Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Free Parking Again

Another issue with free parking. Isn't there a market based way to take care of this issue around Mockingbird Station?

5 comments:

Alton in Big D said...

What's really ironic is that I've seen tons of people park in the park and ride lot and walk right past the station into the shopping area. Maybe DART should ramp up their own enforcement.

M1EK said...

This is really stupid - the entitlement from the transit patron is just stunning. Yes, Mockingbird Station touts DART - the idea is that you would presumably take DART *TO* the station to go shop or eat or whatever (as well as maybe live there), not park in their garage and then take DART to work.

Jeff said...

What I've seen some downtowns do is install "meters" for those parking spots. They do not need coins, but require the spots to turn over every 20 or 30 minutes. This prevents workers from occupying the spots all day.

BruceMcF said...

Rather than "no-pay meters", it'd seem easier to just declare various levels as as two hour, four hour and six hour parking, and someone goes through at regular intervals and puts a chalk mark on tires of the parked cars ... as long as the first pass is at 9am, all-day cars in the two hour spaces can be towed at 11am, in the four hour spaces can be towed at 1pm, and in the six hour spaces can be towed at 3pm.

The market part of the solution is the posted towing fee includes a premium above the cost of towing to defray the wages of the guy or gal that has to go around with the chalk because of the selfish anti-social free-parking-entitlement behavior.

John said...

Maybe the garage could offer the first two hours free for shoppers, but charge an escalating fee after that to discourage all-day parking.