WHY DON’T LOCAL GOVERNMENTS RAISE THE PRICE OF PARKING TO GET RID OF CONGESTION? I have posted several times about my first lesson in economics, I repeat it often: “There is no shortage of parking in Evanston. The problem is that the price of parking is too low to clear the market.”
However, a different question remains: Why isn’t the price of parking high enough to clear the market?
In this article Professor Stephen Carter reflects on his own delay in paying a parking ticket.
Carter says: “Tom Vanderbilt, in his fine book TRAFFIC tells us that spaces in municipal garages go for an average of five times the cost of metered spaces on the street. And not only are the spaces cheap; often the parking fines are too.” Carter thinks that the reason why prices of public parking are set below a market price is that “Planners hate cars; drivers love them. Drivers have more votes than planners, so parking stays cheap.”
Professor Carter cites some studies referred to in Vanderbilt’s book that suggest that parking raises issues of status and power. Carter then says:”Which brings us back to my parking ticket. Nobody has more status and power than the state, so why didn’t I pay my ticket at once? Because the state’s status and power are not strongly signaled. The face value of the ticket was relatively low — $20 — and paying late increased the fine only by $5.”
I am inclined to think that people are slow to pay parking tickets because parking is considered a nuisance and paying for a ticket is considered a nuisance.