Steve Raney Palo Alto Jul 9, 2008 17:45 pm

Almost all employee parking in the suburban United States is free. I'm dealing with the controversial issue of changing that. If a survey asked employees "Is it OK to charge you $6 per day for parking?" the answers would be strongly negative. A new "carrot and stick" proposal is being advocated to seven large Silicon Valley employers. The following survey provides a guided tour through the new, more complicated policy. If the topic is of interest, please go ahead and take the nine-question survey, answering from the perspective of a "free-parking commuter." Less complicated policies won't fly politically, but this policy faces the challenge of being complicated to explain to busy workers. The survey can be found at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=KfRJoTOg7Kdg724gW9lCMQ_3d_3d I'll make the survey results available in a follow up message.

The current status of advocacy can be characterized as at an "impasse." Tech employers are unenthusiastic about parking charges, so are unlikely to take this on. Polls rank parking charges/taxes extremely low, so government is unlikely to take this on. But it is impossible to achieve CA 2020 CO2 reductions without something like this. Compounding the problem, government has motivation to overstate its ability to achieve 2020 CO2 reductions. It is not career-enhancing to suggest that inconvenient remedies will be required to achieve 2020 CO2.

Two previous studies are relevant:

A) A 1989 paper ("Parking Subsidies and Commuter Mode Choice: Assessing the Evidence," by Richard Willson, Donald Shoup, and Martin Wachs) finds commute rewards are less effective than charges: "A program of transit and vanpool subsidies as well as preferential parking for carpoolers had little effect until [Twentieth Century Corporation in Los Angeles] raised the price of employee parking from no charge to $30 per month for solo drivers. Solo driving decreased from 90 to 65 percent after pricing."

B) A 1990 paper ("Proceedings--Commuter Parking Symposium" by Metro and Association for Commuter Transportation, Seattle, Washington) found that charges changed behavior where incentives had not: "CH2M Hill in Bellevue, Washington began charging solo drivers $40 per month for parking, the amount the company pays the building owner for parking. All employees receive a $40 per month travel allowance in their paychecks. Carpoolers park for free. Walkers, cyclists and drop offs keep the travel allowance. Solo driving declined from 89 percent to 64 percent after the parking policies were put into place." My previous, related FSB posts: 6/5/08: "stick" works better than "carrot" 10/20/06: overcoming inertia: cities "jump in together" theory

- Steve Raney,
Cities21, Palo Alto, CA