The Grattan Institute has this month released a report entitled, Productive Cities: Opportunity in a changing economy offering solutions to help increase economic productivity and efficiency in Australian cities.

The report analyses housing, income and transport data in Australia’s four largest cities to show that while highly paid and qualified workers are living close to city centres, workers with trade skills and low skills, and people on low incomes, are living further from the centre.

Amongst its recommendations, the institute advocates building more homes in established areas of cities and improving urban transport. Wayfinding Forum wrote about the benefits of transport oriented developments in established urban areas last month.

However, of most interest to our subscribers, the report also recommends consideration of road-user charging to ensure that road space is preserved for the most productive uses and as a way to raise funds for public transport.

According to the report “in order to address traffic congestion, it is not enough to rely solely on building new roads without also paying attention to managing the demand for road space. A more efficient use of road space could be achieved by introducing a pricing system such as road user charges, congestion charges or time-of-day tolling.” It notes that this was a recommendation of the 2010 Henry Review into Australia’s Future Tax System.

Recent research by our PTC team relating to the time-of-day tolling introduced a couple of years ago on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Tunnel had practically no impact on congestion and use of these roads. The reduction of vehicles between 2008 and 2009 of 1.6% was more than compensated by the increases in cars using the Ryde Bridge ( 5.2%) and Gladesville Bridge (+2.7%) with an overall result of +0.7%.

Chicago City Mayor Rahm Emanuel is attempting to make up for what he describes as the mistakes of a previous administration by renegotiating its 75 year deal with the private company now responsible for running the city’s parking meters.

In 2008, the Chicago Parking Meters group paid $1.15 billion for the lease to monetize about 36,000 street parking spaces. It is the third-biggest street meter system in the U.S. and the largest to be privately administered.

The agreement was endorsed by the then Chicago alderman to the tune of 40 votes to 5 in just two days, with the money received said to be used by the council to address a budget deficit.

According to the Chicago Tribune the deal “stands as one of the dumbest and most despised decisions in the council's history.” It is believed that the city greatly underestimated the real value of the meters as a stable revenue source for city coffers.

To make matters worse, the private company was last month seeking an additional $49 million from the city as compensation for lost revenue caused by street closures. This amount was the result of a two year audit undertaken by the company itself, and has been questioned at all levels. The current Mayor subsequently refused to pay, forcing both parties back to the negotiating table.

Under terms agreed to this week, the Mayor has obtained control over the processing of data to determine whether the city owes or is owed money from future adjustments to available street parking. This arrangement is hoped to save tax payers $1B over the remaining lifetime of the lease.

In further negotiations the city agreed to extend metered parking by one hour in most areas of the city and until midnight in other areas. In return, the private company will allow free Sunday parking in neighbourhoods outside the city’s core.

Terms of the revised agreement and legal settlement were put before Chicago’s city council on May 8, who now have 30 days to review it.

A former parking lot manager at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC has pleaded guilty to his involvement in a conspiracy to steal more than $1 million in visitors' parking fees.

For just over three years, Abeselom Hailemariam was the manager at the 2,000-vehicle parking lot servicing the renowned museum precinct. He was responsible for supervising parking-booth attendants and accounting for revenue.

Prosecutors have alleged that under Mr Hailemariam’s supervision, attendants would keep visitors' parking fees and conceal the thefts by failing to hand out serialised parking tickets and by unplugging the electronic vehicle counters in the booths.

The conspiracy involved the attendants paying Mr Hailemariam a share of the stolen revenues amounting to almost $1.4 million. Having  pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit theft of public money, he is scheduled to be sentenced in July, facing a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

According to the Washington Post Mr Hailemariam was arrested at Dulles International Airport where he was returning from Ethiopia after five months residing there.

Two former parking-booth attendees who were part of the conspiracy have already pleaded guilty to their roles in the thefts and have been handed sentences of between 2 and 3 years.

According to a recent survey of selected cities conducted by the Economist, Shanghai is the most expensive in the world to own and drive a car, and Sydney isn’t far behind due to relatively high purchase costs.

This is not quite the famous Big Mac Index where researchers can compare apples with apples (or burgers with burgers) so this comparison has stirred up debate amongst subscribers. One pointed out that the survey considers the cost of imported cars only. The graph would look distinctly different for Shanghai if locally manufactured vehicles, which are not subject to import tariffs and in fact attract government subsidies, were used. Moreover the survey does not factor the often exorbitant costs of obtaining licence plates just for the right to drive a car.

Cities with high permit rates, road taxes and licensing fees left off the survey include Singapore, and even our friends from Scandinavia. In Copenhagen for example, drivers pay 180% car tax on top of a 25% VAT. Oslo suffers in much the same way.

However, those included or not are ultimately unimportant. Of course the elephant in the room is relative CBD parking costs. One blogger has commented ”Living and working in the city of Chicago the cost of parking at home and the office could easily amount to more than the monthly payment on a new vehicle.”

Importantly, for some cities on-street parking is not an option due to competition for space or security concerns. Therefore the search for safe, economical and convenient parking solutions will always need to be part of the debate whether comparing international cities or making decisions of investment and development opportunities.

Let’s not get started on the relative costs of public transport, that’s for another day.

Transperth has announced that it will be trialling a new environmentally-friendly hybrid vehicle as a part of the CAT bus fleet. The state-of-the-art diesel-electric hybrid was developed for Transperth following a visit to the Volvo factory in Sweden by Transport Minister Troy Buswell. 

According to a press release, the one-year trial of the new technology will start in March, after some final fit-out work is completed. Buses will be running on the Perth CAT routes and evaluated against Volvo diesels and Mercedes CNG (compressed natural gas) buses.

At the end of the trial, the three models will be independently assessed and a decision made on which type of bus will be selected to replace the current CAT fleet. The Minister said the hybrid trial represented a $1million commitment by the State Government - about $600,000 of which is the cost of the new bus - and keeps Western Australia at the forefront of the Australian transport industry and the need to embrace greener technology.