OPINION: How Downtown's parking prices increase congestion and discourage commerce

The popular impression that parking is impossible in the Downtown core is, technically speaking, about as wrong as ideas come. Literally tens of thousands of spaces are available — in garages, on the street, in surface lots and through the occasional valet. Most can be had for a trifling hourly rate, and hundreds of on-street spots become free in the evenings.

Among Downtowners, it's taken as gospel that such misunderstandings are rooted in the sort of unreasonable expectations that tend to pop up in rural, car-centric states like ours. If people can't park their F-250s exactly in front of their destination anytime for free, the thinking goes, they just round things up to "no parking available." Such bizarre attitudes, we figure, can't really be fixed.

But a national expert hired by the city to take a fresh look at Downtown parking argues that it is way, way more complicated than that. There are indeed thousands of spots available, but people may well not know they exist, and if they do, have little incentive to use them. They thus pack into specific parts of the core like sardines — usually at predictable times and on predictable days of the week — to the point where it becomes legitimately difficult to find parking.

"On Central Avenue in the evening, you will often see demand exceeding supply," said Bill Fulton, a planner, author and former mayor of Ventura, California. "Around the growers' market on Saturday, you will often see demand exceeding supply. When there's a big event at the convention center, you will often see demand exceeding supply."

That quickly becomes a problem for Downtown, and it's a big one. For one thing, lots of people respond to such parking crunches not by driving away from the epicenter until they find a spot, but by circling around the busiest area until they luck into one — a practice that parking experts call "cruising." That creates traffic jams consisting mainly of people just looking for a spot, which helps exactly nobody. Worse still, everyone looking to come Downtown during these busy times to quickly spend some money at one of our grab-and-go eateries, coffee shops or shoe repair outfits will find themselves unable to do so, hurting the economy and the larger cause of revitalization.

The typical response to this sort of challenge is to propose the construction of yet more parking lots and garages, but Fulton has another, vastly cheaper idea: tweak the price of parking such that drivers are motivated to use the thousands of empty spots that actually are available.

The approach was popularized by Fulton mentor and economist Donald Shoup, who in the book "The High Cost of Free Parking" laid out a strategy that goes like this: On blocks where it's very difficult to find street parking, authorities should raise prices by a small amount — say, 25 cents per hour. On blocks where it's all too easy to find parking, lower prices. The time of day and day of the week matter as well: If demand on a particular block is high in the morning and low in the afternoon, prices should be higher in the morning and lower in the afternoon. At the same time, public garage spaces should cost less than on-street spaces, the better to divert more people away from the prime on-street real estate.

That price-tweaking process should be repeated at regular intervals, Shoup wrote, until one critical end goal is reached: At any given time, about 15% of spaces on every block should be free and ready to use for anyone who wants to conduct some quick business Downtown and then leave. For Shoup, the "correct" price for parking is whatever leaves just enough room to conveniently welcome the next customer. 

This is not, to put it mildly, how things currently work in the core. There may be plenty of street parking a few blocks away from a popular area, but there's no discount for those who are willing to hoof it a bit. There may likewise be plenty of parking in public garages nearby, but the fees there (two dollars per hour) are twice the on-street rate and apply 24/7. The system is almost precision engineered to shunt everyone away from garages and into congested hot spots. 

"That leads to lack of turnover. It leads to cruising. It leads to congestion," Fulton said. "If you want people who park all day, in one place, to park in garages, why would you make it cheaper to park on the street?"

"Don't underprice street parking. It's very valuable," Fulton concluded. "And don't overprice public garage parking … because it's valuable in a different way."

Peter Rice is the editor of Downtown Albuquerque News, a digital publication covering the city center and nearby neighborhoods. Details at downtownalbuquerquenews.com

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