Washington DC Pilots a Surge Parking Program
New York City, a look inward at the parking opportunities within residential neighborhoods
Washington DC plans to pilot a surge pricing strategy for street parking downtown. Similar to the SFPark program San Francisco started in 2011, Washington’s ParkDC program will implement an array of street sensors, cameras, law enforcement, and transactional data to create variability in their metering price based on immediate demand surges. The city hopes that sharing real-time information on parking availability and pricing will invoke changes in drivers’ patterns and decrease congestion in high traffic sectors.
Inevitably, I, as a New Yorker, look for how this technology might our city with similar problems. Reflecting on issues around street parking in New York City, it’s difficult not to notice side streets in residential neighborhoods and the abundance of parking the city chooses not to charge for. This real estate is the ‘white elephant’ in the room for helping to mitigate congestion around the city. Realistically, the majority of vehicles in residential neighborhoods are used minimally throughout the year and simply shift around the neighborhood due to street cleaning patterns that mandate movements. Should the city refocus attention on emptying the streets of these ‘casual use’ vehicles, a plethora of street width becomes available for additional public uses or to ease the burden of the commercial and construction sectors. To do this the city would have to consider a policy shift towards allowing overnight parking only for vehicles which are regularly used.
What if they used vehicle sensors and data collection as a means to issue exclusive parking permits only to residents who travel a certain amount of miles a week? With an added burden of a driver logging a commuting pattern, the city might be able to mitigate the politics of those who need their car to earn a wage and those who use this valuable city owned asset for free. Currently residents essentially pay for free street parking with their time and fuel costs, idling in their vehicle or driving in circles solely to avoid parking tickets during weekly street cleaning periods. Perhaps analytics can help find a threshold where they would give up this habit and instead paying a new market rate street price, park in a garage, or sell their vehicle entirely.
New York City, with its Muni-Meter parking system, has the capabilities to start a surge pricing system similar to San Francisco and Washington DC. Before it does so, and it’s most certainly on the horizon, the city should focus its attention on the parking it gives away for free disproportionately to those who barely use their vehicles. The “Smarter City” initiatives could assist in finding new politically achievable solutions in these residential neighborhoods.
