WHY CITIES SHOULD PLAN FOR EMPTY PARKING SPACES.

WHY CITIES SHOULD PLAN FOR EMPTY PARKING SPACES. The article on parking I cited yesterday describes Professor Donald Shoup’s “85% Rule.” Shoup says that cities should “charge whatever rates lead to about 85% of the spots being filled up at any given time, moving rates up or down as demand fluctuates. Portland, Oregon and Anchorage, Alaska have adopted the 85% guideline. A result of queuing theory is that if you want to avoid lines at supermarket checkout counters, you have to have some counters that idle some of the time. It drives some planners crazy to have some idle capacity. They think of assets going to waste. They want to add capacity only when 100% of capacity is being used. We have all been in lines at toll booths and supermarkets where this fallacy shows up. Imagine some of the reactions to seeing 15% of parking spaces empty (or more—the 85% is an average over fluctuating demand).

This entry was posted in Economics. Bookmark the permalink.

3 Responses to WHY CITIES SHOULD PLAN FOR EMPTY PARKING SPACES.

  1. Annalisa says:

    Could this concept be applied to public school planning? I’m thinking about how Darien converted the second middle school into Town Hall because there weren’t as many students then. When Darien started overflowing with school-age students, the town was in real trouble.

  2. Lee says:

    Best Buy was loathe to schedule one minute it didn’t need to, and of course the district management didn’t take kindly to actually staffing your stores. When an unexpectedly busy night came up you could count on a pleading phone call to come in and remedy the situation. I think the solution to all these problems is to hire more economists!

  3. Pingback: TWO CONCERT HALLS. | Pater Familias

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *