75 years after the first meter was installed in Oklahoma City, cities are beginning to rethink traditional parking regulation strategies. Tom Vanderbilt considers the options.
Cities are notoriously incompetent when it comes to extracting money from their parking meters, as demonstrated by Donald Shoup and others, says Vanderbilt. In recent years, many have turned to public-private partnerships to regulate meters like Chicago, which sold 75-year rights to their meters to Morgan Stanley in 2008. However, such strategies are a missed opportunity to capture revenue for transportation improvements, says Vanderbilt. Instead, cities should focus on using new technologies to simplify payment and collection of parking fees.
Vanderbilt writes:
'Parking meters, a seemingly mundane fact of the urban landscape, remain as fraught and controversial as when they were first installed...the time has finally come for a sweeping rethink of the parking meter-in part because of changes in technology, and in part because of an emerging change in the way we think about parking in cities.'
FULL STORY: The end of the parking meter
How Parking Meters Turned Around a Struggling Downtown
The revival of Old Pasadena is one of the truly great urban success stories from the past few decades. The area's comeback was not based on shifting demographics or "political will", writes Colin Marshall, but a less sexy foundation: parking reform.
Has Anyone at USDOT Read Donald Shoup?
USDOT employees, who are required to go back to the office, will receive free parking at the agency’s D.C. offices — flying in the face of a growing research body that calls for pricing parking at its real value.
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Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.
California High-Speed Rail's Plan to Right Itself
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This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
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City of Camden Redevelopment Agency
City of Astoria
Transportation Research & Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University
Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada
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