Not All Drivers Are Created Equal

So I’ve been commuting for a week now and while I love my new job the drive to get there is killing me. Everyday, it seems, there is a huge accident that insufferably delays my drive time.

And as it turns out, that drive time is being impacted differently by different drivers.

The Atlantic Cities reported last week on a new study that removing certain types of drivers actually has different impacts on congestion:

The central finding of the the paper, published today in Scientific Reports, is that while keeping one percent of all drivers off the road cuts traffic congestion by three percent, eliminating the same number of drivers from particular neighborhoods can reduce travel time for everyone else by a whopping 18 percent.

The article goes on to mention that in San Francisco, removing drivers from certain neighborhoods, for example, would significantly alleviate drive times.

I didn’t have time to examine the study itself — I’m spending all my time as a prisoner in my car — but I could imagine these findings leading to more targeted uses of public transit. And at worst, I suppose, they give scientific credence to the idea that all the idiot drivers live in specific locations.

One of the many traffic jams I experienced last week.

Paid Parking Is Actually… Cheaper?

There are few things in cities that inspire more annoyance, resistance, or even outrage than paid parking. But as it turns out, certain kinds of paid parking can actually save people money, according to the San Francisco Examiner:

Since taking effect in April 2011, average hourly rates have dropped by 14 cents from $2.73 to $2.59 at the 7,000 SFpark meters. Overall, 17 percent of those meters offer hourly rates of $1 or less — prices that are significantly cheaper than the ones offered at The City’s 22,000 older meters. And 6 percent of SFpark meters go for as cheap as 25 cents an hour, according to data from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which oversees parking policies in The City. The drop in prices for on-street parking meters coincides with a 20 percent rate decrease in SFMTA-run garages.

The new parking meters are using a system called “demand based parking” in which rates are periodically adjusted to account for demand. Rates at high-demand parking places can go considerably higher. The article also notes that the city is collecting more revenue from parking and less from parking tickets — meaning consumers of parking are probably happier because they’re choosing how to spend their money. Notably, the article also includes a list of “cheap blocks” where parking is very affordable.

Parking at Provo’s commuter rail station. Why not charge for this parking based on demand?

The entire program operates from the assumption that parking is already being charged, which isn’t the case in Provo. However, there’s no reason a city like Provo couldn’t implement a similar system where the lowest “price” for parking was free, or extremely cheap, while the highest demand parking cost a bit more. This idea could be implemented at transit stations as well, perhaps using time as a pricing variable.

And keep in mind that because parking costs governments money to build and maintain it is never really “free” to consumers. Instead, everyone foots the bill in the form of tax dollars. Demand-based parking merely shifts the burden to those who use the service the most.

Obviously, this idea would help raise money by charging for something expensive that the government is currently giving away for free. That should appeal to fiscal conservatives, of which there are many in Provo. But it would also de-incentivize driving, thus improving walkability, and perhaps even raise awareness about the abundance of parking in places like downtown. After the initial shock and annoyance wore off, it’d be a win-win situation.

Free parking in downtown Provo. In order to raise revenue and cut expenses, the city could begin charging for parking in places where demand is high.

Apartments With No Parking

Could an apartment building in Provo get by without any parking at all?

Over several posts recently I’ve been discussing walkable infrastructure, Provo’s upcoming downtown residential building and parking demand. The general impression I take away from those posts  — as well as comments on those posts and other discussions — is that there’s still considerable demand for parking  in Provo. The new building at 63 East Center even may be one of the rare instances in which an existing parking lot is actually contributing to something positive in the city.

So at this point high density residential parking is evidently necessary.

A parking structure that will be used for an upcoming residential tower.

But in both Portland and San Francisco apartments are in fact going up without any on-site parking. In this post from Streetsblog, Aaron Bialick explains that a 12-unit condo was just approved by the San Francisco planning commission. The building will be located along a bikeable street in an area connected to public transit. It also meets goals to increase density and reduce dependency on cars.

While the building is something of an anomaly in San Francisco, it’s actually a lot more common further north:

While few projects in San Francisco are currently built without parking, Colen noted that the real estate market in Portland, Oregon has caught on more quickly to the growing demand for car-free living. Two-thirds of new rental apartments being built in that city include no parking. ”What do they know that we don’t know?” said Colen.

The obvious problem with applying these ideas to Provo is that both Portland and San Fransisco are much larger cities. Higher populations lead to greater demand for land, more density and, ultimately, more willingness to build without parking.

That argument is clearly true to some extent and when Provo’s population passes half a million people — which is where Portland is at today — there will almost certainly be fewer parking lots in downtown and greater a willingness to build without parking.

Still, that’s not the whole story. If population, density, or even wealth were the primary factors driving this kind of development logic would suggest that San Francisco — the larger, denser city— should have more parking-free housing than Portland, not less. In reality, the smaller and sparser city is seeing more development without parking. That suggests that other factors, such as policy, culture, etc. are contributing to Portland’s leadership.

As the quote above indicates, it’s not easy to figure this situation out and even officials in San Francisco haven’t really cracked the puzzle. I also don’t expect Provo to immediately begin erecting housing with no parking at all.

But this story indicates cities are not entirely at the mercy of their size or affluence when it comes to parking and development. In other words, policy and planning do make a difference and a community can will itself toward greater efficiency. Or, put another way, as the sign in the Maeser neighborhood declares, we are makers of our own destiny.

How to Make Better, Smaller Streets

Thanks, perhaps, to Brigham Young and the turning radius of pioneer-era wagons, Provo has its fair share of daunting, dangerous and extra wide thoroughfares. And while these streets may have been wonderful in the late 1800s, they’ve tended to wind up as stroads today.

I’ve written many times on this blog about the superiority of narrow lanes over bloated roadways, but wanting a thing is different than actually getting it. In fact, putting narrow lanes into a western city full of stroads may be one of the hardest things a city might undertake. How, after all, do you fundamentally modify the underlying infrastructure of a region?

If you’re San Francisco, you do it one street-stroad at a time.

In the just-released 2012 American Society of Landscape Architects professional awards, Oakland-based Hood Design received an honor award for the Powell Street Promenade. The project took one of the busiest streets in San Francisco and replaced parking with park space:

The Powell Street Promenade provides a 6’2” extension of the existing sidewalk, combining material innovation, technology and urban design into a new landscape that offers refuges for pedestrians amid the street’s busy vehicular and historic cable car traffic. It is the largest example of the city’s “Pavement to Parks” program, which seeks to reclaim swathes of urban land for pedestrian amenities.

The street now has larger spaces for people and less imposing pavement. It’s a win-win.

New benches, barriers, and pedestrian space have replaced parking in San Francisco.

Retrofitting an entire city to fix every too-large street is probably not going to happen anywhere. But this example shows how small changes can create interesting new spaces and help a city move in the right direction. And though this particular example may be costly or particularly suited to the Bay Area, there’s no reason Provo couldn’t deploy a similar but localized version.

The four-lane Freedom Blvd in downtown Provo. Note the car in the bottom right quarter of this picture. That car’s lane is probably twice as wide as the car itself. There’s also no on-street parking on this street, so that lane’s width is basically useless; it accomplishes nothing besides encouraging speeding and discouraging pedestrian use. If Provo wants to increase foot traffic downtown, pointlessly bloated lanes like this need to be fixed. San Francisco’s new project offers one example of how to do that.