New York City is exploring the possibility of privatising the running of its 39,000 parking meters, currently researching mistakes made by other cities and exploring potential bidders.

According to the Wall Street Journal, NYC officials are motivated in part by a belief that a private company could help alleviate some of the well-known frustrations of parking in New York: circling block after block in a search for an empty spot or feeding a meter during dinner.

Part of the city’s motivation lies in a belief that a private company will help with modern innovations, including pay by phone, or a mobile app directing drivers to empty spaces detected by parking sensors. In addition to this, they also feel that a private company might be able to offer savings on labour costs.

New York's meters brought in $149 million in revenue in the last fiscal year, but City officials said it was too soon to say what effect a private operator might have on parking rates or revenues.

Entry into privatisation is cautious for a reason; as historically it has been fraught with problems. In 2008, Chicago privatised their parking meters; receiving a $1.1 billion lump payment—used to close a budget deficit—in exchange for granting the investment group a 75-year lease on the city's meters. The deal done requires the city to pay the investors for lost revenue when streets close for special events or when cutoff times are imposed on meters.

New York City officials say they aren't looking for an upfront balloon payment and wouldn't strike a deal that relinquished control over the setting of parking meter rates or policy. Aaron Renn, a well-known urbanist and blogger who has studied the parking issue, says that the parking meters aren’t an asset like a bridge; but primarily a tool for setting policy on the road, dictating where and for how long motorists leave their cars. A contract with a private operator should preserve the city's ability to say how the space along its kerbs is used, managing a precious real estate asset for the best use for all city residents and visitors. 

An undercover car parking space in Manhattan is expected to sell for over $1 million, according to the New York Post.

The garage is twice the height of an average space at 4.5m high, meaning that the owner could install a car elevator and allow two cars to be parked at the one time. The car space has its own sales contract and will also attract building maintenance fees.

The building itself that the car park is located in is an eight-story pre-war loft building, used as a parking garage. It recently sold for $120 million and is currently being redeveloped, converting  into six luxury condominiums with mammoth, 15-foot-high ceilings.

The city’s second most expensive parking spot is a 300-square-foot “en suite” sky garage that is inside  a $7 million penthouse at 200 11th Ave, which we wrote about in 2009 – view more here.

An article published in the Sydney Morning Herald this week rated and ranked the top ‘extras’ in demand by senior business executives.

A car park ranked as the third most in-demand perk; following money and holidays. (The fourth and fifth most important factors were flexibility and relocation). Given the scarcity of CBD car parks, the value of a car park in the building is a significant motivator. In Sydney and Melbourne,  off-street car parking spaces can have a value of anything up to $10,000 per year. However, relative to $300-500k salaries, it’s not a huge investment.

According to the article in the SMH,  large bonuses and free car spaces are some of the ways that companies show executives that they are being looked after. These benefits can actually lead to bigger long term savings for companies, ensuring that their staff don’t move on after two or three years and saving hundreds of thousands of dollars on recruiting their replacements. 

The Victorian Supreme Court has ordered private car park operators who issue unlawful parking ‘fines’ to stop using misleading tactics. The court's decision confirms that private parking operators cannot levy fines or prosecute motorists who stay overtime or do not display a ticket.

It was alleged that a number of car park operators had breached the Fair Trading Act 1999 by issuing ‘fines’ to consumers with no legal authority; harassing consumers who failed to pay; and illegally threatening legal action.

The court also found that terminology on tickets misled consumers about their rights; and that requests for payments mimicked fines issued by official agencies such as councils and government, using terminology such as 'offence', 'breach' and 'fines.'

View the full judgement on the Consumer Affairs Victoria site here. 

In Perth, the Motorcycle Riders Association is calling on the government to allow motorcycles and scooters to be able to park on public walkways in Perth city.

According to ABC online, they are calling for a trial policy similar to Melbourne, allowing motorcycles to park on footpaths and concrete public spaces, providing the vehicle is walked there, the vehicle is parked at least a motorcycle length away from buildings and the vehicle doesn't inhibit pedestrian access.

The MRAWA claims that the system would encourage motorcyclists to commute, which will ease traffic congestion especially at peak hour. In addition to this, they want extra free, all day parking locations to be scattered throughout the city.

Proposals are also under development for motorcycles and scooters to be permitted to use the emergency and bus lanes on Perth’s roads during peak periods.

The City of Perth, meanwhile, has ruled out any plans for footpath parking in the CBD, citing that 75,000 people walk into and around Perth’s CBD everyday; and that motorcycles parked in public spaces would cause obstruction to this free movement. Currently there is a report recommending an expansion and an additional 30 bays at the Mounts Bay Road parking lot due to go to council. If the report is approved, the Mounts Bay Road park will accommodate 102 motorcycles. 

Thanks to Paul Barter’s Reinventing Parking blog, we came across an article this week that explored how the minimum parking requirements in Los Angeles have had a negative impact on street life and force property owners to use their blocks of land highly inefficiently.

For us the clearest representation of how the minimum parking requirements affect the businesses property were a number of diagrams to designed illustrate this. From Mott Smith’s original article: 

A typical parcel of commercial land will be around 50 feet wide (15.24m) by 150 long (45.72m), or 7,500 square feet (just under 700m2) and is traditionally the perfect size for a small businessperson to build a shop and maybe even housing or office space above. Building right up to the front and side property lines would maximise land-use efficiency and pedestrian-friendliness is encouraged.

But onsite parking rules have made this sort of development nearly impossible. In Los Angeles, minimum parking requirements mandate four parking spaces for every 1,000 square feet of retail space. Using our example above, the largest store you could build on a typical property would be 3,000 square feet - less than half of what was possible before the parking requirements came into play.

For restaurants, the requirements are often even more stringent. In a city that requires 10 spaces per 1,000 square feet of restaurant, the largest building you could construct on a typical property would be 1,600 square feet - less than 25 percent of the potential build-out area before parking-requirements.

It’s a simple and easy to understand demonstration of why the minimum parking requirements in this instance are highly ineffective in stimulating demand. Paul Barter concludes his summation by answering his own question:

Is this relevant to your country? Yes! Don't let foolish parking policies destroy your older commercial districts like the United States did!

A council committee in Washington DC has approved a plan to allow city officials to manage the demand for parking spaces by adjusting parking prices, taking inspiration from San Francisco’s SFpark program.

Under the plan, city officials would be able to adjust parking meter rates, length and times of operations, parking fines and residential parking regulations. Called ‘performance parking,’ the program has been tested throughout the city in recent years. The Washington Post reports that the parking plan also directs that money raised by the program be used locally to improve bus services and to foster the use of alternative transportation.

According to the DCdot site, performance-based parking manages the demand for parking to achieve three key elements:

1. Protect resident parking: Higher kerbside parking meter rates combined with more stringent parking restrictions in residential neighbourhoods in the pilot areas help preserve kerbside parking for residents in areas where business or entertainment uses draw lots of visitors.

2. Protect businesses: Performance based meter rates and time limits are designed to encourage brief kerbside parking with high turnover while discouraging long-term parking that would deprive businesses of customers. Visitors with long-term parking requirements are encouraged by the higher meter rates to utilize off-street parking facilities.

3. Promote non-automotive transportation and reduce congestion: Higher kerbside meter rates encourage walking, biking and transit use in lieu of auto travel in congested places.

An online Russian newspaper ‘The Village’ has launched an app and a media campaign designed to try and stop illegal and inconsiderate parking.

Using the app on a mobile phone, the public take photos of the parking offenders, capturing photos of the car and the number plates. Image recognition technology then reads the number plates to identify the driver of the vehicle.

Then, the name of the driver, along with photos of their car, are published to the newspaper’s website, on banners and media placements; as well as allowing people to post the details to their own facbeook pages as well; naming and shaming the drivers; with a message ‘Share to remove’ (the poor parking).

It’s an interesting way of crowd-sourcing and social shaming for poor parking, and will be very interesting to see if it has any effect. We’re not too sure about the name for the application, however – the Parking Douche App. Find out more in the video below. 

Following our recent post on Eran Ben-Joseph’s book, ‘Rethinking a Lot’, The Guardian have also picked up on the story. They summarise some of Ben-Joseph’s key recommendations for improving parking lots to make them more ‘environmentally responsible’ and ‘aesthetically pleasing’ as follows:

Better design. Citing Miami’s car park as a prime example, drawing on great design principles would be able to restore cities and spaces to be proud of, and should add joy to the routine of driving, working and shopping.

Using new technology. A wide range of technological developments are constantly improving parking lots; from robotic car parks to parking guidance systems; pay and display to pay by mobile phone.

Reducing environmental impact. One of the key impacts of the parking lot is the heat generated by the asphalt surface of the lots, contributing to the "urban heat island" phenomenon which makes cities warmer than surrounding rural areas. A range of solutions are underway to harness this energy, from covering lots with solar panels, to developing reflective asphalt, to creating energy by heating water running in pipes beneath the lots.

Using the space above. Either through car parks built underneath existing buildings and developments; or the construction of multi-level car parks; the smaller land usage reduces their impact significantly.

Digging up car parks. Some activists are even determined to go one step further, digging up car parks and celebrating the ‘rebirth of a new greenspace’, creating permeable space instead of paved lots.

Putting some numbers around his research, Ben-Joseph claims that there are an estimated 800 million car parking spaces in the US - one for every car – and amounting to around 9,104 sq km of land space. Covering this whole area with solar panels could generate enough electricity to power 11 million households for a month. Alternatively, he claims that covering 50% of this area with trees could remove 1,260,805 tons of carbon dioxide per year. We are not sure where the cars would go instead!

Read more on The Guardian’s site here.

In New York, Citibank have announced that they are sponsoring and commercialising the bike share system. To be renamed Citi Bike, the system will be 100% privately funded with 600 stations and 10,000 bikes in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

According to TreeHugger, Citi Bike's pricing is listed as $95 for an annual pass, $25 for a 7-day pass, and $9.95 for 24-hour access. But the city of New York has plans to make sure the Citi Bikes are accessible to New Yorkers "of all income levels". A program is being developed, according to the web site, so that qualifying New Yorkers will be able to purchase a reduced annual membership for $60, payable in quarterly instalments.

It’s very interesting to see a commercial entity come on board to run the bike sharing scheme, as inherently they will be running it to set out to make a profit. However the scale of the investment and reach of the infrastructure is more likely to change behaviours than a small investment. Watch this space to see how it performs!