Freakonomics: Parking is Hell - the hidden costs

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mean
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Re: Freakonomics: Parking is Hell - the hidden costs

Post by mean »

You don't think? Seems to me it describe a fair amount of the RCP and some of northeast. Certainly little if any of KC North or much south of the plaza (or, maybe, Waldo) though.
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Re: Freakonomics: Parking is Hell - the hidden costs

Post by flyingember »

aknowledgeableperson wrote:Doesn't describe KCMO much.
you'd be surprised
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Re: Freakonomics: Parking is Hell - the hidden costs

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

Look at all 3 points made.
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Re: Freakonomics: Parking is Hell - the hidden costs

Post by flyingember »

mean wrote:You don't think? Seems to me it describe a fair amount of the RCP and some of northeast. Certainly little if any of KC North or much south of the plaza (or, maybe, Waldo) though.
I'd put anywhere there's density, it's popular to go there, few parking lots or lots with strong controls on use (specific to one business, gated or similar)

Quality Hill. So much of the on street parking is used by residents or is lot controlled.
Westside, same use of on street by residents
Downtown. I bet 2/3 of parking garages are permit only.
The commercial part of Brookside
UMKC because of strict usage controls on their lots
The core of Westport. Lot controls cause most of the problem here more than a lack of parking.
Crossroads. Again, there's tons of parking but it's all dedicated to specific places. Public can't park in 90% of it.



I'd agree the northland doesn't have a parking problem except for rare areas
NKC does in the residential area but not in the commercial part.
Downtown Liberty, there's few lots for the density of that area, the notable one is the city's.
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Re: Freakonomics: Parking is Hell - the hidden costs

Post by flyingember »

For those who didn't listen, points made

parking minimums have led to lots of good land to use
on street is under priced. need to price to always have spaces free
some areas of cities could be 30-35% parking
there's at least 3 spaces per passenger car in the US just in surface lots (800 million spaces) which is 60-70% of parking. then add house garages, parking garages, on street.
San Francisco experiment "SF Park." 7000 spaces with sensors and dynamic parking (dropped the price)
Reasons not to pay- meter failed, real/fake government credentials, disability credentials
people won't pay when they can get it for free
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Re: Freakonomics: Parking is Hell - the hidden costs

Post by KCMax »

aknowledgeableperson wrote:Doesn't describe KCMO much.
Maybe not much of KC, but there are areas that this does describe. And yet we're going to have a one-sized fits all policy for ALL of KCMO on parking?
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Re: Freakonomics: Parking is Hell - the hidden costs

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

Much to my question about building new or rehabbing and not providing for parking. If someone wants to invest and take a chance and do nothing about parking do let them. At the same time if one goes outside of the downtown area, and maybe even in downtown, that person better be prepared for neighborhood resistance and the council supporting some sort of parking requirement.
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Re: Freakonomics: Parking is Hell - the hidden costs

Post by KCMax »

aknowledgeableperson wrote:Much to my question about building new or rehabbing and not providing for parking. If someone wants to invest and take a chance and do nothing about parking do let them. At the same time if one goes outside of the downtown area, and maybe even in downtown, that person better be prepared for neighborhood resistance and the council supporting some sort of parking requirement.
Yes, that's all I'm really asking for, flexibility in the requirements for common sense. I know the Crossroads has a parking variance, other areas like Westport and the Plaza and downtown could probably use one too.
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Re: Freakonomics: Parking is Hell - the hidden costs

Post by flyingember »

KCMax wrote:
aknowledgeableperson wrote:Much to my question about building new or rehabbing and not providing for parking. If someone wants to invest and take a chance and do nothing about parking do let them. At the same time if one goes outside of the downtown area, and maybe even in downtown, that person better be prepared for neighborhood resistance and the council supporting some sort of parking requirement.
Yes, that's all I'm really asking for, flexibility in the requirements for common sense. I know the Crossroads has a parking variance, other areas like Westport and the Plaza and downtown could probably use one too.
I'd like to see flexible requirements and a citywide parking minimum revoking.

let the market decide on how much is needed for any given spot. if a business wants to put none in and save the money, let them take the risk
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Re: Freakonomics: Parking is Hell - the hidden costs

Post by chaglang »

So what happens if they decide to put in 40 spaces and raze a building to do it?
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Re: Freakonomics: Parking is Hell - the hidden costs

Post by KCMax »

chaglang wrote:So what happens if they decide to put in 40 spaces and raze a building to do it?
So you mean, the status quo?
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Re: Freakonomics: Parking is Hell - the hidden costs

Post by chaglang »

Ha. One of the podcast's points against parking minimums is that they are arbitrary, in addition to being poor land use and an environmental disaster. But if we do away with minimums for all of those reasons, it seems like there needs to be parking maximums to prevent property owners from spontaneously maintaining the status quo. (It's not that far fetched given that a lot of people believe the blanket idea that there is a chronic parking shortage. And if you're an owner, you'd presumably want to err on the side of providing more parking than you need, rather than risk losing out on business because a customer couldn't find a space. (I could be wrong about either/both of those.)) So, what's a nonarbitrary rationale for arriving at a parking maximum number? Or are we just comfrotable with it being arbitrary because it solves the land use and environmental issues?
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Re: Freakonomics: Parking is Hell - the hidden costs

Post by bobbyhawks »

Is there a way to take a Google Map of the River through Crown area and divide it into subsections with a wiki entry format indicating the number of parking spaces in each section? It would be an interesting way to crowdsource counting of parking spaces and to show skeptics just how many people could park downtown if we tried to fill every space. Then, we could overlay building occupancy numbers to see how many people live in the area, office numbers to show how many people work downtown, and identify how many spaces there are in even the peak standard usage times (Total spaces - workers - residents = general parking availability during a weekday).
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Re: Freakonomics: Parking is Hell - the hidden costs

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

chaglang wrote: But if we do away with minimums for all of those reasons, it seems like there needs to be parking maximums to prevent property owners from spontaneously maintaining the status quo. (It's not that far fetched given that a lot of people believe the blanket idea that there is a chronic parking shortage. And if you're an owner, you'd presumably want to err on the side of providing more parking than you need, rather than risk losing out on business because a customer couldn't find a space. (I could be wrong about either/both of those.)) So, what's a nonarbitrary rationale for arriving at a parking maximum number? Or are we just comfrotable with it being arbitrary because it solves the land use and environmental issues?
Not sure what the minimum was when City Center Square was built but look at the trouble the owner had when selling it (one being inadequate parking).

What would be a concern about "no parking requirements" would be the original owner providing no parking, selling to another owner, and then what steps that owner takes to provide parking - like tearing down nearby buildings.
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Re: Freakonomics: Parking is Hell - the hidden costs

Post by flyingember »

aknowledgeableperson wrote:
chaglang wrote: But if we do away with minimums for all of those reasons, it seems like there needs to be parking maximums to prevent property owners from spontaneously maintaining the status quo. (It's not that far fetched given that a lot of people believe the blanket idea that there is a chronic parking shortage. And if you're an owner, you'd presumably want to err on the side of providing more parking than you need, rather than risk losing out on business because a customer couldn't find a space. (I could be wrong about either/both of those.)) So, what's a nonarbitrary rationale for arriving at a parking maximum number? Or are we just comfrotable with it being arbitrary because it solves the land use and environmental issues?
Not sure what the minimum was when City Center Square was built but look at the trouble the owner had when selling it (one being inadequate parking).

What would be a concern about "no parking requirements" would be the original owner providing no parking, selling to another owner, and then what steps that owner takes to provide parking - like tearing down nearby buildings.
I said no parking minimums. I didn't mention no parking maximums.

what you describe is already the status quo. if someone buys a second building they can tear it down today.

the starting point is to stop requiring certain levels of parking. it's easy and quick to push through today with no real need for a study of the impact
the process to control how much parking is allowed shouldn't hold up doing the former, since parking maximums would spark a huge debate that makes the streetcar look like small potatoes
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Re: Freakonomics: Parking is Hell - the hidden costs

Post by flyingember »

bobbyhawks wrote:Is there a way to take a Google Map of the River through Crown area and divide it into subsections with a wiki entry format indicating the number of parking spaces in each section? It would be an interesting way to crowdsource counting of parking spaces and to show skeptics just how many people could park downtown if we tried to fill every space. Then, we could overlay building occupancy numbers to see how many people live in the area, office numbers to show how many people work downtown, and identify how many spaces there are in even the peak standard usage times (Total spaces - workers - residents = general parking availability during a weekday).
you have to account for public/not public.

remember, not all parking is open to residents and not all is open to businesses.
around the city market there's only a fraction of the lot/garage spaces open to the public. in the financial district there's entire garages that are only for the tenants of the tower

and don't forget that there's never 100% of resident spots nor 100% of business spots empty. overnight some business service vehicles remained parked while in the day there's going to be people off work, people who carpool, etc
there's also businesses running multiple shifts. i.e. DST has a night shift.
What about places open cross hours to 9-5 workers? CVS is going to use parking spots near to 24x7.
don't forget about Park University downtown. they share spaces with Commerce Bank


so any study of this type would be limited by this simple fact

and then there's the third category you left off. neither residents or workers- guests.

vendors, tourists, wedding guests (there's multiple wedding venues downtown), convention goers, people with government business, people with business meetings, people coming for lunch in P&L, etc. I can tell you which lot federal court jurors can use and another with city jurors can use. there's one garage which gives up spots to the Kansas City Club weekly and another with far more people on a concert night and some lots which are not available for first fridays. then there's the sprint center, the kansas city marathon, the downtown art show, the american royal parade and other events

the number of spots is not the same as the capacity for downtown parking unless you account for all these disparate uses into the equation. if 10% of spots are always taken up by an event every other week that means your Total spaces - workers - residents = general parking availability is off by 10%, or a pretty bad confidence level. then if another 5% are taken by day guests to downtown you're below statistical reliability

now, one thing the streetcar will do is make it easier to use spaces in more areas for more of downtown, such as the Union Station garage for events at the Sprint Center, but if that's going to be the case, the true capacity for downtown parking is going to always be less than the maximum.

notice how in this very piece linked the optimum number of on street spots is to always have a couple open
it's going to be the same with off street parking. if the lots are always full it hobbles downtown. someone who decides to come downtown last minute may need to walk a few more blocks but there should be parking somewhere.

as a result the general parking available is going to be more like [total dedicated resident spots + total dedicated business spots + general spots] * 1.20 = total number of spots needed

sorry to burst your bubble, but it's far more complex than you make it out to be
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Re: Freakonomics: Parking is Hell - the hidden costs

Post by pash »

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Last edited by pash on Tue Feb 07, 2017 3:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Freakonomics: Parking is Hell - the hidden costs

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

Don't forget location in your discussion of parking, and I am not talking about the streetcar line and US. You have a big event with a few other events a the CC complex and add something at the PAC and maybe at the Folly with a wedding reception or two at the hotels and you can have a shortage of parking at that general location with plenty of parking on the east and north side of downtown.
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Re: Freakonomics: Parking is Hell - the hidden costs

Post by bobbyhawks »

pash wrote:And it's far more complex than you make it out to be. Parking demand for residential and office buildings are inversely correlated, etc. I've always thought there's a great opportunity for a tech startup to find efficiencies in parking by monitoring usage patterns, doing some geo/temporal statistical analysis and pairing up complementary uses.
If it were that simple, then one person could do the project. Hence why I would like to see it crowdsourced. A wiki-style entry would allow for multiple attributes and parking space qualifiers. I really don't care to see exactly how many spaces there are in a two block space. What I want to see is rough numbers on spaces in the entire area, or in combined portions of the River to Crown. Among the other things that could be included would be public/private/temporary (event) public/covered/street/duration/cost per hour/metered/specific to single business/etc. Then, you could click on the attribute and see an estimate of how many of those spaces exist. Breaking the area down into bite-sized chunks would only be so that sections were easier to count. The idea is also not so that people can find an available parknig spot. The goal would be so that folks could see the volume of parking that has been created for downtown. When you combine all of those spaces, it shows the waste created for the number of jobs and residents we actually have. If 100k people are estimated to be downtown everyday, what if the numbers show there are 500k parking spaces? Who cares if they are private or not? That shows our parking requirement is probably a little much and we should maybe reevaluate the incentives we have for parking and of what type.
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Re: Freakonomics: Parking is Hell - the hidden costs

Post by flyingember »

bobbyhawks wrote:
pash wrote:And it's far more complex than you make it out to be. Parking demand for residential and office buildings are inversely correlated, etc. I've always thought there's a great opportunity for a tech startup to find efficiencies in parking by monitoring usage patterns, doing some geo/temporal statistical analysis and pairing up complementary uses.
If it were that simple, then one person could do the project. Hence why I would like to see it crowdsourced. A wiki-style entry would allow for multiple attributes and parking space qualifiers. I really don't care to see exactly how many spaces there are in a two block space. What I want to see is rough numbers on spaces in the entire area, or in combined portions of the River to Crown. Among the other things that could be included would be public/private/temporary (event) public/covered/street/duration/cost per hour/metered/specific to single business/etc. Then, you could click on the attribute and see an estimate of how many of those spaces exist. Breaking the area down into bite-sized chunks would only be so that sections were easier to count. The idea is also not so that people can find an available parknig spot. The goal would be so that folks could see the volume of parking that has been created for downtown. When you combine all of those spaces, it shows the waste created for the number of jobs and residents we actually have. If 100k people are estimated to be downtown everyday, what if the numbers show there are 500k parking spaces? Who cares if they are private or not? That shows our parking requirement is probably a little much and we should maybe reevaluate the incentives we have for parking and of what type.
crowdsourcing is harder than you make it out to be

you're basically proposing the creation of a downtown simulation system and the resulting data entry
companies do weeks worth of studies at great cost just to get single intersection data that's actually usable

just using google maps is going to have unusable data for 95% of spots because you're making huge assumptions about the use of the lot and each individual spot in it you need an on the ground effort with surveys to determine the type of individual in a statistically valid way

you need a system that allows for super flexible data entry. can you imagine how to enter a parking spot that only fills with a single event greater than 5000 people or if there's two events of 2000 or larger but only if on a weekday and only if a nearby office tower is 75% occupied? that's the level of complexity this gets into.
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