Poll, Do You Pay for Parking?
The poll this week comes to us from regular reader Jim “Jimmy Z” Zavist:
One major challenge to creating a more-urban St. Louis is reducing our dependence on the single-occupant vehicle, and one of the major challenges with reducing that dependence is the perception that we have “free” parking, pretty much any place we want to go. Sure, places like downtown St. Louis and downtown Clayton have both parking meters and garages where you pay by the hour or the month, but there are many more places where parking is “free” – just drive in and find a spot. Currently, the cheapest bus fare is $2.00, the cheapest Metrolink fare is $2.25 and a monthly Metro pass is now $68.00. People who choose to drive themselves, over taking Metro, do so for two big reasons, comfort and convenience. Metro will never to be able to beat that combination, but most people also pay attention to the bottom line.
Motorists pay approximately 50 cents per mile for the privilege of having a private vehicle. That includes the purchase price, depreciation, maintenance, repairs, fuel, insurance, taxes and fees. Constructing parking costs roughly $10,000 per space for a surface lot, $20,000 per space for structured parking and $30,000 for below-grade parking. Tuff-Shed will build you a two-car garage, on your own land, for $8,000. Annual maintenance is extra, for both the commercial lots and for your own garage. And about the only places where you see the real price for parking on the residential side is if you live in a downtown loft, where you either need to buy a space in addition to your unit or you pay a monthly fee to park in a garage or lot. In pretty much every other case, whether you rent or own, the garage or the off-street parking is viewed as just another amenity, not an expense, and/or on-street parking is something you learn to live with and share with your neighbors.
My observation is that few people will change how they use their automobiles and live their lives until we change how we value the convenience of the SOV. I doubt we’ll be able to do much to get people to realize the true cost both “free” parking and their SOV’s, much like how our cell phones and internet access are now just another monthly bill. But, for the sake of argument, let’s crunch the numbers. Assume a 15-mile round trip for the daily commute and a 2-mile drive to the nearest Metro park-and-ride lot, along with 20 work days in a month and “free” parking at your place of work or education:
Option One – use Metro:Â 4 miles x 20 days x $0.50/mile = $40.00 + $68.00 Metro pass = $108.00
Option Two – drive yourself:Â 15 miles x 20 days x $0.50/mile = $150.00
Bottom line, it costs you $42.00 per month (or $2.10 per day) or means working an extra 10 or 15 minutes to come and go when you want, with whomever you want, and likely spending much less time “in transit”. The math speaks for itself – unless you’re an idealist, a masochist, very poor or can’t drive, that extra couple of bucks a day seems like money well spent. But that changes, drastically, as soon as you have to pay to park that SOV, at one or both ends:
Option Three – drive yourself:Â 15 miles x 20 days x $0.50/mile = $150.00 + $75.00 monthly parking = $225.00
Bottom line, the difference is now $117.00 per month (or $5.85 per day) and means working nearly an extra hour per day. The cost-benefit analysis shifts significantly, especially if it means writing another check just for the privilege of parking all day. What’s most problematic, especially around here, are the next steps. For many employers, and even some employees, the choice is not transit, but to seek out cheaper or “free” parking – Metro, especially in its current condition, really only works well if you work in downtown St. Louis or Clayton, the Barnes medical complex or attend Wash. U. or UMSL. As a region, we’re blessed (or cursed) with a lot of vacant and underutilized land and buildings. There’s little incentive to build new, structured parking, and because of this, we get little significant new density, the kind that can support “good” public transit.
We end up repeating the suburban, autocentric model, even in the city, simply because there’s no economic reason to do otherwise. Based on some very limited research, the highest land cost I was able to find downtown is $650/sq. ft. (and much is well below $200/sq. ft.) Compare that to Manhattan, where land sells for more than $12,000/sq. ft. We can talk urbanism, but until we embrace it, buy into it, and land values start to make surface parking look irrational, we’re going to continue to get more of the same. And no, we can’t legislate our way out of this – we can’t just impose significantly higher real estate taxes on parking lots or reduce parking requirements. If the economics make sense (and your competitors are or will be doing it), retailers, employers and residential developers will all continue to build the number of parking spaces they perceive their customers or employees demand. This equation will only change, locally, when the cost of providing parking gets to be too great, for everyone, and that will only happen when land values increase, significantly.
The poll is in the upper right of the main page. Thanks Jim for the interesting question. For me my garage space at home is “free” but I pay to park at Saint Louis University.
Jim, thanks for doing the math. Wish planners and zoning folks would embrace this fiscal logic.
I was a downtown worker for 15 years, and paying to park was a huge issue. When I took a new job outside downtown, free parking was like getting a raise!
Another angle: the marketing person for The Partnership for Downtown St. Louis spoke before the City Affair group a bit ago, and had brainstorming discussions for us. Near the end, she commented that we were the ONLY group who asked for LESS parking downtown.
It must be noted that the vast majority of the group live in the city, so we know exactly how much parking we need – and where the free-to-cheapest spots are – so don’t consider this as big of an issue as someone from outside the area.
Thankfully more employers who underwrite parking are willing to underwrite transit as well.
Parking issues (costs, zoning issues, enforcement, property taxes, etc.) as I have explained before say so much about us and our willingness to create a sustainable environment. However, I strongly disagree with your conclusion that “we can’t just impose significantly higher real estate taxes on parking lots or reduce parking requirements.” Even street parking should require a special permit for a fee. Why should one neighbor get to park his four cars on the street for free which blocks traffic and creates additional risks for cyclists and auto drivers? This requires legislation whether at the neighborhood level, county or state.
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Any and all corporate benefits should require 1099s, especially those like “free parking” which leads to more car dependencies, pollution, noise, accidents, etc. “Paying to park is a huge issue” and free parking is a curse to the region, whether on a street or parking lot. I see you didn’t include cycling as an alternative in your limited options. As you may know, Clayton addressed the “free parkers from other neighborhoods” by requiring parking stickers and issuing tickets to cars lacking permitted parking stickers.
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Serving on a condo board for years in a Chicago lakefront building, our garage became overfilled for years as parking was poorly priced. Of course this took courage on the part of board members but the strategy had numerous benefits. Simply by doubling the fee, the demand fell to the upper ranges of capacity and our building was no longer in the business of subsidizing auto use which represented less than one third of the inhabitants. Major upgrades to the building became immediately affordable. Raise the price as you admit and behavior will change. Local leadership lacks vision, courage and reflects the self destructive attitudes of the electorate.
Paying to park in this town is for chumps. If you’re not above walking a block or two you can always find a spot without having to pay to park on a lot or worse, pay to have some kid red line your car around the block. I like having my car and the convience of time. If I knew my trip to a show or an event downtown was going to involve an extra hour of travel time…I’d stay home.
Interesting point….
But for those of us coming from the suburbs, there is even more potential. Need to see about extending metrolink out to Mid Rivers Mall in Saint Peters! We would totally pass that measure now.
Thanks, John, for pointing out the hidden costs of “free” parking.
Jim, many MetroLink riders do not use parking lots – we take MetroBus the fare for which is included in the $68 MetroPass. Metro is a system, not just a commuter train. Yes, the ride may take a little longer – or it may not ! – but meanwhile I can read, nap, talk with neighbors, and observe the cityscape, all while saving money.
Thousands of people do not have the luxury of worrying about parking.
Melanie – I support transit. My equation is based on my own reality. Yes, I can wait for the #16 bus, that comes by every hour (except at rush hour, the bus stop is less than a block away), to get me to the Shrewsbury station, and not have to drive. But I almost always choose to drive the less than a mile to the station because a) the trains run more frequently than every hour and b) I don’t have to worry about what if I just miss the bus, either coming or going? Waiting an hour for the next bus is simply not an acceptable option, for me (it may be for you and others). Since I’ve never had a problem finding “free” parking at the Shrewsbury station, there’s really no incentive not to make the less-than-5-minute drive there – I control my own destiny, I don’t add any congestion to the larger grid and the cost is affordable. What will get me to to change this behavior? One thing, buses that have schedules identical to the train’s, with reliable, well-timed transfers (the bus arrives before the next train leaves and leaves just after the train arrives). I know all the positives – “read, nap, talk with neighbors, and observe the cityscape, all while saving money”. The infrequent bus schedules are the deal breaker for me, and that won’t change until Metro receives a lot more funding.
What JZ explains is clear and correct. A well managed mass transit system must be designed to work in unison. His bus-train schedule example is a good one and demonstrates the importance of the interplay between time/costs/convenience. However, the bus time problem could be easily beaten by using a bike instead of the bus or car. This requires a good place to park bikes free from rain damage and racks on train cars to hang bikes. The Extension offers neither. In addition, it was a catastrophic decision by Metro not to build the planned path along the Extension. Any service break in Metro would have allowed the customer with a bike to simply exit and ride on.
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The real costs to society of mismanaged resources are large. In my condo example, I can explain numerous benefits others couldn’t see but I’ll keep it simple. The prices of the units appreciated 75% (above & beyond the neighborhood benchmarks) in three years after changing the pricing structure. The additional revenues/reduced costs allowed major renovation projects that were previously unaffordable. The % of non-resident owners declined as the rent/value ratio declined sharply and the building became a hot commodity. The same could be done in the St Louis region if local leadership-public understood the obvious benefits of aligning fees with costs.
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Another additional benefit was getting the board to perform more research on costs of different services-resources and to improve the alignment of costs-benefits. In five years the value of the units had doubled. Previous naysayers became strong supporters.
Wonk alert – further urban design economics – is Metro better off building parking lots or running relatively-empty buses in suburban areas? Assumption one – a surface parking space costs $10,000 (land and pavement) per SOV/rider. Assumption two – an underutilized bus route requires an 80%-85% subsidy. Both assumptions are using tax dollars. A full fare on the bus is $2.25. A monthly pass reduces the income per rider per trip to $1.70 (40 bus trips per month). When does subsidizing the bus get to be more expensive than building parking?
The best case is it costs Metro $8.50 per rider to run the bus route (relatively full, with full-fare riders); the worst case is $15.00 per rider (relatively empty, with riders using passes). Divide the cost of parking into the cost of the bus and the payback is surprisingly short. With the best-case subsidy, it’s 5.88 years (assuming 200 work days per year) and 3.33 years under the worst-case subsidy. Yes, there are multiple intangible issues (including providing service to people who can’t drive), but for the majority of Metrolink’s riders, who have access to their own vehicle, the agency would be better off, financially, in the long run, just providing free parking at strategic nodes (virtual density) in hard-to-serve suburban areas, and providing demand-responsive service to the minority of riders who need or want to use a bus to get to the train.
That last mile in suburban areas is the most problematic for any transit agency. Transit works downtown and at Barnes because of the density – lots of potential riders and difficult, expensive parking. Go to a suburban office park or subdivision, and the opposite occurs – easy parking and few potential riders. That’s the whole point of my original question – if parking is easy and free, and land is cheap, what incentive is there to change either the way we commute or the way we build? And the results seem to be reinforcing that conclusion – more than half of the respondents here have free parking where they work or go to school, while only a third have to pay. Compare that with the core areas of the urban nirvanas (NYC, the Loop, even Portland) and you’ll find 75%-95% having to pay. To use that word du jour, the cost informs the commuters’ choices – money there talks, but here it mostly whispers . . .
john’s right – bikes are a great option, but the lack of secure parking is major hurdle here. In Colorado, secure bike lockers can be found at most park-n-rides, and the cost is much less than $10,000 per space: http://www.bouldercolorado.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10385&Itemid=3397
Yes secure, safe, and convenient parking for bikes (like “free/subsidized” parking for autos) is what commuters who prefer to support sustainable transportation designs prefer. For a community that gets it, head north on 55 and it will end in virtual paradise:
http://www.streetsblog.org/2009/05/21/streetfilms-luxe-bike-parking-in-chicago/#comments
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By the way your estimates on the value/constructing costs of parking is inline with what we discovered in our condo parking facility (x-land value). Therefore this part of the condo association had to generate returns in line with these expenses. In addition, the condo building had a staff of five parkers rotated in order to squeeze in more cars. Variable pricing also showed how revenues were significantly below those direct expenses. The naysayers swore up and down that losing the hidden benefits of valet parking would destroy asset values. The opposite occurred.
More on supply and demand for bike parking at transit stations: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_12474122