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.
