PT BLOG


JVH comments on Parking News every day at PT Blog – log on at www.parkingtoday.com. Each month, there are at least 40 other comments like these, posted daily.


If you go to the online edition of October 2010


Parking Today, you will find all the “hot links” below.And even more current comments by PT Edi- tor JVH.


The Anti-Shoupista … (Posted Sept. 1) Mark Rimmer of RTA Consulting comments on Randal


O’Toole, a Cato Institute Senior Fellow working on urban growth, public land and transportation issues, versusUCLA Pro- fessor of Urban Planning Donald Shoup: Sometimes I agree with O’Toole and sometimes I don’t; this


time I do and I don’t. In his “Free Markets for Free Parking” posting at Cato@Liberty, O’Toole criticizes Shoup’s theories on “TheHighCost of Free Parking” because they don’t apply every- where (I agree, they don’t), but he’s making the argument from the perspective that parking should always be a matter of indi- vidual choice and the free market (I disagree). Parking, like roads, is infrastructure and a commodity that


needs to be managed. It also is a commodity for which the demand is likely to fluctuate on a regular basis but not necessar- ily at regular intervals – in other words, the demand on a sunny


afternoon in May is completely different from the demand on a cold November afternoon. Anybody who has been in this business for even a week


understands that the concept of the “typical” parking day is nothing more than a myth; the only sure thing is that every day is going to bring different challenges and stresses. There is no “answer” that will completely solve the parking issues for any town or any business, and if you do happen to miraculously find a solution that works today, you can be pretty certain that something will happen tomorrow that will require you to adjust your approach. Doesn’tmatter if it’s the rates you charge, the hours you are


open, the level of staffing you have on-site or the schedule for cleaning the elevators, something is going to change every day or even several times a day that will require some sort of adjustment (temporary or otherwise) in order to make it work. The simple fact is that most of these “theories” miss a key


piece of the equation, and that is that nobody gets in their car and drives somewhere to park. They park in order to go some- where else, and“somewhere else” is always in flux. The parking demand at the beach on a summer weekend


during the day is a completely different animal than that same location at night.The parking demand for a sold-outKennyChes- Continued on Page 45


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OCTOBER 2010 • PARKING TODAY • www.parkingtoday.com


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