PT BLOG from Page 33


when it is due, but did this relatively simple solution really do the trick? It doesn’t seem reasonable to me. I am a “if you build it they will come” kind of guy. All the free


or even available parking on the planet will not get people to go somewhere if there is no other reason for them to go. Conversely, they will park in the mud and walk through a driving rain to see their team play. TakeOld Pasadena as an example. This was the “skid row” area


of Pasadena, CA. No one went there. It was a mess. They began a pay parking program, and a couple of years later, it was the go-to area in Los Angeles. So, parking was responsible for the rebirth?Not really. Parking provided the money. The money provided urban renewal. And suddenly trendy shops and restaurants found a place to locate. Then people started coming to Old Pasadena. I don’t know any facts about the situationmentioned above, but


things work in tandem. Parking is an important factor, but so is the street scene, or the entertainment factor, or the mix of stores and clubs and restaurants. Can I sit and watch the world go by? Is there a world going by to watch? Are there nooks and crannies where I can be alone, and benches where my friend and I can sit in the sun? Are the sidewalks broken, the streets dirty? Are the shops invit-


ing? Are there a lot of empty stores? Is every other shop a wig store or run by the Salvation Army? Parking is a factor, an important factor, but not the only factor.


A huge garage with plenty of parking may not be “right” for the neighborhood where there are tons of on-street parking that just needs to be managed. Yes, the parking professional needs to be able to sit at the table


with the othermerchants and planners, but it should not be expected that his or her actions will solve all of a community’s problems.


Do You Adjust On-Street Rates Every Time Too Many Spaces Are Empty? (Posted May 26) I had breakfast with a manufacturer of on-street equipment at


the IPI show. We spoke about a number of topics, but he asked me what I thought about market-based pricing. The way he asked the question made me think he didn’t think much of it. I probed a bit and found that he didn’t believe that prices could


be reasonably changed hour by hour to fit the number of cars on the street. “How would you communicate that to drivers?” he asked. He noted that his product was perfectly capable of changing


rates on a moment’s notice, meter by meter. That wasn’t his point. He wasmusing that the good Professor Shoupmight have a bit of an “ivory tower” approach and that the real world works differently. Good point. I haven’t reviewed this with the Shoup-dog, but from my point


of view, you are throwing the baby out with the bath water. It seems to me that for this to work, the word has to get out as to the rates in an area at a certain time. When the new theater opens, for example, rates will go up in


that area when it is usually full (Friday night and on weekends and holidays), but they will go down onMonday p.m. and etc.We find that an area with tony clubs and restaurants may have higher rates during the evening but low rates during the day. Rates are adjusted as data are collected about occupancy in each


area and raised or lowered so there is a free space on each block all the time. In San Francisco, the SFMTA’s smart-parking manage-


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ment program, SFpark, is adjusting rates monthly, I believe, and then not more than a quarter a go. Who knows, that may be too often. You need to be sure that the change in occupancy isn’t a one- time anomaly – say, the opening of “StarWars” vs. the opening of “The Hangover Part IV.” To me, it just makes common sense that the rates are adjusted


often enough tomake a difference, but not so often that you lose sight of the objective.


LA Enforcement Chief ‘Retires’ (Posted May 26)


The powers-that-be in Los Angeles apparently have removed


Jimmy Price, the head of parking enforcement. (Wanda over on PT’s Facebook page posted the story. You can read it there with the PT Facebook wag’s comments.) First, it was the porno movie and the Gold Card Desk that


voided tickets for a select few, then shoplifting and soliciting pros- titution. Yep, this means that supervision is lax at the city that owns LAX. It was interested what they said in the article. Price was


“untouchable” because his department brought in $100 million a year in citation revenue. Wasn’t anyone at the LA city government wondering how


much they could bring in if there was some good oversight in the department? I wonder what a total audit of the enforcement division would bring to light. Sheesh….


A Story From the Zone (Posted May 24)


Mark Curtis at the Parking Zone displayed something differ-


ent at the IPI show and told a story as to its genesis. The company is marketing an up-market recycling container that takes all types of recyclables, enables users to separate them into appropriate bins, and looks good all at the same time. The unit was designed and first manufactured by Paul Allen’s group at Rose Garden arena in Port- land, OR. Allen had spent hundreds of millions on the arena, and wanted


it to be as sustainable as possible. One area was recycling, and Allen didn’t want different colored trash cans sitting around his arena. So the owners designed and built customized units for the center.When other NBA teams visited the Trail Blazers, their own- ers saw the recycling units, fell in love with them and wanted to buy them from Allen. But the Rose Garden arena is in the sports and entertainment


business, not the business of selling such products. Enter Parking Zone.Mark and his crew now have the manufacturing and market- ing rights for the product. And it looks great.


What’s Going On in Chicago? (Posted May 16)


Some “local activists” are stirring the pot in Chicago and ask-


ing newly installed Mayor Rahm Emanuel to unwind the lease agreement over on-street parking. If you believe the story, posted May 8 at TheExpiredMeter.com (“Group Hopes Mayor Emanuel Can Cancel, Renegotiate Parking Meter Lease Deal”), they are at the barricades and any moment now Hizzoner will step up and blow the deal away.


Parking Today www.parkingtoday.com


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