This is great news.
Is parking too cheap?
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This is great news.
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Haystack has been banned.
Metro said:
Between this and the Turnpike article yesterday, the Globe seems to be turning into the medium for rich executives to whine about life.
Oh, there can be traffic on a highway? And it's sometimes difficult to park in a city? Wow, that's some hard hitting reporting...
I love the Jim Gillooly quote in there though:
Indeed.
Oh, there can be traffic on a highway? And it's sometimes difficult to park in a city? Wow, that's some hard hitting reporting...
I love the Jim Gillooly quote in there though:
Indeed.
They were shockingly mild compared to what I was expecting.
I just spent about a half hour trying to find out to what degree garage rates are regulated but couldn't find any information. My assumption would be garages are free to set their own rates, but every garage more or less uses the same (fairly simple) structure: one early bird special for daily commuters coupled with an hourly build up to a max daily rate with a night ,weekend and event rate on the back end. My question is - why don't we see more creativity with the rate structure? The same lack of flexibility in metered parking applies (in part) to garage pricing as well. It costs someone $14 for the first hour at PO Square at 5am and the same $14 an hour at noon. The demand can't possibly be the same. Why not flex the midday hourly rate higher and pull back on the morning rate? It seems like this would address capacity concerns midday while maintaining an acceptable rate for the early morning and late afternoon traffic and wouldn't be any more confusing than pricing different half hour segments at different rates as many garages do...
Granted, I don't know how many people park hourly as I would assume the bulk of their business is daily commuters but it seems there must be some room to tweak the rates to match demand.
I just spent about a half hour trying to find out to what degree garage rates are regulated but couldn't find any information. My assumption would be garages are free to set their own rates, but every garage more or less uses the same (fairly simple) structure: one early bird special for daily commuters coupled with an hourly build up to a max daily rate with a night ,weekend and event rate on the back end. My question is - why don't we see more creativity with the rate structure? The same lack of flexibility in metered parking applies (in part) to garage pricing as well. It costs someone $14 for the first hour at PO Square at 5am and the same $14 an hour at noon. The demand can't possibly be the same. Why not flex the midday hourly rate higher and pull back on the morning rate? It seems like this would address capacity concerns midday while maintaining an acceptable rate for the early morning and late afternoon traffic and wouldn't be any more confusing than pricing different half hour segments at different rates as many garages do...
Granted, I don't know how many people park hourly as I would assume the bulk of their business is daily commuters but it seems there must be some room to tweak the rates to match demand.
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How many of those garages are operated by the same company? I doubt there's as much competition for parking prices as there seems.
JeffDowntown
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Excellent point, there are only a few parking operators in the city.
The theory is that the free market is hyper efficient, and rates are set at the perfect price to maximize revenue.
The reality is that many people dont give enough of a shit to put in the extra effort to perfect the prices.
The new parking lot at Littleton/495 ($4 per day) was operating at about capacity in its first year, but already this year it's become comically overcrowded. Show up at 9am on a weekday and you'll find people parked on the throughway between lots, on top of curbs, on the grass, besides the maintenance sheds -- basically every possible flat surface is occupied. Most of those folks get ticketed on most days, so I guess it's worth at least $5, too. It's going to get cutthroat in the winter when folks lose all of those makeshift spots to snow.
Some cars seem to avoid tickets and my guess is that Laz isn't ticketing people who pay for monthly passes but show up at 8:00am and have nowhere to park but the side of a hill.
Some cars seem to avoid tickets and my guess is that Laz isn't ticketing people who pay for monthly passes but show up at 8:00am and have nowhere to park but the side of a hill.
bigeman312
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In my opinion, this is less of an issue about under-priced parking, but rather under-supplied parking. This is a rural park-and-ride next to an interstate. People should be encouraged to park here and take the train into the city, rather than riving in on Route 2.
When talking about raiding prices in the city, we are encouraging people to use transit, walk, or bike instead of driving. Here, raising parking prices (while a short-term solution to overcrowding) would only encourage people to drive instead of transit. Littleton is not dense enough for any type of local transit or much walking/cycling to the station. Therefore, parking should be drastically expanded at Littleton. This is a good problem to have and means that the extended short-turns are working as planed.
Fitchburg commuter line improvements to be finished by end of 2015 - JANUARY 09, 2014
C
cozzyd
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I wonder if there are many people who would be closer to the Lowell line but take the 495 to Littleton for the Porter connection.
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Not letting prices rise for a staple of life gets you Soviet-style bread lines. Applied to parking, the bread line looks like too many cars circling the lot, and cars parking illegally.
To prevent bread lines, let prices rise and let additional supply/competitors be enticed into the market.
Low prices don't encourage consumption (or MBTA ridership) when supply is fixed (and maxed out). They just encourage "getting in the bread line early" and an artificial scarcity. Getting there early to get a spot is often just wasting people's time instead of using prices to better-allocate the thing.
If any parking facility fills before the AM peak ends, its price is too low.
A full (or unpredictably-full) lot is, today, encouraging people to drive. It isn't about prices, its about a scarily-unpredictable length of commute, and taking too long to find a spot when you are calling it close and your train is about to arrive.
In fact, they should also reserve some $10 "premium" (close-in) spots for everyone who'd rather pay extra for a "sure" spot than miss their train. Giving the best spots to people because they are early is inefficient. Our goal is to maximize ridership and minimize the subsidy, not to encourage early-rising.
Enough commuters will happily pay more--$5 easy, and some $10-- for a more-reliable commute and higher parking fees is a bargain compared to missing a train or driving in a (later) rush period.
Raising prices is the first, best solution for (at least) four reasons:
1) Done right, it leaves ridership basically "flat", and ensures that the lot does max-out, but does so at the end of the AM inbound peak (or one train after, even), instead of at the start or middle of it.
2) Higher prices that have the lot fill more slowly will spread both the road-loads and passenger-loads more evenly across the across the infrastructure instead of making all the train riders bunch up on the early trains, and all the drivers drive late (because the lot is full)
3) It raises revenue...immediate cash that can be deployed anywhere in the transportation system to ease congestion
4) It proves the payback on additional parking. High demand, if it is allowed to be reflected in higher prices shows that the bond authority devoted to new parking will actually be "covered" by new parkers and their fees.
Arlington - your argument is an argument on how to maximize revenue rather than maximize service. How would competitors/supply get enticed here? Neighbors start offering their land to parking for a price?
If the lot has a capacity of 500 cars, raising the price is just taking advantage of the demand rather than ameliorating the issue. Those 500 gets a better experience, 500 drivers gets served - any excess would have to find a different solution. Some may be able to carpool, others walk, other drive onward, others just won't participate.
The solution to having more people getting service is to provide more of service. In this case parking. As bigeman said, this is a rural area, we want people to use this station and come into Boston by train. This means we needs to be able to handle the demands of people using the line. Raising the price would not increase the number of people.
If the lot has a capacity of 500 cars, raising the price is just taking advantage of the demand rather than ameliorating the issue. Those 500 gets a better experience, 500 drivers gets served - any excess would have to find a different solution. Some may be able to carpool, others walk, other drive onward, others just won't participate.
The solution to having more people getting service is to provide more of service. In this case parking. As bigeman said, this is a rural area, we want people to use this station and come into Boston by train. This means we needs to be able to handle the demands of people using the line. Raising the price would not increase the number of people.
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Sellouts before the last AM train has departed are *not* a better experience. Higher prices serve to better-match available parking to available train seats. The goal has to be to re-price the lot (every day, if you could) to ensure that it always sells out by 9am (or one train after the last inbound peak train), but not before.
"We'll always have a spot for you" is a way better promise to make than "its cheap, but you can't get it".
Hikes have the side-benefit of maximizing revenue to a money-losing public entity, but the real reason is efficient allocation of scarce resources, which is best done by auction (or the "slow auction" of raising prices $1...maybe only Sept-June). Parking on the T should definitely be cheaper during the summer vacation "lull".
Your plan: Forcing "any excess" to "find a better solution" imposes serious burdens on people, some of whom would have been happy to just pay $1 more and get there an hour later. Underpriced parking not increasing ridership (again, the lot is full, and you have no idea how many have been turned away or turned off), and wrongly-allocating the "surplus" created by extra train service.
You are, on the one hand, not charging $5 to people who are willing to pay more, and certainly turning away people who would have *happily* paid the higher parking fee to get on a train that let them sleep a little later.
How do we allocate a scarce resource between a bunch of people? "get there early" is Soviet-bread-line stupid. "Get there early and fill the lot at low subsidized prices" is even breadlinier-and-stupider. An absurd political promise that something was cheap and plentiful when it was naturally neither.
From a public policy standpoint, we need to scare off some "early-but-no-more-than-$4" riders in favor of some "later-and-$5-or-more"riders. Same net drivers. Same net riders. More revenue for the T, more-even use of the trains themselves, and, most importantly: service use that better conforms to the whole of everyone's "lives" rather than being dictated by a few early-rising bargain-hunters.
The "early breadline" for "cheap" $4 parking arbitrarily favors people who happen to have body clocks or jobs that can be gotten to early. There's no public policy reason why we should subsidize that behavior.
Instead, raising prices cuts the subsidy on whatever behaviors are going to fill the trains evenly and fill the lot by the *end* of the inbound rush.
If 500 is the max, the price should be set (at any MBTA lot of any capacity, really) to ensure that the lot sells out only by the first inbound train after the AM peak--that way we've spread the load "evenly" across all trains.
This should also result in discounting on underused lots and on underused lines (looking at you, Greenbush)
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JeffDowntown
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Also, higher prices do encourage private operators to replicate additional, alternative parking nearby. Because it would become profitable, rather than subsidized.
fattony
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I think you are both right. Arlington is talking about how to allocate a scarce resource. You are talking about adding more of the resource. Both are solutions in a way. In any case, Arlington's recipe always applies. They have "too many" people trying to park in this lot because of a mismatch of price and demand. MBTA is leaving money on the table and simultaneously disappointing their customers. That isn't good for anyone, it is just inefficient.
If they were smart, they would collect higher fees while they can on the scarce number of spots and use the revenue (or projected future receipts) to bankroll adding capacity leading to lower (or at least not increasing) prices in the future. But they aren't smart, they are deliberately inefficient in a well-intentioned, but nonsensical attempt to be democratic.
I'm probably as free market oriented as anyone on this site but I can't see the best case solution here being to raise prices until the market is satisfied. (Which they should do, but shouldn't stop there) I think the rub here is that there is plenty of land near the Littleton and other commuter rail stations, making the resource less scare than it would be otherwise if the T would recognize she it has a good thing going. If they raise prices and then stop.. They are simply turning people away. It doesn't make sense for them to make a killing on parking while the train suffers.
It's also not as simple as market dynamics on a constrained resource since the commuter rail has (presumably) slack space on most if not all trains. For every commuter that wants to park but can't, you are missing out on $20 that trumps the parking fee by a lot (we could tangent to why the T doesn't peak price their trains but that's a whole different issue). The T has to consider this impact when making parking allocation decisions. This also isn't a close in Subway station with a developed bus network to funnel people in.
We probably need more information here - what's going on with the adjacent land and why doesn't the T own it and develop it to parking? A quick google search shows a lot of undeveloped land near the Littleton station. What's the cost to acquire? I don't think we are talking about a lot of extra land. But the T should add parking to the degree they hit the break even point on adding parking.
Hmm, Littleton/Rt495 has "average weekday 69% availability" according to MBTA website. My guess is that the website is never updated.
Anyway, while I do agree with Arlington in general that prices need to flex according to demand, I also agree with bigeman312 that this particular station is a good candidate for increased parking supply.
The MBTA tends to have a complete lack of understanding of context when it comes to parking supply. They throw down humongous amounts of parking in the worst locations, and then fail to build significant amounts of parking where it would be least harmful and most helpful.
For example, the $36 million idiotic waste of money on the Salem parking garage -- next to a literally ancient downtown -- would have gone a long way in a location like Littleton/495. And instead of inducing huge amounts of nasty commuter traffic through the old streets of Salem, at Littleton/495 it would easily draw and disgorge cars on and off a major highway interchange. (I'm not claiming that Littleton is an alternative for Salem riders -- just comparing the context of the parking supply).
Furthermore, expanded parking supply could exist within the already-blighted 495 corridor, probably mitigating additional environmental impact significantly.
This is what the MBTA does not understand: When a rail line crosses a massive highway interchange -- that's precisely when you want to max out on the park-and-ride style. And when a station lies in a town or city center, that's when you want to minimize on the parking and maximize on the walking, biking and connecting transit.
So one thing that might be smart is to raise the prices on any existing parking within town centers along the Fitchburg line, while trying to build more supply at 495. Right now it's the opposite: parking is $2.50 at South Acton, the next station! Parking is free at Ayer and Concord! $2 at Waltham. Well, maybe the towns do something to limit access, because otherwise, why pay for a spot at Littleton? The policies make no sense right now. They should be trying to encourage traffic to head towards Littleton 495 interchange, not towards the small streets of the various towns.
Anyway, while I do agree with Arlington in general that prices need to flex according to demand, I also agree with bigeman312 that this particular station is a good candidate for increased parking supply.
The MBTA tends to have a complete lack of understanding of context when it comes to parking supply. They throw down humongous amounts of parking in the worst locations, and then fail to build significant amounts of parking where it would be least harmful and most helpful.
For example, the $36 million idiotic waste of money on the Salem parking garage -- next to a literally ancient downtown -- would have gone a long way in a location like Littleton/495. And instead of inducing huge amounts of nasty commuter traffic through the old streets of Salem, at Littleton/495 it would easily draw and disgorge cars on and off a major highway interchange. (I'm not claiming that Littleton is an alternative for Salem riders -- just comparing the context of the parking supply).
Furthermore, expanded parking supply could exist within the already-blighted 495 corridor, probably mitigating additional environmental impact significantly.
This is what the MBTA does not understand: When a rail line crosses a massive highway interchange -- that's precisely when you want to max out on the park-and-ride style. And when a station lies in a town or city center, that's when you want to minimize on the parking and maximize on the walking, biking and connecting transit.
So one thing that might be smart is to raise the prices on any existing parking within town centers along the Fitchburg line, while trying to build more supply at 495. Right now it's the opposite: parking is $2.50 at South Acton, the next station! Parking is free at Ayer and Concord! $2 at Waltham. Well, maybe the towns do something to limit access, because otherwise, why pay for a spot at Littleton? The policies make no sense right now. They should be trying to encourage traffic to head towards Littleton 495 interchange, not towards the small streets of the various towns.
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I'm all for more park-and-ride parking, but that's always a mid-term solution.
Raising prices is the short (immediate) term solution to making people happier (trading a small $ amount for the sizeable convenience of always finding a spot during your commute). And then places with high prices and full lots should rocket to the top of the parking-expansion list.
When people can only "vote" for parking by getting up early and filling all spaces, you lose a lot of valuable information about what market demand is really like. If the T would let prices rise, it would make for a very transparent system of allocating garage-construction dollars (this should have happened in Beverly, and didn't, and now that garage languishes at 100 CARS PER DAY in a 500 SPOT GARAGE, while Littleton suffers) (Beverly users complain "$5 per day is too steep for me" grrr. Shoulda found that out on the old lot, not in the new garage!). We'll see "find out too late" what demand is when Salem opens too.
In other metros, the way they handle this is to build the next expansion as structured parking, usually sharing an overpass & elevator with the station, and then when *that* structure opens they close some more surface lots and build the first few levels of a structure on that (to have a smooth increase in spots, rather than a whole lot of surge-and-regress as lots get opened and closed)
Let a particular station spend a year or two paying $1 above "normal" rates if it maxes mid-rush to prove demand and fund parking expansion anywhere. Then allow the high rates for another 2 years while the new lot gets engineered, funded, and built. Then *lower* the rate to the then-normal price when the garage opens (if that's what it takes to fill it).
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bigeman312
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A-ha! I leave a comment and an interesting debate rages (mwahahaha). But really, I agree with Arlington, mostly. The short-term solution is to charge market rate for parking and raising prices. I do not want to artificially keep prices low. If there is a 500-car lot, and 1000 people want to park their cars, increase the price until just under 500 cars are parking there every day.
Where I disagree with Arlington is that increasing parking prices on a rural park-and-ride station is a good long-term solution. If 1000 people want to park their cars here, build a 1500 car parking garage. Here, the product you are selling is not parking, but rather a seat on a train (+any necessary parking). A full-parking lot is a short-term opportunity to increase parking revenue, and a long-term opportunity to increase the supply of parking which would in-turn increase total revenue and, more importantly to a public transit agency, increase ridership.
I am, in general, not very pro-parking. For background: I view it is a sometimes necessary evil in cities that should be discouraged in favor of alternative modes of transportation. That being said, this is pretty much THE textbook example of where an abundance of parking is a good thing. At a rural park-and-right at the convergence of two highways, with frequent service into a major city, parking should decrease VMT and increase transit ridership.
So, from an economics standpoint (which is Arlington's viewpoint), parking here is not the good they should be selling, but a means of them facilitating the use of their product. From an urban planning/environmental standpoint, more parking means fewer cars driving into the city and trying to park there. Both arguments come down to the same thing, here parking at a train station does what it should - facilitate public transit usage.
EDIT: Didn't read Arlington's comment after the jump. We are essentially saying the same thing. Oh well.
Where I disagree with Arlington is that increasing parking prices on a rural park-and-ride station is a good long-term solution. If 1000 people want to park their cars here, build a 1500 car parking garage. Here, the product you are selling is not parking, but rather a seat on a train (+any necessary parking). A full-parking lot is a short-term opportunity to increase parking revenue, and a long-term opportunity to increase the supply of parking which would in-turn increase total revenue and, more importantly to a public transit agency, increase ridership.
I am, in general, not very pro-parking. For background: I view it is a sometimes necessary evil in cities that should be discouraged in favor of alternative modes of transportation. That being said, this is pretty much THE textbook example of where an abundance of parking is a good thing. At a rural park-and-right at the convergence of two highways, with frequent service into a major city, parking should decrease VMT and increase transit ridership.
So, from an economics standpoint (which is Arlington's viewpoint), parking here is not the good they should be selling, but a means of them facilitating the use of their product. From an urban planning/environmental standpoint, more parking means fewer cars driving into the city and trying to park there. Both arguments come down to the same thing, here parking at a train station does what it should - facilitate public transit usage.
EDIT: Didn't read Arlington's comment after the jump. We are essentially saying the same thing. Oh well.
They could probably stand to both raise rates and build more supply at Littleton/495.
My thinking is that there should be an explicit policy of encouraging drivers to use the Littleton/495 park-and-ride and discouraging drivers from seeking out the town center stations that do not handle high traffic flows well. That policy could be enacted by tilting prices in favor of the Littleton lot (after reaching whatever overall level of balance is appropriate).
The thing about park-and-riders is that you can entice them to use the system at several points on their journey. The best place to do it is at a station adjacent to a major highway interchange that can handle the large traffic flows induced by the park-and-ride station. The worst place to induce park-and-riders is at a town center station that could be part of the walkable center of a small urban village or main street district. Again, the reason is because park-and-ride parking lots cause massive traffic flows, requiring massive investment in nasty road infrastructure that is lightly used most of the day. But that same infrastructure poisons a walkable area 24/7.
Really, it's the same reason we build these park-and-rides in the first place: to entice drivers not to take their vehicles all the way into the walkable city in the first place, by giving them somewhere else to store their cars. And apply that same reasoning the the various walkable town centers along the way.
I know, in many cases the old suburban towns have basically gutted their centers and made them unwalkable anyway... but maybe that damage can be reversed in the future.
My thinking is that there should be an explicit policy of encouraging drivers to use the Littleton/495 park-and-ride and discouraging drivers from seeking out the town center stations that do not handle high traffic flows well. That policy could be enacted by tilting prices in favor of the Littleton lot (after reaching whatever overall level of balance is appropriate).
The thing about park-and-riders is that you can entice them to use the system at several points on their journey. The best place to do it is at a station adjacent to a major highway interchange that can handle the large traffic flows induced by the park-and-ride station. The worst place to induce park-and-riders is at a town center station that could be part of the walkable center of a small urban village or main street district. Again, the reason is because park-and-ride parking lots cause massive traffic flows, requiring massive investment in nasty road infrastructure that is lightly used most of the day. But that same infrastructure poisons a walkable area 24/7.
Really, it's the same reason we build these park-and-rides in the first place: to entice drivers not to take their vehicles all the way into the walkable city in the first place, by giving them somewhere else to store their cars. And apply that same reasoning the the various walkable town centers along the way.
I know, in many cases the old suburban towns have basically gutted their centers and made them unwalkable anyway... but maybe that damage can be reversed in the future.