The true harbinger of social meltdown in New Orleans.

Our original intention for taking this photo while in New Orleans was to vindicate ourselves in case we were ticketed for not paying for our off-street space in a private surface lot. But it also proves useful for another musing on the necessity of parking.

Yes, it’s a private, self-service parking meter. And the black slash is nothing more than a long strip of duct tape. The only other indicator of this meter’s functionality is in a post-it note:

No doubt this happens all the time, just as we routinely encounter on-street parking meters (serviced by their respective cities) in a state of disrepair. The CBD of New Orleans and its adjacent Warehouse District (philosophically an extension of the function of downtown but without the high-rise buildings) boast considerable nightlife and evening activity in the areas closer to the Mississippi River, while five blocks away from the river the activity dies completely. Not surprisingly, the lifeless area of downtown (centered around Rampart Street and O’Keefe Avenue) is rife with surface parking lots, frequently occupying an entire street block.

On a busy weekend night in New Orleans, on-street parking is extremely difficult to come by; it’s free, of course, when the city meters have stopped running. Parking garages typically rank a distant second in their appeal: aside from the inconvenience of ascending or declining several floors before finding a spot, the motorist is almost definitely going to have to pay. Meanwhile, off-street surface lots barely register on the radar is viable parking places at night. Why? Most of them are privately managed and reserved for daytime commuters, and quite a few simply aren’t available after hours. My guess is that the volume of parking on surface lots is not great enough to build the sort of revenue that would justify hiring a parking attendant for a night shift to manage the costs. Parking garages, which stack or sink so many extra layers of available spaces onto their patch of downtown land, can support a far better infrastructure for regulating and staffing the valuation of the property. In addition, they have far more limited means of ingress and egress, so it would be particularly difficult for a motorist to sneak out of a garage without paying. Unless surface lots have gates, it’s not so difficult for a motorist to cheat. So must owners of surface lots simply keep them off limits.

But there are the exceptions, and this lot, servicing the National World War II museum, is available at night. And in this instance, a poorly maintained automated attendant gives motorists a triple reward: a) off-street parking so it’s protected from errant drivers or pedestrian vandals; b) surface level so there’s no hassle of walking up our down a flight of stairs to get to one’s space; c) and in an area with high density of parking demand, it’s free! It’s as good as the suburbs! And my original three heuristics for seeking parking, mentioned in an earlier blog post, still applies: close parking is good but cheap parking is better; time and distance are less important than stalking that coveted cheap spot; time and distance cease to have any significance whatsoever if the spot you find is free.

In the case of the above photographs, we had exhausted all three heuristics. We weren’t even seeking free parking at the time we found this spot; it just happened to be our luck. And we were never questioned for violating the rules, so essentially the broken automated parking attendant was our get-out-of-jail-free card. If the machine hadn’t been shrouded in the darkness of night, I’m sure plenty of others would have caught on, though at the time that we parked there, only a select few other motorists had noticed this terrific opportunity.

Self-service parking meters, both the city-managed on-street variety and these private off-street variants, are not exactly a realm in which New Orleans seems to excel. This is to our auto-dependent population’s advantage, and does nothing to help the case for transit in this relatively dense, pedestrian oriented city (at least for the south) that also boasts an abundance of wide, multi-lane boulevards. Hurricanes notwithstanding, traffic generally flows comparatively freely in New Orleans, and if it weren’t for the fact that the city and state frequently have the worst condition of roads in the country, it would probably rank as the most relaxed city to drive despite the fact that the majority of the development patterns pre-date the automobile. They don’t call it the Big Easy for nothing.

But where does that leave the population seeking the nightlife of the Warehouse District or the nearby French Quarter but too lazy to take one of New Orleans’ classic streetcars to get downtown? They follow the classic pattern of looking for parking: first where it is on-street and typically free because the meters are no longer in effect, then where they have to pay (the cheaper the better). We as Americans—but probably we as humans—have an embedded ideation that unconsciously hones in on free parking. We crave it. And yet, because surface lots such as these so rarely accommodate evening parking, the average local New Orleanian will complain about how hard it is to find parking on a weekend night. (Translation: it’s hard to find free parking.) Such a claim is only ridiculous because the ocean of surface lots at Rampart and O’Keefe are both off limits and far from most of the nightlife. But what about a city that really does have a shortage of parking—where the aggregate number of lots is genuinely dwarfed by the number of drivers seeking parking downtown? Does such a city exist in America? Perhaps a case could be made for New York, and Manhattan most specifically. I wish I had followed-up on the New Orleans scenario to see how long this automated parking attendant stayed broken. If this situation occurred in Manhattan, where a broken machine created an opportunity for free spaces in one of the island’s few surface lots, it genuinely may precipitate a widespread social dissolution. But chances are it would be short-lived: such sought-after land would command far too high a price for the management to let their little machine stay broken for long. Then again, they probably would get enough revenue to afford a real, human parking attendant, even for the tiniest of lots.

When a better (no, perfect) deal is only 20 feet away.

Planners and economic geographers have long dissected the negative impacts to urbanism induced by the provision of vast stretches of off-street parking in central business districts; Donald Shoup’s The High Cost of Free Parking is simply the most high-profile of many evaluations of the embedded inefficiencies created when public officials do their utmost to distort parking provision so that it almost operates like a public good. Shoup’s line “Off-street parking requirements are a fertility drug for cars” almost serves as an aphorism for understanding land use in cities.

Most planners reserve their vitriol for off-street parking, recognizing it as an unfortunate necessity that should, whenever possible, rest underground in garages, or stack upwards through above-ground facilities (ideally with retail or offices on the street level). Through these remedies, every 160-square-foot rectangle within the larger parcel can at least accommodate more uses than a mere resting place for private vehicles.

Conversely, on-street parking is particularly desirable because it accomplishes a multitude of roles: 1) it is more spatially efficient, requiring less additional pavement for ingress and egress than a parking lot would; 2) it often serves as a buffer between the sidewalk and the cartways of a road, shielding pedestrians and discouraging drivers from speeding; 3) it promotes flexibility by spreading parking availability across a wider terrain instead of concentrating it in lots or garages; 4) metering allows the assignment of a particularly precise temporal value to using a space, sometimes up to an exact minute. Recognizing that man cannot live by bread alone, no public official would recommend abolition of downtown parking with the expectation that all downtown visitors would rely solely on public transportation. But most see on-street parking as the first and best choice for mitigating urban parking demand, and meters make such parking particularly desirable for motorists who demand a space for a particularly short time frame.

So, if metered on-street parking is such a smart anodyne to parking woes, how are motorists to respond if they find equally convenient on-street parking and it’s free? That exactly what they’ll get if they travel to the 1000 block of Senate Avenue in Indianapolis.

The east side of the street has evenly spaced meters. Notice that it is empty of parked cars. And here is the west side of that same block:

No meters, and filled with cars. It doesn’t take a doctorate in economic psychology to figure this one out. Most people, often unconsciously, operate in this frame of mind when seeking urban parking:

1) They want something close to the destination but are willing to walk a bit (usually four blocks maximum) if another option costs less.

2) Because of rule 1, they will often loop vigorously around city streets seeking a cheaper, metered parking space for quite some time before surrendering to a garage or off-street lot.

3) Rules 1 and 2 are immediately null and void if they find free parking, and they will be willing to walk great distances (sometimes up to 12 blocks) if they secure such a space without charge.

These are of course broad generalizations, and the more affluent motorists may shrug at paying a high price if it means convenience and proximity to their destination. But the above photos suggest that, on a broader level, pricing is always critical at determining desirability of parking—more than proximity to the destination, or security of the garage, or the convenience of a surface parking lot, or the difficulty far too many suburbanites have at parallel parking.

Which makes this scenario on Senate Avenue seem all the more ridiculous: who would pay for a metered parking space when there is a perfectly legal free option on the other side of the street? The answer is obvious: no one. And with other blocks of unmetered off-street parking not so far away, it is most likely safe to assert that the meters on the east side of the street do not bring in a whole lot of coin. This occurs at a time when the city, sore from diminished revenue, may be forced to cut $500,000 of support for organizations such as Indianapolis Downtown Inc, whose mission is to encourage further development downtown through beautification and promotion.

Now I recognize that parking meters are scarcely a panacea for budget shortfalls, but they are certainly less politically controversial than major structural alterations to citywide taxation, such as a removal of the property tax cap or a raise in income taxes. The city is already considering ways to boost revenue by privatization of meter collection services, while raising rates and increasing hours of meter enforcement, as I mentioned in an earlier post. These considerations are perfectly valid, but one that is likely to cost even less political capital would be simply to install them in areas where they do not yet exist. It is generally understood by the public that most large metro areas require at least a nominal fee for downtown parking during peak hours, so installation of meters here (especially when they already exist across the street) is more likely to be interpreted as addressing an oversight rather than an underhanded way of extracting more money from the motorist. Attempts to protest the installation of meters here, at many of the bridges along the canal, or other sites with free on-street parking will most likely be smothered by the prevailing understanding that this is the least draconian method of ascribing a uniform value to these coveted parking spaces.

Most people will choose an available on-street parking space before a gated lot if the former costs less. Thus, any city looking to boost revenue moderately but painlessly may first consider scouring those subtle locations where free parking exists simply due to the failure to include meters. In many instances, these numbers will prove nominal, but it will provide a larger base from which to build for any other city-wide meter adjustments, such as raised rates or increased enforcement times. These spaces along Senate Avenue achieve an even greater degree of irony when one considers the block along which they rest. Look just a little to the margin of that free on-street parking, and this is what you see:

An ocean of off-street parking available to employees at the Indiana University School of Medicine’s Fairbanks Hall building in the background left. Essentially the meters service a suburban corporate complex, with 15 to 20 spaces of this huge off-street lot available to unaffiliated visitors. I can hardly know whether those visitor spaces were full at the time of these photos, or whether the people using the free on-street parking even had business in Fairbanks Hall. But with provisions like those, my same three principles would apply: the visitors will use the free parking first, either on-street or in the surface lot, long before the meters will enjoy even the slightest ripple of motorist use. Thus, because the IU Medical School has provided free off-street parking—the perpetual gadfly of planners—it has almost completely devalued any on-street parking nearby. Could it be that the abundance of off-street parking provided by the State—embodied through Indiana University School of Medicine—only serves to trip the heels of the City, embodied by the parking meters? Parking may be more complicated than it seems upon an initial observation, but when a state agency is siphoning revenue away from a city agency under whose jurisdiction the State has property interests, one would hope they’d reach a mutual understanding on parking provision that wouldn’t result in the spatial equivalent of deadweight loss.

Generosity can be measured in meters.

Many municipalities see the pricing on meters for on-street parking as a science unto itself. Of course a city wants greater revenue, but it does not want to deter people from parking on the street—almost always the most preferred method over more costly garages—simply because the prices become too high. After all, parking meters typically only can flourish in urban settings, and if the price tag repels visitors from parking in them, it may very well dissuade people from visiting that urban neighborhood or city center altogether. This price sensitivity makes this meter in Cincinnati (photo taken earlier this winter) all the more hilarious to me:

No, this isn't from 1962, though I expect this might have been seen as a reasonable price back then. I’ve heard of low-cost parking, but this almost seems to defeat the purpose of charging altogether. Granted, this was not in Cincinnati’s downtown—I recall the meters there charging somewhat more on par with a national norm—but it was in the main street of the affluent Hyde Park neighborhood slightly northeast of the central business district.

Do the math. The absolute most the city can expect to make on this meter is $1.25 a day, if the meter hours run from 8 am to 6 pm, which is most likely the case because the majority of the businesses here are daytime only. One would hope that the city would not operate a street parking system that runs at a loss, but with such limited revenue, it would be hard to imagine the maintenance of these meters and the labor needed for enforcement could ever add much to the municipal budget.

Increasingly cities are rethinking the operation of their on-street parking fee collection systems, as evidenced by studies engaged in Indianapolis on measuring the viability of a long-term outsourcing contract. Chicago’s revenue through parking meters spiked tremendously after a new contract, but the new costs aroused considerable ire from people living and working in the area. The city further stymied its own ability to make any changes in response to citizen frustration by entering a stupefyingly long contract of 75 years.

The modernization and upgrading schemes for parking meters in many cities have focused on machinery that expands the media for payment. This includes stations that can apply to a broader number of spaces by printing the receipt that shows expiration time, or those that allow credit/debit card and even dollar bill payments. While these seem like excellent ideas in theory, they have aroused frustration for being far less efficient and more prone to malfunction than the conventional, amiably quaint meter pictured above in Cincinnati. New Orleans, for example, installed a new system of computerized boxes throughout its downtown shortly after Hurricane Katrina; these new meters accept plastic and are placed less frequently, since they print the time of expiry for users to place in their windshields. Frustration began to mount within only a few months, when the machines rejected users’ credit cards for no discernible reason other than failure to read it (the card itself had not been declined). Some of them were out of service, requiring the user to walk several blocks to find a box that did work, then return to his or her windshield to place the receipt there. Many people gave up and were forced to make the difficult choice of parking without paying and bearing the risk of getting a ticket, or just seeking an off-street parking garage and paying more money. This undoubtedly will become less of a problem as technology improves, but a city may want to avoid the problem of hastily embracing a new system because it looks sleek and modern; three years after installation, few metering systems seem as clunky as the ones in New Orleans, yet I’ve seen other cities install this same model as well.

An additional situation that new metering systems hope to rectify is the free rider problem. This occurs when a person pays for an hour at a meter and only uses fifteen minutes, giving the next user the opportunity to “cash in” on minutes that someone else paid for. Obviously most on street parking users don’t see this as a problem—it’s just a great bonus!—but it doesn’t help the city in ascribing a price to its on-street parking network. When a city goes for the bottom-of-the-barrel cost as we see here in Hyde Park, Cincinnati, it becomes increasingly easy for users to cheat the system. Enforcement often fails to cite for all-day meter users, concentrating its energies and violations on expired meters or illegal on-street parking, mostly because it doesn’t want to appear excessively draconian to on-street users that might otherwise seek their goods and services in the free parking of the suburbs. The retail abutting these on-street spaces also needs the business and would scarcely support high-cost meters. Thus, a person can put a quarter in, stay for and hour and 55 minutes, then come back, put another quarter in, wait another hour and 55, and so forth. Why should they use city-owned garages for a day of urban parking if they cost upwards of $10 when they can use a meter in Cincinnati all day for a little over a dollar?

The modern New Orleans boxes aim to reduce or eliminate both of aforementioned concerns by issuing paper receipts, so that the payment can only apply to that specific car and not one who comes in afterwards to freeload on the previous users’ remaining minutes. This is fine and good, but with paper receipts, any users who pay for a short, perfectly legal interval (such as 15 minutes) are bound to that time frame. If they then realize after five minutes that they need to pay for an additional 30 minutes, they cannot “add on” to their existing allotment by simply paying more into the meter; they have to wait until the actual clock time equates to the time on their receipts, then start over by feeding the meter again. So the New Orleans meters attempt to expand flexibility through methods of payment but also inhibit it in terms of impromptu visits to urban services. A person cannot change his or her mind easily after agreeing to buy an allotment of time on the electronic, receipt based meters. These users must “ride out” the remaining time on the meter before adding more, or they must accept the fact that they will have to double pay for some overlapping allotments on the meters.

Meanwhile, the City of Chicago, which is hardly a stranger to expensive city parking, is apparently incurring wrath in some neighborhoods simply for raising the costs up from a meager original rate of 25 cents an hour. Granted, the increase was 300% to one dollar an hour, so while the rates remain relatively low, such a sudden jolt is likely to perturb the users of on-street parking, even in an area such as Chicago where public transportation is strong and parking on the street is often subject to strict regulation. Apparently the private company in charge of the new lease on the parking meters took most of the heat, but did the city really have to agree to a contract that is as long as the typical human’s lifetime? Maybe the Hyde Park neighborhood in Cincinnati is doing perfectly fine with its current system, but clearly the change to something as seemingly mundane as parking meters can cause a ripple of frustration, with broader consequences for urban businesses and their patrons.