An Easy Explanation for Why Fixed Doesn't Fix as Many Parking Tickets as Expected

The tech company Fixed promises to be the easiest way to fix a parking ticket. The LA Times (reported by Government Technology, link here) did some analysis of how well the company performs as found that Fixed clients are successful 20% of the time having their tickets dismissed. This is better than zero percent but less than the 28% of tickets dismissed by regular (meaning non-Fixed client) people. The founder of Fixed takes umbrage with this discrepancy:

When presented with the numbers by The Times, company founder David Hegarty accused the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency of possibly "willfully discriminating against our contests."
"To rub salt on our wounds," Hegarty said, "when they deny our contests, they do not include a reason for denial."

Perhaps there is discrimination about the tech clients, but I doubt it. Here is the SF MTA response from the story:

A spokesman for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency denied Hegarty's allegations, saying, "We do not have concerns if people want to use this third-party service.... There is no secret to overturning a citation. If there is a valid reason to dismiss, then that citation gets dismissed."

What is almost certainly happening is that David Hegarty has a poor grasp of economic incentives, at least as far as the Fixed pricing structure goes. Fixed clients are almost certainly not representative of the ticketed public overall. The way Fixed makes money is to take 25% of the savings for a ticket that gets dismissed, but does not charge for a failed contestation. Effectively there is no cost to whoever received the ticket for contesting the violation through Fixed, and Fixed clients will contest tickets they never would have before. Because of the high relative cost of contesting a ticket yourself people who contest in person should have a higher rate of dismissal. They likely believe in their innocence more than a Fixed client. If you take time to sit through traffic court to contest a ticket, you are either burdened by the fine or you really believe you shouldn't have been cited. Contra this, there are few reasons not to contest each and every ticket through Fixed as the only costs to the client are the time it takes to take a photo and fill out an online form. Even if you know full well you're guilty you should contest your parking tickets through Fixed. If you can get one of five dismissed you are doing well gaming the system.

Boo!

Some days things happen that deserve to be booed. Today is one of those days when there are just a lot of crappy policy decisions in the news. It's like rooting for Minnesota Vikings. You know the games will end badly, the public will get hosed, and there really isn't much you can do about it. So you boo.

This is what I am booing today:

Bill de Blasio, front runner to be New York City's next mayor, is beholden to the rent seeking yellow taxi medallion holders. Booo! If you can find a special interest group who deserve less sympathy than the yellow cab medallion holders, let's hear about it. The medallion system should be smashed, not protected, and the green taxis may well turn out to be one of the best transit service innovations that help people in the outer boroughs to happen in years. David Yassky has been a great TLC commissioner and should be applauded for trying to actually make the city work better.

In Edina, Minnesota the city is using eminent domain to take a property so they can build a parking lot. Booo!

Tom Pendergrast, the Chairman of the NY MTA was on NY1 yesterday and made the bold and depressing claim that the MTA will never be at the cutting edge of technology. It will always be right behind the cutting edge.  Booo! The MTA is large enough to move the technological cutting edge with regard to most any aspect of transit operations. I get that the MTA is risk averse, but someone has to think about what the MTA can be and should be rather than just trying to do the things it already does marginally better.

Taken together these, and other similar stories, are all a troublesome adherence to the status quo. Our transportation and land use systems are currently not working well, and we should encourage public leaders to try new things--even if they may fail. A commitment to inefficient taxi systems, favoring parking lots over existing businesses and committing one of the world's largest transit systems to being a follower are not encouraging signs. Booo!

The Role of Parking in Successful Urban Centers: New Report from London

London Council commissioned a report on the role parking plays in ongoing success of urban centers. Here is a link to the report. Here are the findings:

The review of the academic literature and other reports showed that there was relatively little research carried out into the link between parking and urban centre success. Where there was research, it was often not backed up by survey data or other robust evidence.
However, where there was research, the main findings were as follows:
1) More parking does not necessarily mean greater commercial success. A well managed parking scheme, where spaces ‘turn over’ frequently can help to increase the number of visitors coming to a town centre and thereby help business.
2) There is no such thing as ‘free’ parking. The costs of developing and maintaining parking
spaces and then enforcing proper use to ensure good traffic flow have to be borne by
somebody. In the case of local authority operated parking (on street or off street) any costs
that are not covered by parking revenue falls to local Council Tax payers.
3) Shopkeepers consistently overestimate the share of their customers coming by car. In
some cases, this is by a factor of as much as 400%. In London, as well as other cities, the
share of those accessing urban centres on foot or by public transport is much greater. Walking
is the most important mode for accessing local town centres; public transport is the most
important mode for travel to international centres, such as Oxford Street.
4) Car drivers spend more on a single trip; walkers and bus users spend more over a
week or a month. In 2011, in London town centres, walkers spent £147 more per month than
those travelling by car. Compared with 2004, spending by public transport users and walkers
has risen; spending by car users and cyclists has decreased.
5) A good mix of shops and services and a quality environment are some of the most
important factors in attracting visitors to town centres. If both these are poor, then
changes to parking or accessibility are very unlikely to make a town centre more attractive.
6) There is very little evidence of the impacts of parking on the night time economy. This is
an area that needs more research.
7) Boroughs collect a lot of data on parking but there is less information available on town
centre economic factors. Finding ways to coordinate data collection across departments
could be helpful to monitor the impacts of parking policies.

I haven't read the whole thing closely but it looks like a nice review of the state of the literature with some new survey data to support their assertions.

My Letter to the California APA in Support of AB 904

The California Chapter of the American Planning Association opposes reform to minimum parking requirements as required under proposed legislation AB 904. You can read about the legislation here on Streetsblog LA, here is the text of the bill, here is a Market Urbanism post about this issue, another brief explanation of the bill, Curbed LA coverage, and a story from the California Planning and Development Report.

Here is support for the bill from the Infill Builders Association. Below is the text of my letter as sent:

June 23, 2012
Dear Mr. Snow,
I am writing to express deep concern about California APA’s opposition to reforming minimum parking requirements through AB 904. I have studied parking regulations as part of my research for over a decade, half of which time I was in California. It is without question that minimum parking requirements are an egregious failure of planning, and the California APA’s position seems to suggest that, despite decades of evidence to the contrary, they know precisely how much parking should be supplied. The California APA’s position is troubling, to say the least, and actually reinforces the circular logic that got our cities into such trouble in the first place.
Minimum parking requirements increase the cost of housing, increase the amount of land needed for development, and represent the single largest subsidy to drivers. I will not dwell on these effects as the California APA’s letter of opposition suggests that you are aware of the need for reform. Parking reform should be at the top of any planner’s priorities for building better cities. I do want to challenge some of your reasons for opposing AB 904, and show why your concerns are unfounded.
In the basic issues section and in the specific concerns section you are worried that the proposed reduction in required parking minimums is not based on data. To quote your letter:

“Page 4, S. 65200 (a).  It is not apparent how these parking minimums were determined.  They appear to be based on no specific data.  Of chief concern is the requirement for one parking space per thousand square feet of any non-residential project regardless of use.  Given that most jurisdictions use 3-5 parking spaces per 1000 square feet for uses that require the most parking, such as grocery stores, stadiums, park and ride lots, and medical offices, this assumes that up to 75% of those using the project would be using transit.  That is a huge leap of faith and one likely to detrimentally impact projects surrounding these facilities.”

 This quote suggests that existing parking requirements are based on something other than a huge leap of faith. They aren’t. No one knows the right number of parking spaces, and no one knows how many parking spaces are already built. Just because most jurisdictions require 3-5 spaces per 1,000 square feet does not mean they are correct. As a telling example of how supposed “correct” parking requirements have performed, consider that the amount of required parking built in the United States allows researchers to estimate retail sales by looking at images of parking lots taken from outer space. Remote Sensing Metrics, a company that specializes in counting the number of cars parked in commercial and retail lots using satellite images, correctly predicted that the 2011 holiday shopping season was going to be a success because 39 percent of parking spaces were occupied at shopping malls. We live in a world where 60 percent of parking spaces are vacant during good times. I do not see how this indicates that cities know how to set parking requirements. It does suggest that we build too many spaces. I agree that the proposed minima in AB 904 seem a bit convenient, but so are existing requirements. However, the proposed changes aim toward planning for people, building better places, and achieving a broad set of planning goals. By maintaining the status quo, the existing parking requirements make it easier and cheaper to drive.
 Another concern expressed is the definition of transit-intensive areas, and you suggest that only areas with existing transit service should be included. California is heavily investing in new transit systems, and these systems take a long time to plan and build. Reducing required parking now will make these areas better for transit when the transit arrives. Requiring lots of parking in areas where transit will be built will reduce the utility of the investment. We should build transit in areas that are not dominated by automobiles because those are the types of areas where lots of people will use transit! Lower required parking standards strengthen the relationship between transit and land use.
 Reforming parking policy is difficult, but also presents opportunities for building a new regulatory framework that supports good planning and flexibility for accommodating future needs and uses. Maintaining the status quo hampers California’s ability to pursue creative policies that are more equitable and economically viable and that promote vibrant communities. I hope you will reconsider the APA California position.
  Regards,
   David King
Assistant Professor of Urban Planning
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
Columbia University
  Cc:      Kevin Keller
            Sande George

Here is a link to the letter.

It Takes 34 Years to Implement Minor Parking Reform

One issue I think about a lot through my research is how to transition from poor policies to good policies. Such transitions take time and are not easy to implement. Parking reform is a major focus of mine, and I'm always looking for evidence of the temporal aspects of reform. Today I can add a new data point: it takes 34 years to implement a reduction in street cleaning from four days per week to two days per week.  34 years! From the story at DNAinfo:

SUNSET PARK — Drivers may finally have a reprieve next week when the city's Department of Sanitation reduces alternate-side parking from four days a week to two in parts of Sunset Park and Greenwood Heights.


The change marks the culmination of a 34-year campaign to limit alternate-side parking in the two Brooklyn neighborhoods. Brooklyn's Community Board 7 was the first to take advantage of a new law that sets the rules for reducing the frequency of street-sweeping and its attendant car shuffling. 



I'm no fan of free curb parking in New York, but I'm also not a fan of the alternate side parking policies.  The community was able to reduce cleaning frequency through a pilot program:

Any community that achieved at least a 90-percent cleanliness rating on its residential streets for two consecutive years could reduce alternate-side parking on those streets to just twice a week.
"If the streets are clean, if the community keeps them clean, and if they're residential, non-commercial streets, and if the community board votes to do it, then the alternate-side parking can be reduced," Lander said. "The law does require that the streets stay clean, and that's part of the community's commitment — it's to help keep streets clean, as sort of the trade-off for the added convenience for not having to move your car every day."

It is worth noting that the main benefit for residents is that they don't have to move their cars as often. The policy victory it is now a little bit easier to not use your car. During the week there is a disutility to owning a car in these neighborhoods, and this new policy reduces the disutility a little bit. It is absurd that long term parking is provided free by the city, but that is the way it is. Perhaps in another 34 years we can have another marginal improvement in parking policy.

Williamsburg Businesses Want Parking Reform

The Williamsburg business community argued to the city council that they wanted the parking reforms in the zoning code to support redevelopment, but residents objected to the original proposal. From the story:

The zoning and parking changes were first requested by the Economic Development Authority, which sought consistency in regulations in order to facilitate business, according to Mason. Director of Economic Development Michele DeWitt has cited specific instances when zoning or parking regulations prevented the redevelopment of buildings in the district.

The business concern surrounded a furniture store that would not be redeveloped without parking reform:

[Suter’s] has just enough parking to be a furniture store, but not enough for a restaurant or retail store. Singley, whose firm is handling the sale of Suter’s, believed looser restrictions would help prospective buyers secure financing and make the leap into business.

But the residents are concerned about spillover parking:

Residents, including Nancy Canning and Henry Coleman, turned out to the Planning Commission’s May 16 meeting to call for a rejection of the proposal. They felt the process was rushed, and the topic should be discussed in comprehensive planning meetings. In addition, many residents worried that if the city’s goals come true, the Arts District will eventually have a parking problem, with residential streets lined with cars.

This highlights how parking reform is critical for redeveloping existing buildings, even in Williamsburg, Virginia. One smart thing they are doing is that small businesses (less than 5,000 square feet) are not required to supply parking. In most cities in the U.S., I suspect that this change to the zoning code and licensing requirements would be enough to maintain independent businesses and a variety of services. Small store exemptions may be a way to transition away from the heavy burden minimum parking requirements currently entail.

This Week in Parking News

It was a big week for parking news, mostly because New York City issued a RFQ for operations of the city's 80,000+ parking meters.

In Rolling Stone Matt Taibbi goes unnecessarily ape shit about the New York City RFQ:

Well, Chicago isn’t alone anymore. Hizzoner Michael Bloomberg in New York has decided to do his own version of the Chicago infrastructure bake sale; the city announced that it is putting up nearly 90,000 parking meters for lease. They’re expecting to get over $11 billion in upfront money from the deal, which is great news if you’re Mike Bloomberg, who gets to use that money to patch current budget holes instead of making tough cuts or raising taxes. The news is less awesome for the next half-dozen New York City mayors, or for the citizens of New York, who now will get to spend most of the 21^st century grappling with its increasingly monstrous deficits with a major tributary from the city’s revenue stream shut off.
A New York parking meter deal, like the Chicago deal, would be a perfect example of the deeply cynical short-term thinking of many American politicians these days. These deals involve a sitting executive selling off a valuable piece of city property at a steep discount to private financial interests (often, to friends or campaign contributors), in order to solve a current cash flow problem that, surprise, surprise, will still be there the year after you finish spending the proceeds of your sale.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/new-york-to-repeat-chicago-s-parking-meter-catastrophe-20120613#ixzz1xtXcZIgt

Felix Salmon calms him down at Rueters and discusses dynamic pricing:

Which brings me to Matt Taibbi’s latest tirade, complaining about the idea that New York could raise as much as $11 billion by selling off its parking-meter rights. Anybody who wins this contract will have a contractual obligation to implement smart variable-pricing technologies, which will have to include apps showing where the spots are, the ability to pay by phone, and other ways of making everybody’s life easier. How is this not a good thing? Well, Taibbi’s upset that prices will rise:

Meter rates in some New York neighborhoods are already at $5 an hour. A Chicago-style price hike for fat-cat investors might leave us paying thirty bucks an hour to oil barons in Qatar and Saudi Arabia in order to park for dinner in the West Village.

I hate to break this to Matt, but has he seen the pricing at New York’s garages recently? Drivers would kill for the opportunity to pay $5 an hour. Matt lives in Westchester and therefore doesn’t pay New York City taxes, but he still seems to think that New York City should subsidize the cost of his jaunts in to the West Village for dinner. But even if Matt were somehow deserving of such a subsidy, which he isn’t, it’s a false economy: it might feel good to be able park for cheap, but it feels much worse to be stuck in traffic all the time. And the overwhelming majority of West Village diners manage to find a way of eating there which doesn’t involve a parking spot. Why should theysubsidize Matt’s parasitical suburban lifestyle?
New York is not Chicago, where the mayor was forced to give up all control of the parking meters in order that prices might be able to rise to their optimal level. Instead, the city will retain control of pricing philosophy, holidays, and the like, while also receiving an enormous check.

[I'm not sure where Matt Taibbi or Felix Salmon get the $11 billion figure. $11 billion is cited as part of the Chicago deal in a syndicated Business Week story. The RFQ explicitly states that the city is not looking for a large upfront payment. The city is looking for long term management of their meters but will maintain the ability to set prices and enfiorcement. I have my own opinions of the RFQ but will save them for another time. It's not terrible, nor is it likely to be transformative.]


Other parking news:
Santa Monica will now have its parking meters reset after each use, so no more finding meters with time remaining. Drivers will also not be able to re-feed the meters.

The New York Times has a video that describes some high tech meter systems. The parking segment starts around the 8:15 mark. The footage is from the IPI Conference last week.

This local story about Fort Green, Brooklyn, explains how difficult it is to alter parking policies:

The Fulton Area Businesses, the Fort Greene and Clinton Hill business improvement district, hosted its “Fulton Street Community Visioning Project” at BAM — and the first phase of the discussion showed a neighborhood divided over what an improvement even is.
Attendees broke up into groups to discuss what they want to see on the stretch between Ashland Place and Classon Avenue. Residents offered suggestions as varied as new bike lanes on Fulton Street and Lafayette Avenue, turning Brooklyn Technical HS’s football field into an ice rink in the winter, adding more lighting and plantings to the street, or adding some public furniture to attract public arts to the bustling street.
Others sought improvements to the long-closed greenspace in front of the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
But some business owners counterintuitively opposed moves to attract more people to the already bustling street because their customers can’t find parking.
“No one in the neighborhood can find parking,” said Zuri, who owns an eponymous spa on South Portland Avenue, but declined to give her last name. “To add more seating in front of establishments is heinous.”

[One major issue for planners interested in reducing parking requirements is that the profession of planning has spent the past 60 years telling everybody that planners know exactly how many parking spaces are needed for each and every possible use. For planners to now say parking isn't required--even though it isn't--strains credulity with the public.Planners have a lot of work to do to build trust that we know what we are talking about regarding parking.]

How To Deal With Illegally Parked Cars

In New York we have a saying "If you see something, say something." This advice is aimed to alert officials to suspicious packages left on the subway or elsewhere. In London, they have taken similar advice to a whole new level, where anti-terror policy seems to be "if you see an illegally parked car, blow it to smithereens." The Standard has a story about a tourist who had his car blown up, then got a ticket for illegally parking. I bet he won't make that mistake again! From the story:

As any Londoner knows parking in the capital can be a tricky business even at the best of times.
So no doubt there will be a collective wave of sympathy for tourist Nima Hosseini Razi who is today counting the cost of being illegally parked on the city’s streets.
The business student discovered that you do not just run the danger of a fine if you leave your car in the wrong spot - after anti-terrorist officers blew up his Ford Mondeo.

 Perhaps we need to9 be more worried about the increasing militarization pf parking enforcement. First the tank driving mayor, now this. Let's hope that parking enforcement is never turned over to drones.

A Game Theoretic Approach to an Upper East Side Parking Space

Under what circumstances should people cooperate when searching for parking? There are a host of smart phone apps designed explicitly to help allocate scarce parking resources among a privileged few drivers. Such apps facilitate cooperation strategies as a form of collective action. As long as the number of participants (people seeking curb parking who subscribe to the apps) is sufficiently small relative to the population (all drivers) the small group cooperating will have an information advantage and have higher levels of success finding parking. Once the number of subscribers grows sufficiently large relative to the overall population the information advantages will diminish and everyone will have to continue to drive around looking for a space. Allocating curb spaces is an economic problem, not an information problem.

It is possible for a very small group to cooperate and take advantage of privileged information. On Manhattan's Upper East Side a pediatrician and food vendor have developed their own club that monopolizes a street space. Here is a Gothanist story about them. From the story:

An Upper East Side pediatrician and a food-cart vendor have been saving a parking spot for one another on East 96th Street for two years, surprising everyone who believes this city is the glorified embodiment of unchecked egotism. The Post reports that when Dr. Doug Waite pulls his Volvo out of the spot at 8 a.m., Sait Kumtas pulls his van in. At 6 p.m., Dr. Waite honks three times and Kumtas relinquishes the spot.
Instead of throwing vast sums of money at the problem of finding a spot, the men agreed to "cooperate" (a term that originated in the Midwest and means "share like suckers") after they happened to make the swap by chance. “He was my customer,” Kumtas says. “I knew him, and we would say hello."
Everything is fine so long as they remember to give each other a heads up when they're going on vacation. “Once, we were up in Maine to visit my son in school and I got a call on my cellphone from Sait, wondering where I was,” Dr. Waite says. And Kumtas didn't even slash his tires or punch him in the face!

The vendor's van is even in the Google Maps street view photo.

So these two realized that cooperation was mutually beneficial. How large can their parking club get before cooperation breaks down? Probably not very large, but what these two are doing with one space on the Upper East Side is essentially what all the smart phones parking apps are trying to do for all parking spaces.

Driving May Be Down, But Drive-Thrus Are Booming and So Is Parking

According to the LA Times America's drive-thrus logged 12.4 billion trips last year, which is a 2% increase over previous years. So whatever the reason that US drivers are traveling fewer miles in their cars it seems that we can assume they aren't foregoing their fast food rips. (And remember that it is the middle class that uses fast food restaurants more than anyone else.) It boggles my mind that even though 70% of fast food sales are from the drive-thrus there are still minimum parking requirements of about one space per 200-300 square feet of restaurant space. Yet here (found with a very quick Google search) is a Michigan McDonald's with a drive-thru that seeks to build 45 spaces when 27 are required. Sheesh. Whatever you think of the health effects from fast food, the land use and transportation implications are extremely challenging for urbanism.

Are Street Parking Fines Inequitable?

A group of renters are protesting proposed increases for Los Angeles's street parking tickets. From the LA Times:

Renters' rights activists are taking aim at Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's plan to increase parking tickets by $10 -- the sixth increase in seven years at City Hall.
Advocates for working-class families said they intend to speak out on the proposal Tuesday afternoon at the City Council's Budget and Finance Committee, which is set to consider possible changes to Villaraigosa's proposed budget. The city faces a $238-million shortfall.
Those activists are taking special aim at the proposal to charge $78 for parking violations on street-sweeping day, saying it unfairly hits those who live in high-density neighborhoods where spaces are scarce.

This is not a new argument. Here is a description of the effects of Santa Barbara trying to improve street sweeping a few years ago:

On Tuesday, when the City Council heard a status report on the street-sweeping program, the members generally praised the progress. But Council members Grant House and Helene Schneider touched on some issues of equity.
One is how the program, bankrolled mostly by parking tickets, seems to be subsidized by the poor. Parking tickets generate almost a cool $1 million every year — that’s three-quarters of the street-sweeping program’s annual budget of $1.3 million. (The rest comes from ballot measures B and D, for creeks and transportation, respectively.)  Meanwhile, Santa Barbara’s most heavily ticketed area is the Westside, one of its poorest neighborhoods.
“That means you’re really applying two kinds of standards,” House said. “There should be an equal treatment of the different neighborhoods.”

The reason the Westside is ticketed more is because there are more people per unit are fewer off street spaces, plus the free on street parking is used by downtown workers. So what is the treatment here? Clean streets or parking citations? Is it inequitable to charge people for parking (see this Cal State student resolution arguing that it is unfair for students to pay as much as everyone else)? Lots of people seem to think that anything other than cheap or free parking for all is socially undesirable regardless of the broader costs. Will the Bus Riders Union inspire a Street Parkers Union?

What NIMBYism Looks Like: It's All About the Parking Requirements (and Lenny Russo is a Wise Man)

This post by Lenny Russo in the Twin Cities StarTribune is a great, if depressing, explanation of how NIMBYism actually occurs.  Read the whole thing, but this is a key story and it involves parking:

Most recently, Kevin VanDeraa, owner of Cupcake on University Avenue in Minneapolis, attempted to open a second location on St. Paul's Grand Avenue.  The plan for the new location included a wine bar.  According to the code, VanDeraa would be required to have ten off street parking spaces in order to receive his licenses to operate.  The previous tenant, a toy store, was only required to have three such spaces.  Consequently, VanDeraa applied for a seven space variance which was reduced to six spaces with the condition that he install a bike rack.  The six space variance was granted on December 27, 2011.  At that time, VanDeraa agreed to lease parking from a nearby dry cleaner to satisfy the St. Paul Board of Zoning Appeals.

When a variance is granted in St. Paul, there is a ten day waiting period to allow for appeals from those who might be opposed to the variance.  VanDeraa waited ten days, and then he began work on his new location.  Unfortunately, he was unaware that the variance wasn't actually finalized until January 9.  That effectively pushed the appeal deadline to January 19.  In the meantime, two appeals came in just under the deadline.  One was made by the Summit Hill Association, and the other by a neighboring law firm.  Consequently, city officials pulled a previously granted building permit.  Why there was a delay in finalizing the variance and why he was granted a building permit before the deadline expired is not clear to me, but the result was a new hearing on the variance.

At the new hearing, a thorough review of Cupcake's parking proposal showed that VanDeraa could guarantee at least eight parking spaces, but he would only be able to temporarily guarantee two additional spaces.  Under the leased parking agreement, the dry cleaner would have had the option of reclaiming those spaces if it needed them in the future.  On a vote of 5-2, the City Council upheld the appeals and denied Cupcake its previously granted variance.

The Pioneer Press quoted City Council President Kathy Lantry as saying that, "We've got to stop voting for the applicant...The code is very clear. You cannot, for economic reasons alone, grant a variance."  I admire and respect Kathy Lantry, but those seem to me like pretty good reasons to grant a variance, especially at a time when LGA money has been withdrawn and property taxes have skyrocketed as a result.  For perspective, the property tax assessment on the commercial property owned by Heartland in Lowertown increased by nearly $17,000 this year.  Also for perspective, Mark Prokop, who owns the building that Cupcake planned to lease, was quoted in thePioneer Press as saying that due to increased property taxes he could not charge a tenant less than $5,500 per month.  One would have to sell a lot of cupcakes to make that rent payment.  VanDeraa needed the additional wine and beer sales to help Cupcake make rent.

I am not sure what the reasoning is behind requiring a business that is selling wine and beer to have seven additional parking spaces when the previous business only required three.  I can only wonder if there is any empirical evidence that a place selling cupcakes and wine would generate any more traffic than one selling cupcakes and coffee.  Nonetheless, 15 to 20 jobs were lost; a $300,000 investment in a commercial property was discontinued; and a landlord is left with an unleased space with a mortgage that needs to be serviced.  This is because the business owner fell short by two parking spaces.  I wonder how anyone can justify that such a variance would have contributed immensely to congestion on Grand Avenue or to the long term detriment of the community.  Bad precedent was cited as a reason to deny the variance, but variances are reviewed and approved on an individual basis.  There is no reason why a similar request could not be denied in the future if circumstances justified that.

I know the restaurant business well as I spent nearly a decade owning and operating a place in downtown Minneapolis (where there were not minimum parking requirements). This story is all too common. If parking requirements were based on science that was any better than voodoo I would support the community concern. However, planners have argued for decades that they know exactly how many parking spaces are required for specific land uses. So forgive communities for thinking tht planners knew what they were talking about. But this, and many other, cases,  show how nonsensical minimum parking requirements are.

Consider that the city is specifically telling this restaurant that they city knows something about the restaurant's customers that the restauranteur does not. The city is saying, through their minimum parking requirements, that the cupcake buyers will all drive. I know this area quite well (and used to go to the toy store), and this is exactly how minimum parking requirements destroy a vibrant commercial area by forcing too much parking and preventing adaptive reuse of existing structures. But importantly, why not let the restaurant succeed or fail on its own? The city won't require a certain number of cupcake flavors, so why a certain number of parking spaces?

Listin to Lenny Russo. And if in the Twin Cities, eat at his restaurant Heartland. Both will improve your life.

Super Bowl Parking is Slightly Less Than the Average Apartment Rent in Indianapolis

According to Rent Jungle, the average rent for a one bedroom apartment in Indianapolis is $599 per month. According to this story parking spaces will go for close to $500 for a few hours.

Pop-up cafes in NYC parking spaces

The New York Department of Transportation has expanded a pilot project that allows restaurants to create outdoor dining spaces in street spaces (often parking spaces) where the sidewalks are too small for tables and chairs. From the Wall Street Journal:

The city's Department of Transportation could approve as many as 12 so-called pop-up cafés to open next spring, following the success of its first one.

The two-year pilot program provides temporary seating platforms for restaurants not eligible for sidewalk cafés licensed by the Department of Consumer Affairs because of narrow sidewalks or zoning restrictions.

The owners of Fika Espresso Bar and Bombay's Restaurant, located near each other on Pearl Street in the Financial District, housed the city's first pop-up café, which went up in August and is expected to come down in the next two weeks.

The first curbside wooden platform, measuring 6 feet wide by 84 feet long provided space for about 50 chairs and 14 tables, and attracted throngs of lunch goers.

"My business went up by about 14%," estimated Prashant Bhatt, owner of Bombay's Restaurant. "If you come at lunch time there's no place to sit outside."

The business owners split the cost of the pop-up café, which they said was slightly more than $10,000 each.

Before the café opened, many people passing by couldn't even see his storefront, said Lars Akerlund, an owner of Fika Espresso Bar.

"The only thing this street has been used for is loading and unloading of big trucks so everybody just walked by across the street," he said.

"So we've benefited so much as a business….When people go outside they see this plaza with flowers and they can sit outside and have a nice cup of coffee. It's almost day and night," Mr. Akerlund said.

The commissioner of the Department of Transportation, Janette Sadik-Khan, said the pop-up café was a result of the "tremendous unmet need for quality public space in the city."

Cities in Europe and places in California also have erected such cafés.

"The pop-up café was an innovative way to take a look at solving the riddle of how to create a sidewalk café in a place where there just isn't enough sidewalk," she said.

She said the space was open to all passersby, not just patrons of the restaurants.

The DOT is accepting applications until Dec. 3. Restaurants in all five boroughs are eligible for pop-up cafés.

The number of sidewalk cafés in the city has been on the rise, reaching 1,126 in the last fiscal year, compared with 884 in fiscal year 2006, according to figures from the Department of Consumer Affairs.

Fixing NYC traffic

Felix Salmon wrote about a new research project by Charles Komanoff about the costs of traffic in NYC. There is a really neat spreadsheet that Komanoff developed to estimate the various externalities and direct costs of various modes of travel and potential remedies such as congestion pricing. The two big recommendations are that buses should be free and taxis should be more expensive. This helps equalize travel costs across boroughs and opens the door for congestion pricing.

However, the spreadsheet and analysis makes an error that is all too common in transportation analysis and neglects parking altogether. Managing curb parking through performance priced meters is a very effective way to minimize congestion and travel. In parts of NYC (and elsewhere) the share of traffic simply cruising around for a curb space reaches 40 percent. By raising the price of parking the demand for auto travel will decline. The traffic reduction from eliminating cruising may be enough to reduce other direct costs such as tolls and taxi fees. This would make the overall management and use of the transportation systems fairer. The revenue generated from parking charges could be used to improve the pedestrian or bike facilities in the neighborhoods where the money is collected, or it could be used to improve transit. Any use would be better just watching it drive around the block as is the case now.