"The Great Parking Spot Switcheroo" Should Be Encouraged

Transportation Alternatives has a brief news item in their new Reclaim magazine highlighting what they call "the great parking spot switcheroo." Here is a link to the latest issue and the news item (scroll down). Here is what they say:

Local business owners, Transportation Alternatives volunteers and the City DOT have been working to convert car parking spots into bike parking spaces at select sites around the city. Thanks to an innovative program called “Street Racks,” motor vehicle parking spaces in front of particularly popular cycling destinations are being transformed into bike parking facilities capable of storing upwards of eight two-wheelers. You can try out these new bike parking places in front of Mud Coffee in the East Village and Gorilla Coffee in Park Slope. More are coming to Kinfolk Studios in Williamsburg, the corner of Court and Pacific in Cobble Hill and, if a group of neighborhood activists and the owners of Queens Kickshaw have their way, the corner of Steinway and Broadway in Astoria too.

Here is a link to the city's webpage that explains the program. The way it works is a partner (usually a business but this is not clear) petitions to convert a car parking space into a bike parking space. This is good! The partner is responsible for clearing snow and trash, and can add planters if they wish. While I think this is progress, I have two points:
1) the city should maintain the bike spaces just as they do all auto spaces. Placing the onus on partners to clean spaces just because they are bike spaces shows clear favor toward autos. Why should bikes be held to a greater standard of private responsibility?
2) New York City is admirably allowing businesses to take over curb parking for non-auto uses. Here is a report from 2011 that explains the effects of restaurant seating in curb spaces. The competition for curb spaces in parts of the city suggests that planners and business need to be thinking more broadly about what curb spaces are worth. Their value as spaces for cars is low, but parking spaces are extremely valuable for goods movement, food trucks, bicycle parking (which is a major headache in many parts of the city), emergency services, restaurant seating, etc. Perhaps one way to manage the conflicts that arise is to let businesses and residents manage all of the parking spaces locally. Even the latest RFQ from the city to enter a contract for management of all of the city's parking meters only considers that one company will run the whole show. Why not let curb parking be a flexible (or "programmable" in planner's lingo) land use that is controlled by the building or block? Dense urban areas need these types of flexible spaces more than they need cheap parking for cars, not to mention dudes like this guy. You can't make the argument that cities have been managing curbs spaces successfully under centralized control. Very local control may prove a better option. It is at least worth considering.

Orange County Toll Roads Cuts Jobs and Costs Because "Ridership" is Below Expectations

The LA Times reports on the Orange County toll road's budget problems. From the story:

Operators of Orange County’s toll-road network are planning to eliminate cash payments and toll-booth jobs as they try to squeeze more out of their financially strapped pay-to-drive highways.
Drivers who use the route 73, 261, 241 and 133 toll roads will need to have payment accounts linked to their transponders or their license plates in order to use the corridors. Cash payments will be phased out over the next 16 months.
The FasTrak transponders or the license-plate accounts electronically deduct money from a driver’s credit line.
In addition, a rate hike takes effect Sunday. Cash tolls will increase between 25 and 50 cents at most toll plazas and  FasTrak tolls will increase between 5% and 10%. Rates vary, depending on the time of day.
The changes, which will eliminate about 100 toll booth jobs, come about a year after the 73 toll-road project restructured its roughly $2.1 billion in debt. An agreement with bondholders requires the agency to hike tolls whenever feasible.
As ridership continues to fall below projections, leaders are looking for long-term, money-saving measures.

It isn't only transit that overestimates ridership! (Though roads tend to underestimate.)

I understand that toll roads are not doing that well as a private enterprise model in many areas. It isn't clear that this road isn't profitable, though. It is just below projections. The Toll Roads (the operators, you can like them on Facebook) regularly offer deals, giveaways and coupons to businesses as incentives to use their road. It is a bit of an odd model in that I am not used to getting a chance to win dinner simply by driving (and paying for) a particular route. I'm not sure if their marketing is successful, but perhaps there are some lessons about how transport can improve usage and service.

Private Mass Transit in Detroit

Andy Didorosi has a plan for a private bus company in Detroit. Watch the above video for info and details. Since public mass transit is not working in the city, private actors are stepping up. Recently the M-1 Rail Group announced that they have raised nearly enough money to build the proposed Woodward Light Rail line, and that they will cover a decade's worth of operating costs. Didorosi's plan is less ambitious in some ways but potentially more innovative.

Public transit agencies in the U.S. nearly always have monopolies over transit services. A single, large agency controls the routes and technologies used to provide services. Transit agencies also have dual mandates the transit services must be 1) cost efficient, and 2) serve as much of the population as possible. Public agencies can't decide to forego a market because of the expense involved in providing service.* New services can choose their markets, however. This quote from Didorosi helps explain one of the key differences between private and public transit networks:

"We're not going to bite off more than we can chew. We're going to have a high bus density per route. So that will mean that we will have less routes to begin with and cover less area, but it will be more reliable."

Private transit networks will be smaller and denser than public transit networks because private agencies reply on fares to pay the bills and can't afford to be speculative in building service areas. Private networks can't afford to have excess demand, though private networks may be too small to be socially optimal. I have no idea if the new Detroit bus system will be successful, but it at least may provide an interesting case study of service networks and service innovations in transit. Since Detroit does not have a strong public transit agency, new services may not be threatened by existing monopolies and potentially can thrive. We'll see.

Some of the innovations in service are apparent right away. The buses will all have special paint jobs by local artists, music on the vehicles, wi-fi and GPS, and will be integrated with smart phone apps so that people can tell where the buses are. These may or may not attract riders. The fare will be a $5 day pass, which is also unusual. Overall I hope that some of these innovations work and that conventional transit agencies adopt what is successful plus develop their own innovative ideas. However, since many of these innovations cost money and not all will be successful it is difficult for public agencies to try new things. Transit agencies can't afford to be viewed as wasting public money on ideas that don't pan out.

I hope some of these projects in Detroit work, and I'm curious to see the overall effects on accessibility, network development and social welfare. Detroit is gaining a reputation as being a creative incubator, and we'll see if that holds for transit.

*Obviously transit agencies cut routes and add routes all the time, but they rarely abandon entire areas of a city.