What Happened?
The City of Los Angeles last year began a pilot program to test the viability of congestion-based pricing for metered parking, but some research predicts the prevalence of disabled parking placards will undermine the pilot program.
So What?
Congestion-based tolling is gaining popularity internationally, particularly in London and Stockholm, as Gov1 has previously reported. In the United States, however, there is more enthusiasm for using variable parking meter charges to raise revenue and reduce driving in congested areas during peak hours.
While the results of LA’s pilot are complete, a recent article by UCLA professor Michael Manville sounds a cautionary note about a potential pitfall for the pilot. He suggests that one hurdle the pilot will have to overcome is that, throughout the day, as many as 52 percent of metered parking spaces in downtown LA are occupied by drivers who are not required to pay. His study found that 27 percent of non-payment was due to disabled placards. He recommends that, for congestion-based metered parking to be successful, state laws about disabled parking will have to be changed.
The Pilot
LA’s congestion-based metered parking pilot is called LA ExpressPark. It is being conducted in a 4.5-square-mile area of downtown LA. According to press materials (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/21/parking-in-downtown-la-la-express-park_n_1533625.html), key components of the one-year pilot, which started last May, include:
- A parking guidance system that provides information about open spaces via street signs and the “Parker” mobile app
- Another mobile app “ParkMobile,” that allows meter payment via smartphone
- News meters and multi-space pay stations that will charge between $1 and $6 for an hour of parking, depending on congestion
- A back-end system developed by Xerox to aggregate, manage and analyze parking data
The program is being funded by $15 million from the US Department of Transportation and $3.5 million from the city.
The Critique
Manville’s concerns about the success of the ExpressPark pilot are based on his own analysis of parking data in Los Angeles. His study showed that:
- Non-Enforcement accounted for 25 percent of nonpayment
- Meter failure accounted for 19 percent of nonpayment
- Government Identification accounted for 6 percent of nonpayment
- Disabled Placards accounted for 50 percent of nonpayment
Non-enforcement and meter failure have easy technological fixes, Manville suggests. Disabled placards, he says, are a bigger problem than government identification because access to government license plates is centrally controlled and governments have an incentive to limit access to them. Disabled license plates, on the other hand:
- Are issued in a decentralized fashion, based on certification by medical professionals
- Are a commodity that increases in value the more expensive parking becomes
- Incentize people to use metered parking and to stay parked for longer periods, meaning that even the 7 percent of people in LA using disabled placards could significantly upset optimal meter collection.
- Obscure the market-value and optimal pricing for parking spaces
Manville’s primary concern is that the market distortions presented by disabled placard programs, which exist in 23 states, mean a significant loss of revenue for municipalities and could present a roadblock to developing effective congestion-based metering programs. He also suggests, though, that offering disabled people free parking is problematic in its own right, because poverty and disability are imperfectly correlated, so letting disabled drivers park for free is not the most effective means of public support.
Anecdotally, the disabled placard programs appear to encourage fraudulent claims of disability. Particularly if congestion-based metering is implemented, it will drive up the demand for disabled placards, and potentially increase instances of fraud.