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Reinventing Parking    Demand-responsive parking prices: a key element of Adaptive Parking Posted: 13 Jan 2012 05:25 PM PST If your town or city wants a parking system that is fair and efficient and which adapts itself easily to changing conditions then you will also need parking prices that adapt to changing conditions.  Pricing parking is controversial but there is no getting away from its importance for improving parking outcomes.   So a shift towards performance pricing for parking is a key part of the Adaptive Parking agenda. The barriers are political, not practical. We have the technology.  SFPark's performance pricing uses smart parking meters like this one. One key reason to make parking pricing more responsive to demand has been well explained by Donald Shoup. It is to reduce cruising for parking. In districts with saturated on-street parking an alarming percentage of traffic consists of motorists searching for a local parking spot. This is totally unnecessary traffic caused by mismanaged parking! In the Adaptive Parking agenda I would extend this reason a bit further and take aim at ALL queuing for parking (including queues outside parking lots and even invisible queues, like waiting lists for permits).   Why extend performance pricing to minimizing all queuing for parking? Because a second reason to want responsive parking prices is to better reveal market prices for parking in each neighbourhood. Even private sector parking prices can be unresponsive. There is an adage in the parking industry that many operators set their prices by simply 'looking across the street'. Many organizations have long waiting lists for employee parking permits. A broader approach to performance pricing might seek ways to reduce such queues and make parking prices more responsive and less sticky so that they more accurately reflect current conditions.   This post is the third in a series explaining the basics of Adaptive Parking.

Beyond parking benefit districts Posted: 11 Aug 2012 01:11 AM PDT Emily Washington at the Market Urbanism blog has been doing a book club style review of Donald Shoup's book, The High Cost of Free Parking. It has been a useful process! If you are new to Shoup's parking reform ideas, please take a look right now at the whole series, which can be found here: Chapters 1 - 4, Chapters 5 - 9, Chapters 10 - 14, Chapters 16 - 18, and Chapters 19 - 22. She wrapped up the other day, with the Preface and Afterword to the paperback edition In these two chapters, which Donald Shoup added for the paperback edition of the book, he discusses some of the changes in parking policy since the original edition in 2004. He also reiterates his three prescriptions for saner parking policy: 1) Set the right price for curb parking; 2) Return parking revenue to pay for local public services; 3) Remove parking minimum requirements. She also shared some final thoughts, which I want to take up with this post.  To reiterate, I highly recommend the entire book. I am in complete agreement with Shoup on his first and third recommendations for parking policy, and he clearly and persuasively makes the case for these two arguments. However, the more I think about it, the more I think that his recommendation of parking revenue benefit districts might not be the best solution, even though it would be much better than the status quo. Yes, this policy has successfully built support for performance pricing in some neighborhoods. However, I think that tax abatement districts would build even more support. ... Property taxes are particularly unpopular, and I think abatement would be sufficient to build support for parking prices that eliminate cruising. As Shoup says, charging higher meter rates is not about increasing cities' revenue, but rather about eliminating curb parking shortages. By giving the increases in revenue back to the residents who are paying these higher rate

So what is Adaptive Parking? I suggest the name 'Adaptive Parking' for various parking policy reforms that focus on increasing the market responsiveness of our parking systems. 

Publications Note: Several of these documents contain draft versions of published work (or in different stages of being published). For citations and quotations please refer to the officially published version. The contents of this site can be freely used for personal use ONLY. Although the material contained in this web site is freely available, it is not public domain. Its contents, in whole or in part (including graphics and datasets), cannot be copied and published in ANY form (printed or electronic) without consent. Permission to use any graphic material herein in any form of publication, such as an article, a book or a conference presentation, on any media must be requested prior to use. Books | Book Chapters | Articles in Preparation | Refereed Articles | Special Issues | Reviews & Reports Books Rodrigue, J-P, T. Notteboom and J. Shaw (2012) (eds) The Sage Handbook of Transport Studies, London: Sage. Forthcoming. Rodrigue, J-P, C. Comtois and B. Slack (2009) The Geography of Transport Systems, Second Edition, London: Routledge, 352 pages. ISBN: 9780415483247. Rodrigue, J-P, C. Comtois and B. Slack (2006) The Geography of Transport Systems, London: Routledge, 296 pages, ISBN: 0415354412. Rodrigue, J-P (2000) L'espace économique mondial: les économies avancées et la mondialisation, (The Global Economic Space : Advanced Economies and Globalization), Collection géographie contemporaine, Sainte Foy : Presses de l'Université du Québec, 534 pages. ISBN 2760510379. PricewaterhouseCoopers Best Business Book Award. Book Chapters (2012) "Commercial Goods Transport" in UN-HABITAT, 2013 Global Report on Human Settlements: Sustainable Urban Transport, United Nations Human Settlements Programme, London: Earthscan. In preparation. (2012) "Transport, Flows and Globalization", in J-P Rodrigue, T. Notteboom and J. Shaw (eds) The Sage Handbook of Transport Studies, London: Sage. In preparation. Rodrigue, J-P, B. Slack and C. Comtois (2012) "Green Supply Cha

In press: Hole, G.J. "Experimental Design". In: Research Methods in Psychology, Fourth Edition, edited by G.M. Breakwell, D.B. Wright and J. A. Smith. London: Sage Publications.   In press: Laurence, S. and Hole, G.J. Identity specific adaptation with composite faces. Visual Cognition.   2011: Laurence, S. and Hole, G. The effect of familiarity on face adaptation. Perception, 40, 450- 463.   2011: Hole, G.J. and George, P.A. Evidence for holistic processing of facial age. Visual Cognition, 19 (5), 585-615.   2011: Hole, G.J. Identity-specific face adaptation effects: evidence for abstractive face representations. Cognition, 119, 216-228.   2011: Briggs, G.F., Hole, G.J., and Land, M.F. Emotionally involving telephone conversations lead to driver error and visual tunnelling. Transportation Research Part F, 14, 313-323.   2010: G. Hole and V.Bourne. "Face Processing: Psychological, Neuropsychological and Applied Perspectives". Oxford: Oxford University Press.   2009: Harrison, G. and Hole, G.J. Evidence for a contact-based explanation of the own-age bias in face recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 16, 264-269.   2009: Bourne, V.J., Vladeanu, M. and Hole, G.J. Lateralised repetition priming for featurally and configurally manipulated familiar faces: evidence for differentially lateralised processing mechanisms. Laterality, 14 (3), 287-299.   2008: G..J. Hole. Predictors of motor vehicle collisions. In: M. Duckworth, T. Iezzi, and W. O'Donohue (eds.) "Motor Vehicle Collisions: Medical, Psychosocial and Legal Consequences". Elsevier.   2007: G.J. Hole. "The Psychology of Driving".Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.   2007: Steede, L. L., Tree, J. J., and Hole, G. J.  I can't recognize your face but I can recognize its movement. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 24, 451-466.   2006: Steede, L.L. and Hole, G.J. Repetition priming and recognition of dynamic and static chimeras. Perception, 35, 1367-1382.   2006: Steede, L. L., Tree, J. J., and Hole, G. J. Diss

MIT Smart Cities: City Car Published February 12, 2008 Energy Policy , Transportation 2 Comments Tags: Automotive X Prize, Electric Car When I think of car sharing in the U.S., I think of Flexcar and Zipcar [they have merged -- new name is Zipcar]. Together I think they had around 5,000 vehicles at merger time in 2007. But so far carsharing has no measurable impact on urban traffic or CO2 load. Some of the consumer resistance may be price. That's where the MIT City Car looks promising - this is exactly what I want for the urban short-trips that involved carrying stuff back to the transport station. I could imagine the Buenos Aires CBD traffic density being cut in half or more by a hundred thousand of these way-cool cars, with a "luggage cart" stand every couple of blocks. And a little car that can move in any direction on its four independent wheel-robots would be very appealing - though possibly deadly amidst speeding BA taxis… UPDATE 080212: Some clarifications are required, prompted by comments to this post from carsharing pioneer Dave Brook - whose blog is a recommended source on the industry. I'll just briefly enumerate these points: 1. Carsharing cannot make a major impact on urban traffic/CO2 load unless the concept wins large scale adoption by consumers who elect to substitute public transport + carsharing for their current single-passenger-per-vehicle preferences. 2. Not being privy to any objective studies of consumer preferences, I'm speculating that at least two factors will gate acceptance: convenience and price. On convenience the City Car concept might contribute if deployed with sufficient spatial frequency to e.g. make Ms. shopper happy running her errands within a convenient carsharing radius around a transport station. My speculation is that density is probably not coarser than a 2 block grid. 3. Price - The City Car could make high frequency deployment more economic by introducing several operating cost efficiencies

Finding the zone: The Zen of urban cycling 36 BY JOEL GWADZ 27 JAN 2012 2:49 PM Photo by Choh Wah Ye. I am a mountain biker and mountain bike racing is a big part of my love for cycling. There's only one problem: I live in the city. To get to the hills, I have to put my bike on the car and drive an hour out of town. Luckily for me, there are many aspects of urban riding that fulfill a similar sensory experience to the high I find on the trail. I'm no World Cup racer, but hammering down the mountain biking trails, I still have moments when I find myself in a state of athletic euphoria that riders call "the zone." When you're in the zone, your bike and body operate as a single unit. Your thoughts and actions are intertwined. Your mind measures the variables as they approach at warp speed and you respond without thinking, arcing tight twists and turns through gaps just inches wider than your handlebars. Riding in the zone is an amazing, Zen-like experience. It is the cyclist's version of a "runner's high." This immense state of focus not only happens in the woods. The zone can be achieved when riding in the city, too. In a mountain bike race, the competition adds to the adrenalin. The effort required to chase the racers in front of you or escape the racers behind you can fuel the experience. In town, encounters with car drivers can act in very much the same way. In the woods, it is about flowing over logs in the trail, cruising through seemingly lineless rock gardens, and dipping between tight trees. On the city streets, it's about weaving past the guy on his cell phone who steps out from between parked cars, adapting to an aggressive lane change by a soccer mom in a minivan, or avoiding a car door swinging open into your lane. In so many ways, urban riding is just a series of close calls. Yesterday, I was taking a standard route across town. I was moving at a pretty good clip, when a driver behind me laid on the horn. Instead of ridin