, just requires transit agencies to format their data in the Google Transit Feed Specification format and sign an agreement with Google.
At first, WMATA officials said that their scheduling information was "proprietary" and could not be shared with Google. Later, they told me that formatting the data in GTFS was time-consuming and not a priority for the WMATA staff. In June, General Manager John Catoe said in a Friday lunchtime chat that WMATA was working on it, but that the results were not accurate enough. (Since Transit would use the same data as WMATA's own trip planner, this explanation didn't hold water.) Finally, when I asked about it at the October board meeting, they said that they still needed to hammer out the legal agreements.
On Monday Brett Tyler, Director of Customer Service, gave me a definitive answer:
Metro staff did explore some possibilities with Google, but ultimately we decided that forming a partnership with Google was not in our best interest from a business perspective. We do believe that Metro's newly redesigned Web site, at www.wmata.com, improves customers' access to information about the Metro system. In addition, customers may get real-time information and bus and rail schedules directly on their cell phones or PDAs.
These tools are quite useful, but they're not a substitute for Google Transit. WMATA's Trip Planner doesn't let you explore either your origin or destination neighborhood. It's especially picky in trying to designate the origin or destination, at first asking you to leave off the city and state, then later requesting that you designate what city and state you meant.
Google spends a lot of time working on its user interface. WMATA should take advantage of that experience, especially since Google is willing to provide it for free. Plus, by making the data available, WMATA could allow other innovators to build even more useful tools. A company that specializes in easy-to-use Web sites will probably build a better site than an authority that specializes in running trains and buses, and having more clever programmers helping riders get the most from our public transit beats limiting the information to just a single site.
David Alpert of Greater Greater Washington and I created a petition to ask WMATA to reconsider their decision and make their data available to Google, as 91 other US transit agencies have done, and publish it online for anyone to use to build innovative new tools and grow transit ridership.
Here are just a few of the many US transit agencies who decided that Google Transit is indeed in their best interest:
Please sign the petition today. Crossposted on Greater Greater Washington
According to the Director of Customer Service for WMATA, the direct cost for a Smartrip card is $3.50 in bulk from its vendor, Giesecke and Devrient (PDF on the “GO CARD”, the specific design used for Smartrip). According to WMATA, the cards originally cost just under $10.00 each but with larger volume purchases, the costs have fallen. The cards are not usable as delivered and must be initialized. It's not clear whether WMATA has to do those manually or whether they own one of the machines sold or leased by the Smartrip card designer, Cubic Transportation Systems.
Should the cost of a Smartrip card have fallen along with WMATA’s costs? What do you think? WMATA has to pay staff to order new cards, process them, and distribute them. They have to pay staff and a contractor to develop Smartrip improvements as well as manage the existing Smartrip program. They have to maintain thousands of individual card readers.
On the other hand, WMATA used to sell you a card for $5 that cost them almost $10, and they’re still willing to give you magnetic stripe cards which are not as reusable for no additional cost, and there are certainly costs associated with the magnetic strip cards. Now that WMATA is trying to get people away from paper transfers by requiring Smartrip, I think it’s time that the price of a card come down.
Here’s the information about Smartrip from the Director of Customer Service:
The policy established by Metro’s Board of Directors is to sell SmarTrip® cards for $5.00. This policy has been in place since the program was launched in 1999. At that time, the cost of each card was just under $10.00. Over time and with larger volume purchases, the charge per unit has fallen to $3.50 per card. When we receive the cards, we must initialize them because they are not usable as delivered.
Again, thanks to WMATA’s Director of Customer Service for the answer.
